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[Volron]

6 hours ago, palestreamer said:

city bus driving

Oh the stupid we see (saw in your case), oof.  I think my "highlight" would be a good ol fashion (small) rumble of 8 that took place on my vehicle, all started by an old man. heh

Not unless you count the bodies I've seen lying on the street after some bad crashes.  You wouldn't think that a fat woman (300+ from what I could tell) could fly that far, and how much damage she did to that 1990 Silverado which ended up complete disabled in the middle of the highway.

 

Fortunately I've only been in one accident (so far) that disabled my vehicle.  Got rear ended by someone doing 50-60 while my vehicle was at a complete stop, no patrons or myself injured, but I couldn't stop laughing at what the mechanic's had to do to get that rear engine compartment door open.  Still get a giggle out of that when I remember it.

 

Still at it, 17yrs so far.  Sure as hell doesn't feel like it though.  Still feels like 5, maybe 6 years.

Edited February 28 by Volron

[Snargfargle]

4 hours ago, Aethervox said:

twenty-seven years working on ferries (BC)

I lived the Pacific Northwest for ten years and visited it many times before I moved there. I've been to BC quite a few times and took a ferry to Victoria a couple of times. I might well have ridden on your ferry, or at least seen it.

 

[Snargfargle]

1 hour ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

I used to think that gas attacks in world war 1 were relatively rare and special things...only to find out that everyone was basically using chemical weapons freely and often.

In the Army during the Cold War we trained for gas attacks about once a month. I've been tear-gassed dozens of times. One of my jobs as a medic was to attend the gas chamber in case anyone got disoriented and couldn't find their way out. Later, when I was a museum curator, I periodically fumigating the specimens to prevent insects from eating them. I did this about once a week, rotating around the various collections. The fumigant I used was carbon disulfide so I was glad I knew something about gas masks.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 28 by Snargfargle

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

1 hour ago, Snargfargle said:

In the Army during the Cold War we trained for gas attacks about once a month. I've been tear-gassed dozens of times. One of my jobs as a medic was to attend the gas chamber in case anyone got disoriented and couldn't find their way out. Later, when I was a museum curator, I periodically fumigating the specimens to prevent insects from eating them. I did this about once a week, rotating around the various collections. The fumigant I used was carbon disulfide so I was glad I knew something about gas masks.

 

 

 

 

 

I've spent a lot of time manufacturing or experimenting with some 'fun' chemical compounds in my day. Masks and Personal  Powered Air Supply systems were a big part of safety back in those days.

Still get a kick out of remembering the buddy system we had for working with one active material. A symptom of exposure was paranoia...so you couldn't self diagnose if your PPE was failing. We worked in pairs so you could trust that your colleague would notice you getting strange and pull you out...

I don't miss coming home and immediately showering or having separate laundry loads from my wife though...that wasn't fun.

[Snargfargle]

6 hours ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

Latin was one of my matriculation subjects (1988). It made medicine a lot easier, because I could surmise the functions of some of the muscles simply from their names and skip a lot of learning.

I took a class in classical Greek once and also picked up enough Latin roots to make sense of many of the words in that language too. Knowledge of Greek and Latin word roots comes in handy in biology. I used to define the etymology of scientific names for my students. I think that most of them couldn't have cared less but some got it. When it came time to identify a specimen on a test it was handy to know that, say, Reithrodontomys megalotis, literally means "grooved-tooth, big-eared mouse."

[Snargfargle]

5 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

A symptom of exposure was paranoia...so you couldn't self diagnose if your PPE was failing. We worked in pairs so you could trust that your colleague would notice you getting strange and pull you out...

We do the same thing in scuba. I took a course in diver stress assessment and rescue when I was getting my master diver card. Once, I saw another diver have a high-pressure hose rupture at 75 feet. I swam over, gave her my spare regulator, and then shut off her air. I then slowly escorted her back up to shore. I have a bit more training than the average recreational diver but every diver can do that. Responding to that exact emergency is part of the training in the basic scuba diver course.

[Ensign Cthulhu]

57 minutes ago, Snargfargle said:

We do the same thing in scuba.

I remember an Australian medical drama show in which the kick-off was a diver sending a written message to his friends up in the boat (via an underwater crayon on some sort of message board). It was a smiley fish; the diver had recognized, in himself, the symptoms of rapture of the deep, and this was all his mind had left to signal it. The subsequent drama revolved around getting him to a decompression chamber, because he had also made the executive decision (accepting the risks) to surface in a hurry while he still retained the desire and the will to surface at all. 

[palestreamer]

4 hours ago, Volron said:

Got rear ended by someone doing 50-60 while my vehicle was at a complete stop, no patrons or myself injured,

Yep, been there done that. People drive like maniacs around buses, you see the most amazing idiot stuff when you are on the road 40 hours a week. I did 12 years, 5 accidents, all others faults. Two hit and run. They just drove away. Amazing how modern cars just dissolve into thousands of tiny pieces in a bad smash.

[Snargfargle]

1 minute ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

decompression chamber

Just about every diver, no matter how careful they are, will eventually suffer a dive-related illness. My left arm started bothering me once and I eventually couldn't extend it or raise it without quite a bit of pain. I finally realized that I had a case of the bends. I'm nitrox certified so I went and got my tanks filled with a 36% O2 mixture and did a one-hour therapeutic dive at 30 feet, aka the poor-man's decompression chamber. The pain in my arm went away and never came back. 

[Snargfargle]

29 minutes ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

a written message... via an underwater crayon on some sort of message board

LOL, I just went out and found my old dive slate amongst my scuba stuff. Guess what was still written on it? There's a story behind that and it involves a girl but probably not what you are thinking.

[Ensign Cthulhu]

6 hours ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

I suspect the reason many battles from that period aren't well known or studied has to do with security concerns over releasing full information to historians...since that is our last real experience with chemical warfare on a large scale.

No. This information has been public knowledge for a very long time, and the weapons and their effects are very well understood and well described in history. The major reason is that the explosive and kinetic effects of artillery were significantly greater killers and gas was more of an annoyance than a battle-winner, especially if you had disciplined, well-trained regular troops who could deploy even the most mundane of countermeasures (e.g. a urine-soaked cloth across the face vs. chlorine) at short notice. 

If I had to bring any army out of time to fight my battles for me, it would be the British Army of World War 1 as it stood at the end of 1917: devastating in its ability to break into any position with massed pre-attack artillery barrages, standing protective artillery and MG barrages, counter-battery that could destroy any counterattack, steadfast in defence, and experienced in getting around on a chemical battlefield.

[Volron]

12 hours ago, palestreamer said:

Yep, been there done that. People drive like maniacs around buses, you see the most amazing idiot stuff when you are on the road 40 hours a week. I did 12 years, 5 accidents, all others faults. Two hit and run. They just drove away. Amazing how modern cars just dissolve into thousands of tiny pieces in a bad smash.

Yeah.  I remember disintegrating the front end of a SUV with a 70,000lb articulated bus.  For me, it really felt like I hit a bump in the road, didn't even cause the steering wheel to jerk.  For him, yeah...  Was doing 30mph, but he is very lucky I had the room to at least move to the left lane.  If not I would have T-boned him at that speed.  That is how fast it happened.

The guy who rear ended me was driving a Dodge Journey.  Welp, it had a journey to the scrap yard.  He hit me hard enough to push his engine into the cab of his vehicle.

Edited February 29 by Volron

[Snargfargle]

2 hours ago, Volron said:

The guy who rear ended me was driving a Dodge Journey.  Welp, it had a journey to the scrap yard.  He hit me hard enough to push his engine into the cab of his vehicle.

People say that they don't make cars like they used to but this is a good thing. I've been at accident scenes where the vehicles looked they had been put through a scrapyard crusher but the people in them received only minor injuries. Conversely, we had one lady hit the side of her head in a low speed crash with an old 60's model pickup. She was alert when we got the scene but complaining of a headache so we transported her to the hospital. By the by the time we got there she was unconscious again. Those here with some medical training will know what a bad sign that is.    

 

[Snargfargle]

Someone mentioned the interesting people you meet in life. I knew that my boss, a PA, in the Army had been wounded because his knee would lock up on him and he'd have to hop around on one foot occasionally until it unlocked. I also knew he had served in the Special Forces because of the patch on his right shoulder. I didn't realize until years later what the plaque that hung on his wall meant because I'd never heard of Detachment B-52, Project Delta.

He never talked about the military actions he'd been in because they were classified and, having a Secret security clearance myself, I knew not to even ask. The Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star with V-device and cluster, and Purple heart on his class-As showed that he'd been there and done that though. The only "medal" I ever got was for helping to win the Cold War and I probably should return that because I'm not that sure in light of recent events that we actually did.

My boss had been stationed way back in the boonies training the montagnards and essentially serving as the village doctor as well. He said that one day he and some of his fellow advisors decided that they needed a helicopter so they took a trip to the docks and "requisitioned" a Bell 47 that was still in its shipping crate. When they got it back to their base and opened the crate, however, they discovered that it hadn't been fully assembled. They then found an aircraft mechanic who was heading out on R&R and convinced him to help them put it together by paying him with cases of whisky. None of them actually knew how to fly a helicopter but they read the manual and sort of figured it out. My boss said that he never learned to land right was always having to repair the landing struts. They flew that helicopter for a year until a general got wind that they had it and made them give it back.

 

 

 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

1 minute ago, Snargfargle said:

Someone mentioned the interesting people you meet in life. I knew that my boss, a PA, in the Army had been wounded because his knee would lock up on him and he'd have to hop around on one foot occasionally until it unlocked. I also knew he had served in the Special Forces because of the patch on his right shoulder. I didn't realize until years later what the plaque that hung on his wall meant because I'd never heard of Detachment B-52, Project Delta.

He never talked about the military actions he'd been in because they were classified and, having a Secret security clearance myself, I knew not to even ask. The Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star with V-device and cluster, and Purple heart on his class-As showed that he'd been there and done that though. The only "medal" I ever got was for helping to win the Cold War and I probably should return that because I'm not that sure in light of recent events that we actually did.

My boss had been stationed way back in the boonies training the montagnards and essentially serving as the village doctor as well. He said that one day he and some of his fellow advisors decided that they needed a helicopter so they took a trip to the docks and "requisitioned" a Bell 47 that was still in its shipping crate. When they got it back to their base and opened the crate, however, they discovered that it hadn't been fully assembled. They then found an aircraft mechanic who was heading out on R&R and convinced him to help them put it together by paying him with cases of whisky. None of them actually knew how to fly a helicopter but they read the manual and sort of figured it out. My boss said that he never learned to land right was always having to repair the landing struts. They flew that helicopter for a year until a general got wind that they had it and made them give it back.

 

 

 

One of my work colleagues drove a tank in Desert Storm.

Said he was somewhat terrified to go into combat because every time they had done exercises he had been ruled dead in the first few minutes.

My grandfather was a Marine parachute qualified forward air controller during the Korean War. His unit's job was to drop into surrounded positions and provide close air support coordination and spotting. Just before the war started he had qualified to do air traffic control at Andrews and so he didn't get sent to Korea. Everyone else from his squad but one guy didn't come back.

He never really talked about it, the info I know is all from my mother and uncles. Took me a while to reconcile the kind grandfather with the badass younger man.

[Snargfargle]

5 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

He never really talked about it

I think the closer you were to combat in the service the less you talk about it. I jabber all the time about my service because pretty much all I did was travel a lot and participate in training exercises. My Mom's first cousin was just another one of my "uncles" who took us kids hunting and fishing. I didn't know until I spend a week with him and my "aunt" right before he died that he had dropped paratroops behind enemy lines on D-Day. He'd never even mentioned that he had been in the Army Air Forces during WWII.

[Wolfswetpaws]

44 minutes ago, Snargfargle said:

I think the closer you were to combat in the service the less you talk about it. I jabber all the time about my service because pretty much all I did was travel a lot and participate in training exercises. My Mom's first cousin was just another one of my "uncles" who took us kids hunting and fishing. I didn't know until I spend a week with him and my "aunt" right before he died that he had dropped paratroops behind enemy lines on D-Day. He'd never even mentioned that he had been in the Army Air Forces during WWII.

Two days ago I was doing my Uber Driver gig and picked up a Rider who mentioned having worked a double-shift on her feet as a security guard at a bank.
She mentioned her legs felt sore and/or cramped.
With a little more conversation it was ascertained that she hadn't been drinking fluids often, in addition to being on her feet all day. 
She also brought up the notion of adding salt to water or putting salt on her toungue and then drinking water.

I mentioned my past as a US Marine and having been the "Ambulance Driver" while our Unit was doing a 25 mile training march with some other local Units.
A person had gotten dehydrated enough to cramp-up their entire body and they were ridgid like a board (we couldn't bend them into a seated posture).
So I drove them and the attending two Corpsmen to the nearest medical facility in a military pickup-truck (affectionatly acronymed a CUCV) at 70+ miles per hour.

And I also suggested that the taking salt idea (mentioned to her by her co-worker or friend) was similar to the "salt tablets" issued to military personnel in WW-II.
Followed that up with talking about how the Isralis studied hydration in desert warfare in the 1960's, and that they had determined that a person needed one liter of water per hour to remain useful in the desert.

Thankfully my Uber Rider was not nearly as far gone as the heat casualty I'd transported decades ago in the late 1980's.  
She was cogent and receptive to our discussion and announced she would drink water when she got home and would lay down to put her feet up (to alleviate the swelling & cramping).  
She also mentioned that she was supposed to go out to a local watering hole with a friend in a few hours.  I mentioned that alcohol was not a good medicine for dehydration and we shared a few laughs before I reached her drop-off location and she exited my car.

Stories of Forum Members.  🙂 

[Yedwy]

Well I had a pretty uneventfull childhood in my Socialist country untill the war broke out in 1990/91, then I shared in the collective experience of having bombs, shells etc land all over the place for a couple of years... After the war my folkes and I moved to a rather rural area (to an inherited house) where I finished my elementary and then highshool. After that I applied and got accepted to a Medical shool which I finished after 7 years and got my MD. I did my internship followed by an state administerd exam to be able to practice medicine with patients. Then I got a job in an out of hospital ED and after couple of years went on to a General hospital to do my residency in Anesthesia and IC which I finished after 4 years and change and passed another state administered exam to be accepted as a specialist (ie what is board certification in US). Now after some 15 years there in total I am head of the department of Anesthesia and ICU for the last couple of years.

Edited February 29 by Yedwy

[ArIskandir]

1 hour ago, Snargfargle said:

Someone mentioned the interesting people you meet in life.

Yeah, sometimes you cross paths with people of very interesting backgrounds...

Once in a mosque in the early 90's I met an OG muhjihadeen, he had fought the Soviets and had many photos of him with his RPG on the shoulder riding over the wreaks of Mi-8s, Mi-24s and T-55s (still smoking!)... that guy had some stories. He was raising funds in order to keep fighting some guys that were causing trouble... they would be known as Talibans... 

When I was studying at the Univ, there was this old Russian guy that had a library/study club near the campus. After some time I learnt he was an exile and fought on the WW2, this obviously picked my interest and I digged more, he was not too keen to share much on the topic but I was persistent, well informed on the topic and we were on good terms... that old guy was an ex-ROA, one of Vlasov's combatants!

My own grandfather was an ambulance driver for the Nationalist side during the Spanish CIvil War, he was from Canarias and was drafted by Franco's troops. He never shared anything about the War (and I was too young to go asking questions when he died). I remember him always packing a gun, this was very rare in my country at the time. I never saw him shoot but all his friends agreed he was an excelent marksman, the better of their group... and their group included many military and police men. 

[Snargfargle]

4 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

hydration in desert warfare 

When I was in Basic, our drill sergeants didn't like the sound of water sloshing around in our canteens so we had to march ten miles to the range before we could stop and drink any water. Now, the military has gotten smart and everyone wears a blister pack and sips water continuously through the day.

I spent three months at Irwin one winter back in the 70s. It was hard to get the troops to drink enough water because it was cold at night and they weren't thirsty, even though they weren't hydrated sufficiently. I started a lot of hydration IV's on that field maneuver. I don't know if you were ever stationed at Twentynine Palms but Irwin is about three hours north of there. Well, by M886 it is, by car the trip would likely be faster. I drove a few patients from Irwin to the hospital at the Marine base because our base wasn't actually fully opened up yet and all we had were our own aid stations.

Irwin was where I got to see a new close-support jet that the Air Force had just been supplied with. I was attached TDY to a recon infantry platoon while I was there so I got to see the Air Force pilots firing at targets up close and personal. The targets were only a couple hundred meters in front of our position and the planes would start firing at them when they were actually behind us. I was more than a little concerned that one of them was going to pull the trigger too soon and take us out. When they fired their cannons it sounded like God himself was ripping apart a big strip of cosmic canvas above our heads. Those newfangled jets were A-10s. 

When I was scuba diving I learned that being well-hydrated helps you to out-gas excess nitrogen and prevent the bends. We were taught that if you didn't need to pee while diving you weren't hydrated enough. That's one of the few advantages of being too poor to afford a drysuit, if you catch my meaning.

 

[Admiral_Karasu]

5 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

Yeah, sometimes you cross paths with people of very interesting backgrounds...

Once in a mosque in the early 90's I met an OG muhjihadeen, he had fought the Soviets and had many photos of him with his RPG on the shoulder riding over the wreaks of Mi-8s, Mi-24s and T-55s (still smoking!)... that guy had some stories. He was raising funds in order to keep fighting some guys that were causing trouble... they would be known as Talibans... 

When I was studying at the Univ, there was this old Russian guy that had a library/study club near the campus. After some time I learnt he was an exile and fought on the WW2, this obviously picked my interest and I digged more, he was not too keen to share much on the topic but I was persistent, well informed on the topic and we were on good terms... that old guy was an ex-ROA, one of Vlasov's combatants!

My own grandfather was an ambulance driver for the Nationalist side during the Spanish CIvil War, he was from Canarias and was drafted by Franco's troops. He never shared anything about the War (and I was too young to go asking questions when he died). I remember him always packing a gun, this was very rare in my country at the time. I never saw him shoot but all his friends agreed he was an excelent marksman, the better of their group... and their group included many military and police men. 

That's probably a common trait in those who have served in a war. My grandfather never talked about it, as far as I know, my uncles didn't say much either, at least not in my presence. Where they probably did talk was any veteran gatherings they might have attended.

[Aethervox]

Since some are talking about relatives here is what I got from my maternal Grandfather (both my grandfathers served in WW1 in Cdn army). My England born grandfather got into the British army first but later was transferred into the Cdn army. He was at Gallipoli - Suvla Bay - & one of two patrols who got to the top ridge overlooking the landings. The Turks had left their position there for some time but later came back before any allied troops could get up to secure it. The history of this is in the 1968 book 'Gallipoli' where one of the officers is mentioned by name. In 1922, an article in the Times of London appeared where the battle was discussed - the mistakes, the opportunities, etc. The named officer on the ridge top mentioned another unknown officer as being in the other patrol. That unknown officer was my grandfather. They exchanged letters, etc so this is documented. Unfortunately, the author of Gallipoli did not know this. I suggested to my grandfather he should contact the author but he was averse to that. I think he declined because he didn't think it was that important (so many years later). My grandfather did say he was taking his binoculars down from his eyes when a bullet broke one of the glasses - it was that close to injuring him, I suppose. I am into history so I would ask him about the war but he didn't say that much, really. I gave him the book on Gallipoli for Xmas one year & he thanked me warmly  - ofc, I had my motive - I said "Granddad, after you finish it, could I borrow it, please". This grandfather later served in a number of Cdn field batteries (artillery) & was wounded a couple of times - carried some shrapnel his whole life.

 

[Snargfargle]

My Dad was a national champion track athlete. If you know where to look you can see the records he holds. Dad actually knew Wilt Chamberlain personally because they were in college at the same time and went to the same track meets. I inherited none of Dad's running genes because I was adopted. My brother did, however. He ran marathons and bicycled semi-professionally until recently when his hip started bothering him. His second wife, who is much younger than us, still runs marathons. She ran in the Berlin Marathon last fall. My brother is a telecommunications CEO and is always hanging out with people who I only get to read about in the news, like Usain Bolt and Meb Keflezighi. I still have more hair than he does though.

My only "claim to fame" is that I was born in this pretty little town that has a connection to a rather famous WWII jet fighter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 1 by Snargfargle

[Ensign Cthulhu]

12 hours ago, Snargfargle said:

I inherited none of Dad's running genes because I was adopted.

But from where? 😜

[Wolfswetpaws]

1 hour ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

But from where? 😜

I clicked on your link.
Found some interesting connections, one to a D.C. Comic series and the others which share storytelling similarity with the television series "Dark Shadows".