Fate ?

[Gazzer]

Ever had a close call ? as in missing injury or worse due to circumstances. Ever supposed to be somewhere but plans changed and you didnt.

Back in 1977, i had a young friend that loved engineering, planes , trains etc and at the time my favourite day out was Birmingham Science Museum. This was an adventure for myself and my friend as I was only 15 at the time, he was about 11. To get to the Museum was Bus ride followed by a train journey into Birmingham.
We arrived to the Museum and spent the day walking around but soon realised we needed to go to catch the train. On the way I felt unwell with stomach cramps. We arrived at New St station but I needed to sit down so we ended up missing the train we were due to get on. Never mind, the next train was 20 minutes later and I was feeling better. When we arrived at Stourbridge Junction you have to swap trains onto a shuttle train which will take you to the town station. Now the track to the station is only a short journey and you cant go any further than the town station as there must have been a bridge there a long time ago which was now just a wall with track stoppers.
Well we arrived at the junction to be told we had to catch a bus to the next station, when we arrived this is what we found .
A train crash at Stourbridge, 1977 (1) | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
makes you wonder if the weight of 2 more passngers coould have tipped it over the edge ?

 

[Olz]

Yes, once when I had been to the metro centre at gateshead and was setting off home, england were playing and I switched to talk sport and caught the wrong button and started to retune the radio, so I pulled over and re tuned it took about 15 seconds, then set off.

Coming away from the metro centre on a dual carriage way and a van just swerved from lane one across lane two and straight into the central barrier before spinning back across both lanes, it took a car out on the way into the barrier and two more on the way back, before the four cars in front of me (two in each lane) piled into the carnage aswell.

I remember thinking then, If I hadent of knocked the tuning out, id have been right in the middle of that. :yikes:

 

[DHTiling]

:yikes:

Western bypass is a mare Oli..

 

[Gazzer]

During my last months while living in Australia, I decided I would like to see some more of Australia. So I went to the travel agent but found it was very expensive to travel and you woould be travelling all day just to get to one destination. This didnt appeal so I decided to have a holiday where all Aussies go...Bali .
When I was getting prices I saw a sign with a price to go to Rio, well I started thinking !!! as I had made a Brazilian friend on site and he had said that I could go and stay with his family. Anyway I did in the end but the time I was due to go to Bali was the same time as the bombings. I didnt find out until I returned, Sent chills down my back.
2002 Bali bombings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Olz]

Another time I came to a green traffic light at a crossroad in the early hours of the morning and without thinking just pulled up at the lights and stopped, the missus asked me what I was doing and told me the light was green, at which point a car came screaming through the cross road from the side through the red light.

I cant explain why I stopped, I felt really wierd afterwards, but for some reason I just stopped at a green light, we'd have been brown bread for sure the car would have smashed staight into the side of us, and it was absolutley screaming along.

 

[Olz]

:yikes:

Western bypass is a mare Oli..

It wasnt far from the Metro Dave, heading towards Durham, It was right by where theres a holiday in up the banking.

 

[DHTiling]

I know where you mean. bad spot that..

 

[Colour Republic]

good thread... spooky... but good

 

[Gazzer]

My most chilling one was this.
The 1st year of work I was doing a weekend paper round but in august I finished it because the distance was too much for the money paid, so i went and did about 3 weeks for another paper shop. I decided it was too much after working all week and I could get more money by working saturday tiling.

Then this happened which was my 1st paper round.

Our Century 1976-2000

 

[Olz]

I can still picture the moment the van started to swerve now Dave, never did find out why it did.

 

[Olz]

My most chilling one was this.
The 1st year of work I was doing a weekend paper round but in august I finished it because the distance was too much for the money paid, so i went and did about 3 weeks for another paper shop. I decided it was too much after working all week and I could get more money by working saturday tiling.

Then this happened which was my 1st paper round.

Our Century 1976-2000

:yikes::yikes::yikes::yikes:

That is chilling Neale

 

[doug boardley]

had a couple of incidents skydiving, one where I was descending (under a round canopy) and ground wind was blowing me off course, next field on was a farmer "scaling" hay, guess where I was heading 20 foot from landing:yikes:, luckily farmers tractor stalled and I bounced off the tractor engine:hurray:Another incident (again under a round canopy) jump master put us out quarter of a mile before drop zone instead of quarter of a mile past it (Neale will know the DZ, it's right next to steam gathering field), me and my mate ended up in Morecambe Bay, but luckily the tide had just gone out

 

[united]

When i was 15 my mate had just got a new nova (car) and one Sunday morning He came to pick me up along with another mate. I was watching hollyoaks when they came to my door so I told my dad to tell them to come back in an hour.

They didn't come back in an hour which was strange, it turns out that my mate flipped his car of the top of a hill and landed in a tree with the tree going through the back seat, the Police said anyone in the back seat would have been killed... I would have been in the back seat if I wasn't watching Hollyoaks :yikes:

 

[united]

My most chilling one was this.
The 1st year of work I was doing a weekend paper round but in august I finished it because the distance was too much for the money paid, so i went and did about 3 weeks for another paper shop. I decided it was too much after working all week and I could get more money by working saturday tiling.

Then this happened which was my 1st paper round.

Our Century 1976-2000

Scary stuff :yikes:

 

[doug boardley]

my uncle wasn't so lucky, got struck dead by lightning while playing football:yikes:

 

[Ken Bruty]

My most chilling one was this.
The 1st year of work I was doing a weekend paper round but in august I finished it because the distance was too much for the money paid, so i went and did about 3 weeks for another paper shop. I decided it was too much after working all week and I could get more money by working saturday tiling.

Then this happened which was my 1st paper round.

Our Century 1976-2000

Blimey Neale, you're not a reincarnated moggy are you?:lol:

 

[mikethetile]

back in the day I was a member of a well known notorious m/cycle gang and went on a lot of runs

any biker knows the problems of riding in a large group, not bring able to see the road ahead, trying to keep up in traffic etc, so we used to split into sixes and rotate so the leader would drop to the back for a few miles and then the next leader would drop to the back and so on , this prevented anyone getting left behind if they broke down

one night after a weekend run we were about 10 miles from home home and my bike . a 3 cylinder 750 suddenly played up and was only firing on two cylinders, I was falling further behind when the leader dropped back and I caught him up, we checked the bike over and could find nothing wrong so we set off with him riding behind me in case I conked out and just to make matters worse it started to drizzle

I could see the tail lights ahead of me getting smaller and disapearing and reappearing as they went around the bends, suddenly they were all over the road on a bend and two headlights were mixed up with them

my bike spluttered and banged a bit and then starting firing on three again

when we caught up a few minutes later we found carnage

the road was greasy on the bend and you could see there was diesel/oil all over the bend, it was slippery to walk on and no wonder they had slid out on their bikes, a car coming the otherway had tried to stop but skidded into the bikes, Lost two mates that night and another the next day from his injuries

only one of the four survived

bike was ok after that and never did find what caused it to misfire

 

[doug boardley]

back in the day I was a member of a well known notorious m/cycle gang and went on a lot of runs

any biker knows the problems of riding in a large group, not bring able to see the road ahead, trying to keep up in traffic etc, so we used to split into sixes and rotate so the leader would drop to the back for a few miles and then the next leader would drop to the back and so on , this prevented anyone getting left behind if they broke down

one night after a weekend run we were about 10 miles from home home and my bike . a 3 cylinder 750 suddenly played up and was only firing on two cylinders, I was falling further behind when the leader dropped back and I caught him up, we checked the bike over and could find nothing wrong so we set off with him riding behind me in case I conked out and just to make matters worse it started to drizzle

I could see the tail lights ahead of me getting smaller and disapearing and reappearing as they went around the bends, suddenly they were all over the road on a bend and two headlights were mixed up with them

my bike spluttered and banged a bit and then starting firing on three again

when we caught up a few minutes later we found carnage

the road was greasy on the bend and you could see there was diesel/oil all over the bend, it was slippery to walk on and no wonder they had slid out on their bikes, a car coming the otherway had tried to stop but skidded into the bikes, Lost two mates that night and another the next day from his injuries

only one of the four survived

bike was ok after that and never did find what caused it to misfire

were you one of Satan's Slaves the Mike?

 

[mikethetile]

no we didnt have them down here

much more well known than them

 

[doug boardley]

😳one of the "better known" chapters then

 

[doug boardley]

no we didnt have them down here

much more well known than them

if it's the one I'm thinking... what a motto
"when we do right, nobody remembers, when we do wrong nobody forgets"

 

[mikethetile]

yes doug

I was in a small local gang of about a dozen members and we were told we were going to affiliate as we werent big enough to take them on so we lost our own colours and had to fly theirs, I stayed in for about a year then dropped out as I wasnt happy with the way things were done

if I walked into a pub I would be given free beer by the landlord and asked if I wouldnt mind just drinking it queitly and then leave without trouble, the regulars were so nervous some would drop their pints when they saw me, people were terrified of me. we were ordered to do debt collecting and to collect "insurance payments" from local businesses

so we had gone from a happy local bike gang that got drunk and messed about a lot to being part of a worlwide organisation built on fear and terrorism. they were also shooting local drug dealers so they could control the local drug supply

I got a right hiding when they caught up with me but it was worth it to be free from them

 

[White Room]

You dark horse Mike.

 

[mikethetile]

well its something I dont shout about Mark and rarely mention

getting mixed up with a bad lot is part of growing up for some people

 

[White Room]

You did'nt go the bikers place in Hemel donkeys years ago, opposite the town hall

 

[doug boardley]

dunno how I escaped this one, doing neck end of a ton on A6 in my capri 2 litre s, tape got jammed in player so I was trying to get it out/eject when the lorry that was half a mile in front of me stopped, I did't see it had stopped (cos I was messing about with my tape deck) hit the brakes, swerved across the road, turned A-o-T twice and walked out without a scratch, found my sheared off back wheel 300 yards away. The real sting in the tail was that week I'd just finished paying off the loan for the car and the next week I was gonnna insure it fully comp. 3 years of work down the drain, (or more precisecly, to the scrap yard:mad2🙂

 

[mikethetile]

I seem to rember going a few times mark, but those days were a bit of a blur, we got round all the local biker pubs, I lived in Luton then and we had control of several pubs so we had to look after our investment as the landlords paid us to keep their pubs trouble free

 

[doug boardley]

gulp!!! but I did have another freefall incident ( just trying to get back on thread here)

 

[doug boardley]

....a rusty ripcord... took some tugging and groundrush was looming:yikes:, yanked it and it came abruply, smacked right in my flapping lips (needed 3 stitches and 2 caps), blood all over my goggles and crash landed in a most ungentlemanly fashion:incazzato:

 

[mikethetile]

best get back on thread Doug

as I said it wasnt the way I wanted to live or be seen by others and im not proud of myself for letting myself being pushed into doing what I knew was wrong

sometimes things happen to us that make us the people we are now, no one makes me do what i know is wrong these days

so back on thread and ill say no more about that chapter in my life

 

[doug boardley]

no worries at all Mike, but just out of interest I just googled it, Jesus H Almighty!!! reams and reams of info and if you don't read you never learn