Post something interesting about yourself

bluemax_1 said:
That's hardcore!!!

I've done just over 100 miles in a day a few times when I was a lot younger, with a group/peloton (which makes it a LOT easier, when you and the other riders take turns leading, and drafting).

How long did it take you from start to finish? Was it for competition, or just for the heck of it?
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Was studying in Zurich back then, did a lot of cycling, competitions, too. Routinely around the ZH lake on Saturdays (~100km). No money for a car … everything on my beloved bicycle, that was stored every night next to my bed, in my single student room.

This was for the heck of it, from ZH to Kaiserslautern, where my parents lived. Don’t remember the exact time, just that I left at sunrise and arrived in the middle of the night, and that the last 100km were much slower than the first 300 :)
 
I didn't grew up with motorcycles and for the longest time I stayed away from them.
May 2nd, 2021. I learned how to ride a motorcycle and finished the MSF 2 day course held by Honda Riding Training Center in Alpharetta Ga. Parking lot training on how to ride. After completion, the motorcycle driving category got added to my driving license.
May 6th I picked up a Royal Enfield 650 from a dealer and rode it home in rush hour Atlanta. May 7th, left home early morning and rode the bike for a little over 300miles getting it ready for its first service. No freeway, back roads only and keeping it under 5000rpm.
When I took it back to the dealer on May 8th for the service they thought there was a problem with the bike or something like that :) , I told them that I have Fridays off from work and I needed road practice after the MSF course :) and all the videos about riding I've been watching for the couple months. I ride a bit less now and I enjoy it more. It's not frightening like those first days.

I don't remember most of my childhood and teenage years.

I quit smoking cigarets cold turkey. (My wife says it's a big deal)
 
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I have an ex-girlfriend who's a current member of the upper chamber of the Diet (Japanese Parliament). And a current Member of Parliament in the UK, who was a junior minister under the recently departed government, once threatened to do unspeakable things to me with a jar of Nutella.
 
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I peaked too early. I was a seriously high performer (academically) at university. I studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge. My worst ever exam performance was for my 2nd year Ecology course. It was also the highest mark in the year, and earned me an academic prize.
 
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DennisM said:
My three brothers (I am the baby of the family) always told me that I really wasn't their brother because mom and dad found me on the side of the road in a ditch and just raised me. I was a tormented child.

When I was deployed to King Abdul Azziz Air Base (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) for Desert Storm 1990/91 a few interesting things happened to me.
1. Dan Quayle sat at my table in the mess tent and I didn't even know who the F he was at the time.
2. I threw a football around with General Norman Schwarzkopf and a couple others outside of the hardened shelters our F-15s were kept.
3. I played dominos with Tommy Hearns; FYI - black guys call dominos ... "playing bones".
4. My brother steamed opened a box of Cheezits, put a pint of JD in it, resealed it and sent it to me in a "care package". The only thing I could find to chase it with was warm pineapple juice. After finishing the pint and using the warm pineapple juice as a chaser - I was feeling pretty okay up until an "ALARM RED" sounded and I had to dawn my gas mask. The smell of the JD and pineapple juice inside my gas mask made me up-chuck in it.

I really really suck at golf.
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Loved Hitman Hearns. I was built like him so I adopted his boxing style.
 
I worked all my professional life doing environmental work of many descriptions. Mostly water quality protection but some other things too. When I worked for Union Electric in St. Louis I did groundwater work around a lot of their problem sites. And they had a lot. Helped write EPA underground storage tank regulations which was very rewarding.

After UE I went into business on my own. Consulting work and owned several private utilities. Had payroll of about 40 so medium sized small business. Got bought out for real money. But not enough to retire at 50.

So next did basically the same thing again in the Branson area. With good help we got a lot done. 2.5 M EPA grant helped kick off what is now the largest not for profit water and sewer company in Missouri. We got DNR to accept large scale drip irrigation systems. At first in sensitive areas but now statewide. We built an interceptor sewer that got all wastewater discharge to Roark Creek eliminated.

The non profit group operates publicly owned systems as well as the ones they own.

I'm retired now at 72. Happy to look back fondly at my career. Not a pleasure cruise but it worked out in the end.
 
I have been the first person to arrive at 2 separate car accidents involving a pickup truck vs. semi, with a fatality. However, I have also been able to save someone’s life on on occasion. That was pretty cool.

But probably my best moment for just being somewhere in the nick of time was once when I was about 24 years old. I was walking across a parking lot to a grocery store. There was a man coming out of the grocery store with a cart so full of groceries it was nearly overflowing. He also had a 1 year old in the seat of the cart that I would soon learn was not strapped in. The man had his car keys out and was focused on unlocking his car remotely from quite a distance. The remote was not working. He was pushing the button and not paying attention, and after several pushes he became so absent minded he took his other hand off the cart and just started walking toward his car, leaving the kid and the groceries behind. He was 100% focused on his key fob and completely ignoring his cart.

The cart continued to roll, overcome by gravity down the very slight slope of the sidewalk. The cart, because of the slope actually started turning away from the line the man was walking. It turned toward me just the same as if it had been steered that way.

I just started sprinting because the cart was rolling toward the curb and it was obviously not going to stop. The man continued walking toward his car, mashing the button on his car key fob, almost waiving it at his car like a magic wand. I yelled and he turned to see me sprinting toward where his cart was heading. He simply stood there frozen with his key still pointed at his car.

The cart tipped off the curb, pitching groceries absolutely everywhere, and the 1 year old infant with it. The baby literally flew a good 5-6 feet through the air and I caught it pointing head down about 1 foot above the pavement. It was catapulted in a perfect rainbow arc in the air. At this point I was full speed, and had to hurdle the cart and still falling groceries. I landed perfectly and came to a stop 1 step in front of the man and simply handed him his baby. I simply said, “this is yours.”

He was making animal, spluttering noises as I simply walked into the grocery store leaving him to pick up his groceries that were spread all over and busted open, while holding a screaming infant. I never looked back, I just went and did my shopping.

Believe what you will, but that story is absolutely true and not embellished. Just before this all happened, when the man came out of the store, I was maybe 50 yards away (possibly more), and I had a premonition - something literally said “RUN”, so I did. I was running when he let go of the cart almost.
 
I can't say I've ever had premonitions but I have seen things I found difficult to explain.

I worked as an ICU nurse during COVID and that was a surreal experience in many ways as I was still a fairly new nurse at that time, and I had family members that fell strongly on either side of the many debates the pandemic produced. I saw a lot of people die, many of whom had preexisting conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes, but were also fairly young, 60-70; it was strange in my mid 20s to meet lots of families that had planned for retirement only to have life unexpectedly cut short in the "golden years". It taught me that life is short and that death is often not as dignified or controlled as we might hope.

Sometimes the patients that declined from COVID and ended up on the ventilator were ones you might not expect. One memorable patient was a 45yo man, active lifestyle with regular running and weightlifting. African American, history of mild hypertension.

He followed the course of most of our ventilated COVID patients in 2021, heavy sedation and eventually paralysis to allow scarred lungs to cooperate with the ventilator, antibiotics and remdesivir, occasional vitamin d infusions. Continuous blood thinners and insulin drip. After 4-5 weeks of this he was maxed out on the concentration of oxygen he could receive from the ventilator, was experiencing alternate bleeding and clots, and his organs were starting to fail. Despite being on multiple drugs to raise his blood pressure his BP dropped to crazy lows, like 60s/30s;

this was usually a sign that the patient would pass in the next couple hours. I started my shift at 7am with him in this condition. His wife had been called out of town and let us know she would be unable to make it back until the following morning.

He was in a similar state when I gave report to the oncoming nurse 12 hours later. When I returned the following morning, the same nurse informed me that the patient's wife had arrived an hour before, and that he had died within minutes of her reaching the bedside.

I was amazed by the fact that he had survived that long, considering that his blood pressure had been barely high enough to maintain life for the last 24 hours. It was also baffling to think that the patient could have been aware of anything because he had been on large quantities of sedatives midazolam, fentanyl, propofol and nimbex (a paralytic) for weeks now. It seemed that somehow, he knew she was there and once she arrived he was ready to pass on.

I was there for their final conversation, held weeks before, as he called her on Facetime to let her know that he was getting worse and needed to be intubated immediately.

This experience put me into the habit of always speaking to my sedated patients, as you never know what they might be aware of.

I also ran a 5 minute mile back high school before I tore both ACL's playing soccer.

Funnily enough, my wife and I recently discovered that I might indeed have perfect pitch as well
 
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I have paddled my Sea Kayak to most of the outer islands of Maine (still have to get to Monhegan). I have had 3 careers. At 67 I can still swim a mile and touch my toes. I have too many knives.
Unlike a lot of you folks I have no apparent paranormal abilities.
Very fun thread!
 
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Wow is my life boring.

53, BSEE from WPI, did shot put in HS and college even tho I was only 5'9" and maybe 150lbs (beat a lot of bigger guys in HS cuz I had better technique, but very different in college lol). Pretty good pool player at one time, and like fast cars.

In the early 2000s I had an Audi S4, and was invited by Audi to a big event at NH Speedway. We got broken up into groups, and the groups rotated through various events, one of which was a road coarse. I got the 2nd fastest lap time in my group.The guy that beat me had a TT, and he blew his clutch doing it.

Another time, Dodge had an SRT thing at Gillette stadium. Had different road courses set up in the parking lot, with different SRT cars at each. Got the fastest lap times at the Cherokee, Caliber, and 300 courses, but one technically didn't count cuz I hit one stupid cone (forget which). One guy turned off the traction control in the 300, wiped out pretty much all the cones, and got kicked out lol.
 
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This is a fun thread. What a cool way to get to know your online buddies.

I don't find myself particularly interesting.

- I was adopted (1 of 20 siblings). My two brothers and I were the only 3 "white" boys growing up, everyone else was First Nation)
- I was home schooled.
- I have written (copied) the Bible in its entirety probably somewhere between 10-15 times in my childhood. (it was a form of discipline and as you can see, I got in "trouble" a lot)
- I am a voracious reader and when I worked my way through the family library, I read entire series of encyclopedias (we had several).
- I had what was called a wicked "Irish" temper in my youth and I was quite the devil. I made a conscious choice around 11 years old to never let it best me again and I've never lost my temper since.
- I worked in cable for around 12 years. If you ever want a front row seat to society's underbelly, become a cable guy or a cop.
- Speaking to the above, I spent 5 years volunteering as a Reserve Deputy for a local Sheriff's Office. Very formative years for me and an experience I wouldn't trade for anything.
- I come from a long line of geniuses, rife with alcoholism and other issues. I inherited neither their alcoholism or their genius.
- I play the guitar and fiddle.
- I've won speedloading and shooting competitions with traditional muzzleloaders.
- I am an avid student of history, both the sociological and material culture of different eras and peoples.
- I don't like making mistakes so it makes me risk averse but at the same time, my most formative life lessons are from mistakes I've made.

I guess that's enough about me.
 
Outstanding and fascinating posts, everyone! I'm not that interesting, but I'll play along. Here goes:

I am a 30-year veteran of the construction industry, specializing as a carpenter since I left school. Throughout my career, I have delivered major projects in four different countries - Australia, New Zealand, England and Singapore.

I am the proud father of triplets who were born via international surrogacy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This experience was both the best and the worst of my life. It was the best because I love my kids more than life itself, and their birth was the greatest privilege I have ever had.

However, it was also the worst because surrogacy is illegal in Malaysia, which meant everything had to be done in secret. I had to pay bribes to officials to make it happen, and the Australian embassy wouldn't grant my kids passports even though, as their father and an Australian citizen, they were fully entitled to them. It took six months, and during that time, my wife and I lived in constant stress and fear that the authorities would somehow find out and take the children away from us. I got so desperate that I sought out a Fairfax journalist and was about to go public with the story of being stranded in Malaysia with triplets. The journalist wrote to the Australian embassy on our behalf, and they finally granted the passports two days before Christmas.

The kids turn nine next month.

In 2012, I went to Blade Show in Atlanta and spent nearly $10k Aussie on knives! I plan to return with my kids in the next few years.
 
In 2016 I was in a bad accident which resulted in severe spinal cord damage. I woke up paralyzed from the hips down with a doctors telling me this would be the rest of my life, that the damage was too bad and not fixable.

8 years, 10 surgeries at mayo clinic and st judes, countless Physical therapy hours later and by the grace of God and my Wife I am walking again. Not just walking but, working, riding bikes with my daughters and hiking with my dogs.

Never give up people, always shoot for the impossible. It's attainable. I'm so grateful for everyday I'm upright.
 
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