What is the scariest ride you have ever been on. I've been white water canoeing but

[applegrove]

it was when the water was low in August, so not so fast. I've been on ferris wheels and that pirate boat at the fair, I've taken a helicopter ride at the CNE, but the scariest has to be when I went for a spin on the back of my cousins' honda three wheeler up and down the hilly dirt road at the cottage when I was a teen. I was terrified. And rightfully so since I don't think they make three wheelers anymore because they were so dangerous...only four wheel version (a wonder how we made it out of the 1970s alive).

[femmocrat]

1. The Flume Ride.

Pretty tame for most people.... but I hid behind the seat with my hands over my eyes the entire trip. My kids thought it was soooo funny that Mom was scared!

Obviously, that was the last such ride I ever rode.

[Renew Deal]

2. 6 hours strapped to Romney's car roof

[applegrove]

3. That is such a sad story. I wonder what the Canadian Custom agents said when the Romney

family car pulled up at the border?

[Joe Shlabotnik]

4. too bad it wasn't "give that guy the full cavity search for contraband alcohol and cigarrettes" n/t

[csziggy]

5. When my horse ran away and his bridle came apart

and he was headed directly for the intersection of two very busy highways. That was pretty scary! Fortunately he was voice trained and listened when I told him to "Whoa" in a calm voice. Screaming it at the top of my lungs did not convince him to slow down at all for some reason!

[applegrove]

6. That would be scary. I got blown off the highway one time by a logging truck. Somebody

else may have tried to stay on the road and struggled to regain control, but I saw a nice, comfy, big snowback at the side of the road to I went for that soft landing instead. Car was not damaged at all. Nobody was hurt. That is all that matters.

[csziggy]

11. Car scares can be scary but nothing was as scary as that horse with no bridle!

I once blew a tire when going something over 100 mph. That was exciting and a PITA because I had to change it once I stopped shaking.

And then there was the school bus who played chicken with me and won. I ended up in the ditch, but no one was hurt.

No, it's the horses that always put the real fear in my gut. Like the one that got spooked by a truck, spun out onto the road, then slipped on the pavement and fell on my leg. I was very lucky no one was right behind that truck! The really scary part was when I tried to stand and that leg wasn't solid enough to bear weight. At least the horse had calmed down so I could use her as a crutch to get to a phone and call for help.

Glad you are OK!

[applegrove]

14. Glad you are okay too.

[BiggJawn]

7. My daughter, when she was learning to drive.

My car had a "personality" and it was a job even for an experienced driver to get the clutch and gearshift coordinated so's as to not grind the gears.

[Capn Sunshine]

8. When I was in college

back in san Diego in a beach town called Mission Beach, there was this broken down amusement park right on Mission Beach right down from where I lived. What was scary was going there after a couple of bongloads and watching the supports to the rickety wooden roller coaster "The Giant Dipper" shiver and pop and actually jump over about a foot when the coaster roared through a turn up at the top.

Then, getting on, knowing what you had just seen, and that you might ACTUALLY die,
THAT my friend was one scary ass motherfucker of a ride.

[MorningGlow]

9. My first thought too

One of the country's oldest wooden rollercoasters is at an amusement park that was practically in my back yard when I was growing up--the Jackrabbit at Sea Breeze.

It wasn't overly tall, and it sure wasn't fast, but there was something bone-chillingly terrifying about the rattling of the wooden structure...and the guys banging away on it with hammers WHILE we were riding it. To think that thing was running when my grandmother was young...it's still operating, too.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

21. Oh Yeah!

Wooden Rollercoasters rocked! Here is a link to a few pictures of the one in my hometown of Detroit
http://rcdb.com/2185.htm?p=8053

[bluedigger]

10. So many to choose from.

There was Andy's 71 440 Cuda with the six pack...that pinned me back in my seat for a few seconds!

I sat up front on a lobster boat once on a trip out to Damariscove Island in a fog bank. I could see about 20' in front of us. The lobsterman brought us straight in to the dock over two miles of open water.

I was on a UH-60 Blackhawk one time flying nap of the earth at night. The doors were off, my seatbelt had jammed open, and I had an outer seat. I gripped the seatbelt over my inboard shoulder as hard as I could for about an hour while looking at treetops in the dark at 100 mph.

I don't really do amusement rides - they're too small and uncomfortable.

[Populist_Prole]

12. Ride in a full aerobatic airplane

Both thrilling and terrifying. I never got sick, and I kept my composure over the headset/mic but I would describe the way my mind processed it as 2 parts "Oh Wow, freakin' wild!" and 3 parts "OK OK OK, I believe that's quite enough".

[Brother Buzz]

13. The Great Flume Ride of 1875

http://www.sierranevadavirtualmuseum.com/docs/galleries/history/transportation/ultimate.html

Fall of 2005 marked the 130th anniversary of one of the great thrill rides of all time – The Great Flume Ride of 1875.

In the 1870s, lumber was a highly desired commodity. The construction of railroads and the development of underground mining caused an upsurge in timber demand. The Sierra Nevada responded by giving up this precious product in abundance. Millions upon millions of board feet of lumber were produced annually to feed the devouring monster of commerce.

An important question in this pursuit was this --- How do you transport the lumber across the mountain ridges to places far, far away?

The answer came in a variety of packages. Steam-powered lumber tractors were devised. Another solution in North Lake Tahoe was to build a giant conveyor to move timber from the lakeshore east over the ridges to the waiting Carson Valley beyond. This giant conveyor was called an “incline.” It was located in the town named after the conveyor – Incline Village.

Another more common solution was the construction of flumes – V-shaped troughs that used running water to move the lumber. One such flume was built along a 15-mile stretch on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe from near Incline Village to approximately where US50 splits at Spooner Lake. It is here that our story unfolds.

The flume was the effort of the Pacific Wood, Lumber, and Flume Company. It was built by a collection of mine owners to provide lumber for the burgeoning mines of the Comstock Lode. Most notable among the stockholders were James C. Flood, James G. Fair, John Mackey, and W.S. O’Brien, principal mine owners in the Comstock region. The flume as constructed for the then astronomical sum of nearly $300,000, but Flood estimated that the flume saved nearly $500,000 annually in transportation costs. It was an expensive but cost effective investment. Called The Bonanza V, the flume snaked through the mountain ridge above Lake Tahoe on a trestle that ranged from 20 to 70 feet above the ground. Constructed in only ten weeks, the flume required two million feet of lumber and 28 tons of nails to build. About 500,000 feet of lumber was moved daily – an amount that would have utilized about 2000 horses to accomplish. The pieces of lumber averaged 16 inches square and ten feet long. The drop in elevation was about 1750 feet along its path. It took about 25 minutes for the lumber to travel the fifteen miles. Today, the route of the flume is a popular hiking and mountain bike trail called the Old Flume Trail.

In 1875, reporter H.J. Ramsdell of the New York Tribune was invited by James Flood and James Fair to visit the flume and take a ride along its length. Ramsdell accepted and two boats were brought forth. “These were nothing more than pig-troughs,” Ramsdell recalled in an 1876 article for the Williams’ Pacific Tourist magazine, “with one end knocked out. The boat was built like the flume, 16 feet long, V shaped … The forward end of the boat was left open, the rear end was closed with a board, against which was to come the current of water to propel us.” James Fair and Ramsdell were in the first boat, and Flood and the superintendent of the flume were in the second. Anxiously, they jumped into the boats and while interested bystanders yelled “hang on to your hats” -- they were off.

H.J. Ramsdell was petrified. He wrote: “The terrors of that ride can never be blotted from [my] memory…. A flume has no element of safety. You can not go fast or slow at pleasure; you are wholly at the mercy of the water.

You can not stop; you can not lessen your speed; you have nothing to hold to; you have only to sit still, shut your eyes, say your prayers; take all the water that comes, filling your boat, wetting your feet, drenching you like a plunge through the surf, and wait for eternity... it is all there is to hope for after you are launched in a flume-boat. At the start, we went at the rate of about 20 miles an hour, which is a little less than the speed of a railroad train, then we picked up to 30 miles an hour... a mile in two minutes.

There I was, perched up in a boat no wider than a chair, sometimes 20 feet high in the air, and with the varying altitude of the flume, often 70 feet above the ground…. If the truth must be spoken, I was really scared out of reason.”

At times the flume had a 45 degree inclination. The boats careened wildly from side to side. At one point, Fair lost his grip and his fingers were crushed between the boat and the sides of the flume. The flume, said Ramsdell, was “small and narrow, and apparently so fragile,” and “the mountains passed by like visions and shadows.”

They zoomed along at speeds that James Fair estimated at 60 miles per hour, and which James Flood figured had to be 100 miles per hour. Ramsdell stated, “My deliberate belief is that we went at a rate that annihilated time and space.”

Flood’s exaggerated estimate is understandable. His boat caught up to the Ramsdell/Fair vessel during the perilous ride and slammed into its rear. Flood fell on his face and the waters engulfed him, drenching him thoroughly. Flood’s fellow passenger, the flume superintendent, was also saturated and scared stiff.

Finally, thankfully, the intrepid voyagers reached the end of the flume after less than 30 minutes (although Ramsdell said it felt like hours). Wet and shaken, they assessed their journey. James Flood stated that he would never make this trip again, even for all the value of his mine holdings. The trembling Flume Superintendent said he was sorry he ever built the flume. As for H.J. Ramsdell, his feelings were very clear. “For myself,” he wrote, “I had only strength enough to say... ‘I have had enough of flumes.’”

Today, many amusement park owners who have flume rides (such as Knotts Berry Farm) point to this 1875 flume ride as their inspiration. But nothing today could possibly compare to the original thrill ride.

[applegrove]

15. I've seen a flume run around a dam in Canada. But mostly we used rivers and lakes to transport

lumber.

[HopeHoops]

16. Getting a ride home from a friend in high school. Not a good driver.

[RebelOne]

17. Jumping from an airplane.

After my sixth jump, I decided that I had enough. I got lost in the air and was headed for a bunch of pine trees, but I came down in a huge field of reeds over my head. Plus, I had to walk a half mile dragging a heavy parachute. Fortunately, someone found me. So that is when I called it quits.

[Brickbat]

18. This is going to sound totally stupid, but it was the Howlin' Tornado at the Great Wolf Lodge in the

Dells. That motherfucker is six stories tall. I love rollercoasters and thrills, but the Howlin' Tornado totally drank my milkshake.

[Chan790]

19. Ground-to-elevation zip.

A concept so foreign to most people that they look at you funny until you explain it (you're ziplining from a higher point of ground to a lower elevated-platform like a treetop-structure or the top of a tower. Basically, you're taking a running-jump off a cliff in a zip-harness to a fixed-point in space in a controlled-angle-of-descent fall.) then they look at you like you're suicidal. Maybe you are. You are the one jumping off perfectly-good terra-firma dangling on a wire and hoping you can bring yourself to a complete-stop on the far-end. It's about as close as a human being can get to jumping off a skyscraper without a parachute and living. This is not done for sport or entertainment, it's typically done for reasons of getting you to an elevated point that would not be otherwise accessible and it's extremely-dangerous.

Adventure junkie.

[pokerfan]

20. Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane at 5000 feet

I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I love all sorts of thrill rides except the stupid ones that just spin you around until you get sick. My favorites are the big zero-gee rides like Superman: The Escape at Six Flags Magic Mountain and the Big Shot on top of the Stratosphere Tower in Vegas.

Anyway, this was thirty years ago and some friends of mine and I decided to go skydiving one day. This was in college and it was extremely cheap, something like $50 for instruction and your first two jumps. This wasn't a tandem jump either but the old-fashioned method where your first jump is solo, albeit on a static line. We went through four hours of class and then five of us including the pilot and the Jumpmaster went up in a Cessna that looked something like this:



Greg was the first one to jump. The pilot lined us up with the jump zone and then rolled back the power. The Jumpmaster opened the door and Greg, holding onto the wing strut, crawled out on the platform fashioned over the starboard landing gear to facilitate jumping. When the Jumpmaster told him to jump, Greg simply shook his head. The Jumpmaster repeated his instruction a few more times without avail and eventually we were no longer over the zone. So we brought Greg back into the plane and went around.

Long story short, we all went out on the next pass. I don't blame Greg for his abortive first attempt as it's not uncommon for a first time jumper to balk as stepping off that little platform and letting go of the strut is extremely unnerving. But it was exhilarating. Quite literally a leap of faith. Trust that your chute was packed properly, trust that static line was correctly attached, trust that your chute will open correctly and that you won't have to go to the reserve chute. Trust that you will find a suitable place to land without breaking a leg.

I highly recommend everyone tries it at least once. To this date, I've taken off multiple times from that airport but I've never once landed there.

[RebelOne]

22. Been there, done that. My first jump was the greatest thrill. n/t

[pokerfan]

24. Yeah, subsequent jumps were not as exciting

so I moved on to other things. Like mountain climbing.

[Lionel Mandrake]

23. I once got a ride from Professor Hu,

the worst driver in the Pacific Southwest. She played chicken with other cars that she didn't even know were there. I expected a collision at any moment.

When she stopped in a NO STOPPING zone to let me off, I didn't hesitate to make my escape - traffic or no traffic.

[Texasgal]

25. Mediocore Skier

accidentally stuck on a black run in Telluride, CO.

I cried as I made my way down.

[applegrove]

27. I remember skiing at Lake Louise just a week after the women's downhilll had been there. They left

the flags and markings up. I started to ski down and got to a part that was so steep I had to sit on my ass and slide down it. These women were skiing that grade hill and 60 miles an hour. I cannot believe anyone could be that brave.

[treestar]

26. Riding an elevator to a 50th floor

I'm OK with elevators until you get to say 15 floors. Then it seems creepy.

[Art_from_Ark]

28. 1) Riding in a twin-prop 29-passenger commuter plane

which was trying to navigate through a huge storm system that had spawned ice storms, thunderstorms and tornadoes.

2) Driving the twists and turns of the Pacific Coast Highway (north of Marin County, California) late at night in very heavy fog.

3) Hitting an air pocket near Hawaii and falling a thousand feet or so. The pilot (who wasn't a native English speaker) then made this announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing severe.... problems"

[LiberalEsto]

29. The ride home from one awesome Estonian summer party in NJ

We Estonians like to party. And drink.
We had a beach party the morning after the main party, and everyone got totaled on the beach. I think this was in 1968, before I got my drivers license.
Some guy from the party gave a ride to several of us who lived in northern NJ.
Everyone was drunk.
As we headed away from Point Pleasant, the driver had to stop every half mile or so to let someone barf on the side of the road, including himself.
I was scared shitless.
I pulled a towel over my head and prayed the entire way home.

[Glassunion]

30. My ex

[XemaSab]

31. The ride from San Cristobal to Palenque

16-passenger van, no seatbelts, 2-lane winding mountain road with huge cliffs, RAINING, and a driver who LOVED to pass on curves and who seemed to take every sign that said "Dangerous Curve" as a personal challenge to his manhood.

[Chan790]

32. You've just described every driving experience I've ever had with a South American.

Most recently my former manager who hit 85 across Rock Creek Park and passes on the shoulder. Half the time asking questions and not looking at the road. Great guy. Drives like a mad man.

[MiddleFingerMom]

33. I crashed at night in a Huey helicopter once -- "something" about the cabin ambient noise changed...

.
.
.
... and we all knew it wasn't good. It wasn't a bad crash -- we didn't break any
structures and everyone got the fuck outta Dodge without injury, but it was S-C-A-R-Y!!!
.
Another medic had crashed in one hard enough to break the skids and got almost 50 yards
away running (hopping?) before he collapsed (he had a broken FEMUR -- thighbone -- but
was so scared/pumped/in shock it didn't register until he had moved away).
.
Toboganning down Devil's Dip in my hometown after someone had iced down the top steep
hill. Ricky (my best friend) bailed (it was SCAREYFAST!!!!!!) and I flew past the little
horizontal break in between the 2nd and 3rd hills and landed flat on my back. PAIN and
worse... unable to move anything!!!
.
Lucked out... in 10 minutes or so, all was well -- I had just gotten the wind knocked out of
me.
.
.
.

[applegrove]

34. Oh my god. That sounds so scarry.