The one where PJM meets Dr Oversteer and Mr Sideways
I was twenty three years old and let loose with a MkII Golf GTi 16 valve with more than three times the horsepower of my previous car.

For those of you cosseted by two generations of hatchbacks with all the fun engineered out of them, the old Golfs were a seriously entertaining driving experience. You could alter the car's line through corners by judicious use of the throttle pedal and 139 horsepower went a long way in a car that weighed less than a metric ton.

Take it from me that in practice it's a hell of a lot more fun than I made it sound.

For the most part, I drove it sensibly and responsibly, neither wanting to get points on my pristine license or to be a nuisance to everyone else. However, one wet afternoon I was approaching a roundabout and the devil got the better of me. I gave it a tiny bootful more than I should have as I turned, which ordinarily wouldn't be a problem as it had plenty of grip in reserve...

...until I lifted off the throttle suddenly.

The back end obediently stepped out of line and I gave the steering wheel a tug to catch the ensuing slide.

The textbook method is to apply a little power, turn into the direction of the slide and everything should sort itself out with minimal drama.

The textbook explicitly does not recommend shouting "Fuck!" and putting your foot on the brake.

*parp* "Ohfuckitimgonnacatch..." *parp* "itimgonnacatchit..."

Still the Golf continued to oversteer

"fuckfuck.." *parp* "...fuckimnotgoingtocatchit..."

By now I was gently pirouetting sideways and came to a graceful halt as the nose of the car scraped a crash barrier. I looked up facing the wrong way round a roundabout and sheepishly put the car into reverse and straightened up, noting the many expressions of disgust from fellow road users.

From that day on, cars have been treated with the utmost respect.

Total cost of this lesson? £810.75 for repairs to the bumper and wing, plus a new pair of pants.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 13 Feb 2009, 10:24, 5 replies)

Not Darwinesque, Just Stupid!
When I was a younger antichrist, I lived in a 4 bedroom detached house, with a large garden.

This meant parties. Lots of parties. The main feature would be a ludicrous amount of alcohol (or a bouncy castle).

Mostly it would be my brothers friends from school, work, etc. Every once in a while he'd invite girls I knew from my old school, so I'd end up chatting to them all night.

It was on one of these nights that I decided to be an idiot.

Me and a friend were sat in the front room, chatting shit. Two girls I knew wandered in and started chatting. Part way through the conversation, one of them mentions that her feet are killing, so she'll drop her shoes.

I look down and see a pair of monstrous heels, something like this - img217.imageshack.us/img217/5237/hellgoldrh2.jpg - basically, pretty damn big!

We laughed at how much she'd been tottering round in them all night, and then the girls go off to get a drink, throwing a shoe at me as they do, hitting me in the stomach.

I pick it up to throw back, and realise it's quite heavy, much heavier than I expected. I then looked at the heel itself and though "I wonder if it'll hurt if I hit myself with that?"

So I did. Hard. It hurt quite a lot, and bled, as you can probably guess.

I felt something warm trickle down my head, and quickly caught my friends attention. He was just about to panic when I had a brainwave and shout "Get the camera!".

This is how I looked -


My brother then comes in with some tissue, asking what the hell I'd done. When I told him, he laughed at me.

Don't blame him really.

Length? 3 inches
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 10:21, 1 reply)

I'm the kind of cyclist you hate
As a rule, I wear black.

I have no reflectors. I have no lights. I have no helmet. I hang off the back of trucks. Sometimes I have a walkman.

I am allergic to some general anaesthetics - they kill me - but I don't wear my medic alert (in fact, I don't know where it is).

I have not long to live.
:)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 10:21, 11 replies)

Water and Electric
It's common sense that water and electric don't mix, which I why I panicked as a 7 year old running around my house having a water fight, when I fired a shitload of water all over one of the light switches.

Instead of just leaving it, I thought it might make my house set on fire, so I put my mouth over the light switch and tried sucking the water out.

Bad move, I shot back to the other side of the room and was curled up in a ball making ewok noises.

Doh.
(addikt, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 10:17, 1 reply)

I once went fishing for piranhas.
I was on a balsa raft, which, due to the weight of the fishermen, floated a couple of inches underwater.

We had a colander of raw meat to use as bait.

After half an hour, we'd only caught one.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 10:17, Reply)

Imptatient
One day I was in the middle of Lancaster waiting to cross over a busy road, as I was half way over a big articulated lorry stopped right in front of me.

Me, being an impatient bastard at the best of times decided to cut through _underneath_ the lorry to get to the other side of the road. Unfortunately I'm 6ft 3 tall and being a lanky fucker I bashed my head underneath the lorry, fell over and nearly shit myself as it started moving with me underneath it.

I escaped unhurt but only by a foot or so, I still have nightmares thinking about how close I was to certain death.. Stupidest thing I've EVER done by far.
(addikt, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 10:14, 3 replies)

Fixing a fan in a PC power supply
In my infinite wisdom at the age of 13, I decided to do a bit of DIY repair on my PC, which had an amazingly annoying buzzing broken fan.

I kept the pc plugged in (to earth the chassis), but switched off at the plug and the switch on the pc power supply itself.

I then unplugged it all, opened the power supply up, changed the fan. Before putting it all back together, I had a brainwave;

"Why don't I just plug it in to test it all works before putting it all back together?"

I checked it was all switched off, plugged the cable in and then switched everything on for the test.

It didn't work, but I noticed the cable was loose in the PC socket, so i pushed it in.


20 minutes later, I awoke the other side of my bedroom, with a seriously sharp pain in my right hand.

I looked down to find my finger and thumb were *bright* red and throbbing a little. Ouch.

I switched it all off again, and retraced my steps.

In order to plug the cable in properly, I had to steady the power unit, unfortunately for me, I decided to use the capacitor on the back of the plug to do so, with my finger and thumb.

I tend to put things back together before testing now.
(Ethelred is watching cheese grow, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 10:06, Reply)

It is a shock to me that I am still alive to write this.
Do any of you know Bath well?


I forget the name of it, but there's a big hill on one side of the town, it has a main road on it with, houses all down one side of the road, and a blind bend at half way down the hill.


It's a fun road to drive on.


It is not a fun road when, after an afternoon in The Hobgoblin then a late night in T's (or TJ's, I forget which, and I don't know if it is even there anymore) you find yourself sitting in a shopping trolley saying to your friends, 'Go on, let go, it'll be fun, I'll be fine'


In my defence, I did have some thoughts of safety...I made them launch me from the left hand side of the road so I would be travelling WITH the traffic...


Two cars went past me on the other side of the road before I drifted across, heading at high speed towards the blind bend on the wrong side of the road. I would go head on into the next car that came round the corner.


I panicked


I leant as hard as I could to the right, tipped the trolley over, missed smashing my head on the curb by what felt like millimetres, skidded on my side to a stop and clambered to the path, scraped and bleeding and shaking as (and the rest of this is what was relayed to me later, I didn't see any of it)


A black BMW came round the bend at speed, flying through the spot where I had been laying split seconds earlier, coming through the gap between me half up on the curb and the skidding trolley that had just crossed back into the other side of the road.


Followed by a speeding police car.


We can only assume that the police car didn't see me or was too intent on chasing the BMW.


Fuck me, I've scared myself just remembering that.


Worst thing I have ever done.


By far.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 10:04, 3 replies)

Still kicking myself about this one
My Darwin moment came when I decided on leaving the exhaust port uncovered, as the idea of covering it up with a wire mesh or filtered covering would make the Death Star look aesthetically unpleasant.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 9:57, 3 replies)

Driving to work
February the 18th, 1993. A cold, but otherwise inauspicious morning. There had been a little bit of snow that night, but no more than a light dusting, and the roads were clear. I had dropped the missus off at work at around 8:30, and then headed to the office.

Between the town I lived in and the town I worked in was a perfectly straight stretch of road, about two miles long. The visibility was perfect, I was keeping my distance (as taught by my instructor). Conditions were, as they say, perfect. As I motored along in the white Metro, music playing, I was in ebullient mood. Which considering that I was off to work at the DSS, was surprising.

Did I mention that this road was above disused mine workings? And that near the end of the road, the fields on either side had flooded, creating a couple of good-sized lakes?

As I approached these lakes, the car in front braked suddenly. As a precaution, and even though there was more than enough stopping distance between us, I instinctively touched my car's brakes very lightly. It was at this point that the otherwise flawless driving surface decided to reveal that it was, in fact, covered in black ice...

As I felt the rear end of the car begin to slide, time appeared to slow dramatically and my brain went into overdrive. You're meant to steer into the skid, right? One problem with that; it's the passenger side of the car that is sliding out, meaning that if I steer into the skid, it's going to take me onto the other side of the road and into oncoming traffic. No option but to try and steer out of it instead.

I wrestled manfully with the steering wheel, successfully pulling out of my collision course. Unfortunately for me, this had the effect of propelling me in the other direction, the car wheels locked and sliding gracefully across the ice like some kind of automotive Robin Cousins but without the gayness or sparkly jumpsuit.

"Oh, fuck", was all I could think, as I struggled frantically to bring the wayward Metro under control and pointing in a straight line once more. Needless to say I failed miserably, and ploughed straight into the kerb, the impact of which caused the bonnet to instantly fly up and obscure any view that might have been afforded me.

As the car flew (yes, flew) across the bank, several thoughts were running though my head. Generally along the lines of "Shit", "Fuck", "I'm going to diiiiieeeeee", and "Why didn't I get the bus?"

The car's flight didn't last long. No, there was the small issue of impact upon the surface of the lake. Water. That'll provide a relatively soft landing, right?

Not if that surface is covered in two inches of ice it won't. As the Metro plunged headlight-first into the icy pool, the whole of the front end crumpled like a concertina on impact. As the car came to rest (fortunately for me next to the bank), I realised that I was now facing the direction from which I had been travelling, meaning I had turned 180 degrees during my mid-air flight.

Getting out of the driver's side wasn't an option, as it was partially submerged, but the passenger side was almost on dry land. I escaped the wreckage with somewhat shattered nerves and a slightly damp foot - nothing more. Put a bit of a dampener on the rest of the day though, what with it being the ex wife's car and her birthday and all.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 13 Feb 2009, 9:57, 2 replies)

To be honest
I believe the problems lay a lot deeper than just the poor workmanship and lack of funding as most experts talk about and i think that if...

oh..

Darwin awards....

i thought it was the 'problems within the norwegian leather industry'

my bad
( Mr Nerdy-Speccy-FuckNuts Ouchy ouchy wa wa!, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 9:47, 2 replies)

Potential football-related suicide
I am, and always have been, a Celtic supporter. Not the easiest thing in the world to be when you live in a city populated mainly by fans of the perenial underachievers of Scottish football, Hearts and Hibs.

Anyway, on with the story. As a student, I lived in a hall of residence way out on the eastern outskirts of the city. My girlfriend of the time live on the western outskirts of the city. Getting to her place involved a 1 hour bus ride right through the city centre.

One Saturday afternoon, I was heading over to her place. For reasons that escape me now, I was wearing my Celtic top - the famous green and white hoops.

OK, so shoot me - I would never wear a football top now unless I was actually playing the game, but this was a long time ago and I was but a pimply 20 year old.

The number 44 bus goes along Gorgie Road and past Tynecastle, home of Hearts. With it being a Saturday afternoon, they had a game on. Against Rangers. Gulp.

So there I am, sitting bold as brass on the top deck of the bus, resplendent in my Celtic top, sitting in amongst a bus full of half-bevvied neanderthals in Hearts and Rangers tops making their way to the game.

Oh my fucking giddy aunt. I was absolutely kacking myself. I knew that if I moved I would (a) bring attention to myself and (b) probably unleash an avalanche of turd from my oscillating trumpeter's lips.

I just stayed in my seat, said nothing, and looked out of the window.

And you know the crazy thing? No one said a word. Not a fucking word. I still to this day cannot believe that I was stupid enough to have made the mistake in the first place, and secondly lucky enough to live to tell the tale.

I can only imagine that everyone else on the bus must have thought that I was a tooled-up psychopath looking for a bloodbath to kick off.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Fri 13 Feb 2009, 9:46, 4 replies)

Caravan
Driving back from holiday one day, we were overtaken by a car pulling a caravan. Before you ask, we weren't driving particularly slowly, but this car must have been going at 75mph. The caravan was weaving behind it and we took one look at it and slowed right down to let it get ahead of us.

Emerging from a services a while later, we passed the same car. It was badly smashed up and the caravan was lying behind it on its side. I have no idea if anyone was hurt, but I can't say we thought anything more than 'you deserved that, you prick'.
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 9:40, Reply)

11 year olds, pron and electricity!
The length we go to for a bit of smut.

We used to have a trailer shed at the top of the garden that we took over as our 'den' (we were 11!) Twas a great place for reading the Razzle, Fiesta and wotnot.

1 night it was a bit dark so i managed to find an old spotlight in the shed with 1 of my dad's cobbled together super-long mains extentions. I ran it up the garden, plugged in the light and it worked - for about 5 seconds.

I sussed that the huge bit of black insulation tape in the middle must be the problem (where mi dad had joined 2 leads) so i set to work undoing it all to tidy up the leads and re-connect them. Only problem is i hadn't turned it off at the wall. Now, all i can remember is a loud buzzing noise and trying to crawl up the garden on my knees. My mates filled me in on the rest of the story 2 days later in hospital.

Apparently, there were 'blue lines' of electricity crackling and my hair was stood on end with smoke coming off it - i STILL had hold of the wires as the light was on! 1 of the lads realised what was happening and kicked the wire out of my hand. It was at this point that my hear stopped. Lucky, my dad came out, saw what was going on and started CPR for 15 minutes till the Ambulance arrived.

This was 20 years ago and i still have no finger prints on 4 fingers.
(TheManofScience, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 9:38, 2 replies)

I once said 'boo'
to a goose.
( Mr Nerdy-Speccy-FuckNuts Ouchy ouchy wa wa!, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 9:37, Reply)

Darwins awards
Royal Medal (1853)
Wollaston Medal (1859)
Copley Medal (1864)
( Mr Nerdy-Speccy-FuckNuts Ouchy ouchy wa wa!, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 9:36, Reply)

Not me but worthy...
Having all been out the night before for one of the lads birthdays (think we finished about 2pm) we were all feeling a bit worse for wear when it came to working that night.

However, we all pulled together and come 10pm we had all arrived and work was open, DJ, myself and two others of our management team are sat in the office having a quick skive and chat about the previous nights exploits.

The tales flow and everyone is happy.

The DJ asks my colleague if he has anything leftover that might help him get through the night a little easier, and being the kindly soul that he is my colleague informs the DJ that yes, he does indeed have something left.

Colleague pops off to do whatever and later on in the evening presents the DJ with: a) roughly 4 measures of a strong stimulant wrapped in a Rizla and b) roughly 4 measures of a tranquiliser more commonly attributed to Horses, again wrapped in a Rizla.

Some of you will have probably guessed this already, but sure enough, our DJ promptly decided that they must just be two wraps of something and with a healthy swig of Vodka Redbull, knocked back the lot.

Cue half an hour of.. 'Has he?', 'No, he can't have', 'You're taking the piss' etc. until we eventually establish that we have in fact now got a DJ on our hands who is fast fading into an absolute mess and three hours to go til closing.

He ended up not going home but going out to another club in town til even later as he didn't dare go home, and had to get a train back to Leeds at 8am.
( Ril3y is a brit abroad.. bring on the Stella / Asahi, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 8:58, Reply)

Could we please
not get any QOTWs based around books full of amusing stories / urban legends?

It doesn't seem too bad plagairism-wise from what I've read so far, but it'll probably descend to copying straight from the books...
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 8:54, 3 replies)

A balmy July night...
After a night of Stella, Sambucca, Absinthe, more Stella, then repeat...

Walking along the High Street towards the taxi rank, the then SO decided it would be a good idea to go for a swim in the river to cool down.

Seemed like a good idea at the time, so we headed off that way.

She quickly stripped and lowered herself into the river, holding onto the mooring platform.

Not to be outdone, I stripped down, and did a perfect dive straight into the river, coming up about 10 yards from the bank...but about 200 yards downstream. Instantly sober. And seriously aware of the current.

I actually managed to swim back to where she was still hanging onto the moorings, pulled myself and then her out, and then she decided to tell me:

"I could feel the current pulling me as I got in..."

Yeah, thanks for telling me...

Stupid, stupid, stupid...

But the sex on the moorings was pretty good, although I had to go back the next day to make sure the CCTV cameras weren't facing that way to save her blushes (they were).
( snee held his breath since, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 8:16, 1 reply)

Welsh
Went out on the piss in Cardiff.

Was wearing an England football shirt.

That was an interesting night...

...reminded me of 28 Days Later...
( SpankyHanky, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 7:58, Reply)

sucks to be
these guys.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 7:22, 1 reply)

a long time a go while
i was but a manky studenty type (actually i was never that manky - i didnt see how being at art college meant i had to dress like a french vagrant)

i have many tales of towering acts stupidity and recklessness but we shall start with one of Mrs Spimf.

I decided to do a runner from a few months rent and move to another flat. Mrs Spimf was in charge of the move while i was noodling around at art college or more likely in the pub across the road.

So there she was happily making trips back and forwards across town in her company ford orion packed with my crap.

I cant really comprehend what was drifting through her candy floss head when she spotted the deep fat fryer but the decision to transport it across the very hilly town of Dundee without emptying it first will remain one of life's great mysteries.

So carefully she picked up the grease laden appliance carried it down the stairs as if it were a slightly cruddy landmine. wedged it into the footwell of the passenger seat. drove up and down steep streets at at a funerial pace, extracted the artery clogging device. gingerly carried it to the front door of my new flat opened the door and promptly lobbed 2 litres of oil on the brand new carpet.

grim reaper? - i could have fucking killed her myself.

daft bint
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 7:16, 2 replies)

Bunker Bouncing
When I was a nipper, I was round at my friends house, and we were jumping up and down on top of his coal bunker. Nobody used coal any more, so it was empty, and it wasn't particularly well constructed in the first case. It was made from slabs, slabs that you would have on your driveway.

Of course it's clear where this is headed, I'm 7 years old and roughly the size of the bunker. The bunker, of course, collapses, and I fall into it, and the slabs fall on top of me. One of them opens me up from just under my neck down to my stomach, there's a fair bit of blood. My pals mum comes running out of the house hearing the noise, sees me in a panic covered in blood and rushes to my aid. I was so scared I wasn't interested in anything she could do for me, I wanted my own mum, so I ran the 2 minutes it took me to get home. It turned out it was a superficial scratch, although I can't fathom why I wasn't killed or maimed. My pals mum of course felt guilty and responsible, so much so that she couldn't face phoning or coming round to see if I was ok until her husband came home and they both came around. By that time it'd been forgotten, I had been given the usual biscuit and had an assortment of plasters on. I think she was closer to death than me.
( Halk, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 5:28, Reply)

I always look forwards to the weekend...
..... to have the sunday potatoes, pumpkin, carrots and a PEAROAST..!!

b3ta.com/questions/dumbthings/post110091/

And then there's the part two:

Decoking 2 stroke expansion chambers with a drill and a length of old brake cable.

Attaching a 3ft length of flexible cable to a hand drill, inserting the cable down the exhaust and pulling the trigger really won't budge the soot, as I found out - it's just like trying to use a 3ft long 4mm drill bit. Straight as a die. So I grabbed the cable and kinked it into half a dozen bends so it looked like a zig-zag.

Now we have some action - a LOT of clanging and rattling inside the exhaust as the bent cable spins wildly at somewhere around the drill's 2000RPM. Stop. Bang pipe and dislodge a handfull of soot. Nice. And repeat.

I really could not believe how much crap was coming out... even after half a dozen sorties of clanging and cleaning. So, to speed up the process I start to "drill" the cable in and out of the pipe hoping to get the kinks into bends that may have been missed.

It was all going swimmingly until I pulled the spinning drill out just a little too far out of the exhaust and am now faced, literally, with a madly flailing 3ft long, 4mm thick "whipper snipper".

Bear in mind that I was sitting and holding the exhaust between my legs, so when the helicoptering wire broke loose I managed to let go of the exhaust and cover my face with one free hand as I released the trigger of the drill in the other. The exhaust, now free to fall to the ground and in doing so exposes the one place I should have protected FIRST.

And that is when I remembered about momentum - the wire swung another couple of revolutions throuh the air and cut a terrifying arc in a whipping fashion, missing BOTH my legs. But the pain I felt from what it DID hit was tremendous.

That was over 20 years ago and I think my voice is only now starting to return to the lower registers.

So true to the Darwin Awards nomination criteria, Ladies and Gentlemen, that is how I very nearly did wipe away all possibilities of my adding to the gene pool. Thankfully I didn't receive enough votes for the win and was allowed to father the two children I now have.
(Sir Jester, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 5:14, 3 replies)

Cycling #2
Myself and an ex-mate (another story) used to go into town on our bikes of a Sunday, back when Sunday meant that everything was shut and no-one was there* (Christ that makes me sound old). That meant no cars needed to be parked, and that meant that multi-story car-parks would be closed to cars, making them there for sole purpose of tearing around on bikes as far as we were concerned. The multi-storys around here were simply awesome for riding bikes through - they had an up and a down ramp at each end, and the road surface was grippy and super-smooth. You could condense the hard slog to the 5th/6th floor top level to about 60 seconds flat if you stayed on the ramps at just one end, and you could extend the thrilling race down to a good few minutes, even at ludicrous speeds, by going down the ramps at opposite ends each time. Hours of fun.

The problem with it being hours of fun is that hours of fun is also hours of practice, and we ended up getting pretty good. We learned the quirks in each ramp, where the lumps to avoid were, what was the best line to take, etc., and began to use less and less caution.

That we were getting better was easy to see from our timed-descent times tumbling, and that that wasn't necessarily a good thing was easy to see from the time we both clipped the barrier coming off a corner. Nowadays that carpark has a thick wire mesh in front of the barriers and honking great girders behind them, but back then it consisting of nothing more than a thigh-high barrier of the kind used in central reservations on a motorway. This barrier was all that was there to keep people on the 5th level safely on the 5th level, as opposed to plummeting to their death and/or severe manglement. It was probably not in the design specs for it to keep speeding cyclists from toppling over it if they happened to glance off it at too high a speed**.

Suffice it to say that there was much flailing and wailing, but, despite not feeling like it at the time, or it deserving to be, it was just about confined to the safe side of the barrier. Funnily enough, that was the last attempt at the world record for car-park descent on a bike.

* Sunday shopping is great for sticking it to the people who think that their sky-pixie gets to decide when I can shop, but I do miss having days in town when there was no-one else around.

** If by some fluke of irony it was indeed in the design specs, I really don't think much of their margin for error.
(misanthrope is so adjective he's verbing nouns!, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 3:43, Reply)

Cycling
cycled as fast as my 10 year old legs would carry me down the hill after the little green car.. turned a corner and saw a big red thing.. pulled the brake levers for all i was worth.. but still crashed into the back of a big red tractor (complete with bailing spikes) at a speed great enough that i smashed my helmet and broke my nose and cheek bone putting my head through the number plate..
i somehow missed the spikes.. and an inch either way with my head and it would have hit the much sturdier bits of metal holding the number plate in place.. the 3 operations on my face seems like i got off likely now..
(Fluffylegend, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 3:20, 1 reply)

Cycling #1
Cycling down a narrow, busy and fast road (it links an airport to a motorway junction, so you can imagine), I saw a motorbike rider ahead drift into the wrong lane, before visibly startling at the swerving oncoming traffic and swerving back into his own side.

I rode the rest of that road muttering to myself about how someone could be that dim when they have their life in their hands, tutting, shaking my head, and generally feeling superior as I pushed hard to get a good speed up.

Seeing the painted line whiz beneath my wheels was what alerted me to the fact that I had reached the end of the road, going about as fast as can be managed by Mr Average on a bike, and had now joined said roundabout by shooting straight into the right-most of the two lanes. Right in front of a big blue lorry. Ooops.

I didn't even cross back to get myself together, I just sat on the grass in the middle of the roundabout watching traffic until I managed to unclench my buttocks, around a half-hour later. Still makes me shudder.
(misanthrope is so adjective he's verbing nouns!, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 3:10, Reply)

Urban exploring
So I was wandering through an abandoned and partially demolished neighbourhood in Seoul, Korea, with a fellow Canadian named Brandon.

We were taking pictures, going into abandoned buildings, etc. This is a dangerous practice, so we of course follow a lot of rules. One is never to go into a building that's been partially demolished.

So while wandering around, a bunch of Korean art students show up and look around the place. We kept our distance from them, until I saw this genius standing on top of a half-demolished building (see comments).

Me and Brandon start yelling at him to get down. He looks back at us, goes "Ah! White people!" and points us out to his friends, all sort of reminiscent of that movie Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

I took this picture of him staring at us in astonishment and pointing, while we were staring at him in astonishment and Darwinness.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 2:54, 8 replies)

Petrol + Plastic Bag + Taxi
When I was 17 my family upped sticks and buggered off to Rio de Janeiro for 2 years. My Old Man worked with a very nice lawyer whom I shall call Adailson.

We lived in an area of Rio called Leblon, and regularly drank in a bar at the very end of Copacabana next to the Fort. One blazing hot morning my dad had dragged me out of bed and insisted that I accompany him to a fairly high class jewellers in Centro as my parents wedding anniversary was coming up and he wanted to get my mother some necklace or something. This was a reasonable thing for him to do as his grasp of Portuguese never extended beyond "Gin and Tonic", "Double Gin and Tonic", "Steak and Chips", and "Fuck off", whereas I did have a reasonable grasp of the language.

For some reason the Old Man decided that we'd meet up with Adailson before going to the jewellers for a spot of lunch.

Lunch, with my dads limited vocabulary, was steak and chips. We finished eating and went to Adailson's car and started to drive up Avenida Atlantica along Copacabana. About 3 or 4 blocks up, the car started to cough and the engine died. We got out. It was about 38C and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We stared at the car. Eventually Adailson, with a Eureka look on his face, revealed that the petrol tank was empty. No matter, there was a petrol station about 8 blocks away so we could go there and buy some petrol, come back, and fill the car up. Adailson opened his boot, grabbed some bags, and we started walking.

I should've been suspicious when he grabbed the bags... I mean... why would you need a plastic bag when you're going to buy petrol?

Anyway, after a long, *hot*, walk to the petrol station Adailson reveals his master plan - fill several bags with petrol, get a taxi back to the car, fill it up.

But, said my father, why can't we just get a can. Oh, says Adailson, because then they'd send an attendent with us and we'd have to tip him, its easier this way.

So, there we are, standing and watching whilst this crazy bastard fills several medium sized plastic bags with petrol (he'd triple bagged them for 'safety'). Dubiously, we climb into a taxi, with Adailson resting his cargo on his knees, realise the Taxi driver is smoking, glance back at Adailson who is cheerfully spilling petrol over himself, turn back to the taxi driver and 'politely' ask him to get rid of his cigarette, and start the drive back to the car.

Any idea how hard it is to pour petrol from a plastic bag into a car?

Its not easy. It goes everywhere, and the crowd of people you attract is statistically likely to include smokers.

Statisically, its also probable that you'll attract the attention of a squad car from the Policia Militar who will take objection to people happily pouring petrol over themselves, their car, the road, whilst several onlookers blithely smoke.

I got home that night smelling like an Esso garage.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 2:42, 2 replies)

Not the usual way to die from a car accident
So we're in Russia, me and Vince are taking the race car down to the petrol station since neither of us has had the chance to have a quick blast in it. Cue the immortal words from Vince "I've driven some powerful cars in my time"...

As we come round a sharp bend on the gravel road, sideways with a look of terror on Vince's face as he wrestles with the steering wheel, the thought on my mind is not that we're going to die (it's a race car, it has a roll cage) more that we're going to have some explaining to do if he stacks it.

Somehow he regains some sort of control as we narrowly miss a black 4x4. With tinted windows. Driven by a Russian chap in dark glasses and a leather jacket. Who is not amused. And who later comes to our campsite to explain very clearly how miffed he is.

Vince was not allowed to drive again that trip.

I do have video from on-board but it's mostly various jaunty shots of the footwell and muffled swearing as I tried to brace myself against various bits of roll cage.
(fridgefreezer inserted a topical reference into his sig on, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 2:24, 1 reply)