by "Buck"

June 21, 2005

The positive feedback from the stories of my adventurous youth has
inspired me to share a few more.    Seems you folks like this shit,
although to me it all seems to have been an exercise in stupidity now
that I reflect back on it.    Be that as it may….

A high school buddy of mine, who's now a Virginia State Trooper, was
big into the paramilitary.  The two of us shared a desire to someday
be Airborne Rangers or Devil Dog Marines.  We wore all the regalia and
on weekends played "war."  That's probably not unusual for kids, but
we continued playing into our high school years and the realism became more and more authentic.     We decided we wanted to be members of the Army's 10th Mountain Division and learn to rappel.     We didn't have much money, so in our bullet proof minds, we could pull this off on-the-cheap.

His dad worked in the coal mines and had a garage full of worn out
coal mining shit, so we rummaged through the stash of stuff and found two mining belts.  A little explanation may be in order.    A coal
miner is required to wear a "utility" belt, sort of like Batman, it's
typically red in color, about four inches wide and made out of that
nylon shit that seat belts are made from.  It has a steel buckle, but
not like a normal belt—these are two clasps of steel that lock together.  The belt included a brass plate with the miner's name on
it—just in case he would be crushed beyond recognition in a huge roof fall and they had trouble figuring out who was who with all of the
mashed faces….this was in the 1980's and DNA was still that twisted
ladder we learned about in biology class.   The belt was also designed
to hold the power-pack that supplied "juice" to the light on a miner's
hard hat.   It would also hold a breathing apparatus and various other
non-descript shit that coal miners had to have.  But for our purposes they seemed PERFECT as the base for a rappelling harness.
Oh guardian angel, don't fail me now.

We went to a store called Maloney's, which was a regional chain
department store.  It's best described as a poor man's Wal-Mart.
There we procured about 300-feet of nylon/cotton rope, the kind you
have to burn on the end to keep it from coming apart.   Mind you we
bought this in 50-foot lengths and tied it together to reach the 300
foot plateau.  We also went to Bower's Lumber Company and bought a connecting link—which is a link of chain with a "gate" to open and
close…sort of like a carabiner—only NOT a carabiner, and a simple
steel ring.  We were outfitted.   Holy shit, we were going to die.

We started off simple enough and rappelled off the side of my dad's
barn.  I have to admit for having no formal training whatsoever, we
showed pretty good form using our cobbled together kits.   We decided after a few practice runs it was time to take our act to the
mountains.  He had a number of high cliffs behind his house.  We
tied off to trees and lowered ourselves, one leap at a time, to the
ground below.   We did this for several weeks and had become fairly
proficient.   Confidence can be a dangerous thing and we were brimming with it.     Nearby there was a railroad, that had literally cut a gap in a hill.   The gap was about 100-feet wide and about 100 feet off the ground.  The walls of this gap were literally straight up and down rock faces.   We stretched our cheap-ass Maloney's rope across that divide, tied off one end to a tree and the other to a telephone pole, creating what the military would refer to as a "zip" line.    I supposed that's because you simply zip across it.   One side of the gap was slightly higher than the other, so we reasoned we'd fly across there hanging only by a spliced cheap-ass Maloney's rope, a cheap steel ring, and connecting link from Bower's Lumber Company.   What we hadn't figured on was our lack of engineering….I'm mean really, who would have considered that?    Military zip lines, I later learned, are STEEL CABLE.    The users actually hang rolling devices on them and they are normally stretched with a machine to a tension that will support a 270 pound high school kid or Airborne Ranger.      All flaws in our plan that would later become glaring errors.

I was eager to be the first to take the zip line across the railroad
gap.  I clipped on my "gear" and set sail without so much as a
hesitation to breathe.  My largess and momentum carried me about half way across the gap.   I learned, too late, that gravity alone wasn't going to get the job done.   I also learned that the tension on the rope—pulled only as tight as our arms could make it—wasn't enough. As I moved across the rope, it began to sag and I began to descend INTO the gap—rather than zip across it to the other ledge.   I was sinking like an oversaturated turd in a thousand gallon commode. Another error in our engineering—cotton/nylon rope will stretch.  I was now dangling about 15-feet off the ground on a rope stretched to its limit and tied off about 80 feet over my head.   This predicament can best be described if you would visualize a necklace hanging from a woman's neck—and I was the charm on the bottom.   I just dangled there having no idea what to do.  My buddies at the top of the opposing ledges were equally clueless.

I surmised I could survive a fifteen foot drop with the worst injury a
broken bone.   I knew there was no way I could reclimb the rope since I would have to do it upside down.   I estimated I'd climb about
two-thirds of the way, lose my grip and fall even further.   I pulled
out my trusty Rambo style knife—which was all the rage of the late
80's paramilitary crowd and was about to cut the rope when nature
intervened and the rope snapped.  Who could have imagined that, I mean we only paid 16 dollars for it!!!!!!   I made the 15 foot fall and
landed flat on my back among the gravel that formed the bed of the
railroad.    I lay there for a few minutes trying to catch my
breath—which had all been deflated by the fall and sudden stop.   My
buddies up top were certain I had gone Christopher Reeve on them.
They were figuring in wearing some kind of awareness ribbons or
bracelets someday for paraplegic research—actually we'd never heard of such hipster politically correct bullshit in Big Stone Gap, but I
added that as window dressing to the story.    They all came running
down the path to my side.   I remember wiggling my toes first, then
turning my head…all good signs…I could feel my legs and my back…I had a slight pain in my lower back, which turned out to be a bad bruise, but I was able to sit up.  Finally I caught my breath and stood up. The frayed ends of the cheap ass Maloney's rope still hung off each side of the gap.  I looked at them and don't remember anybody saying very much.    We stared at the scene, mulled over the experience, then my buddy said, "Want to go to Hardees?"

The ropes, as far as I know, are still hanging there to this day.
They were left as monuments to the occasion.  Again, how I survived to my 30's baffles me.

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