I was just posting at another website, relating a story of the closest time I ever came near to death... and oddly enough, the incident did NOT occur while I was participating in extreme sports, serving in the Army, or trucking through the ghetto. It happened back when I was still a teenager, partying on the beach in my home town of Coronado. I hailed from a broken military home, as well as a hard-partying generation (CHS, Class of '79), and I was a diehard vertical skateboarder to boot... so I suppose it's only natural that the incident occurred during that time frame. What friends I had were also skaters, but some knew other kids in school, and one night we were invited to join some rich punk whose parents had gone away for the weekend... the parents owned a condo on the 9th floor of one of the Coronado Shores buildings (ten 150' condo towers on the beach just southeast of the Hotel Del Coronado, you can Google "Coronado Shores" to see pics). Truth be told, I didn't even like the guy (or ANY rich wank), but a couple of my friends talked me into going down there, as we could drink all the beer & free booze we wanted, aye? 
So we go down there, take the elevator to the 9th floor, find the right unit and enter to party. Now, those Shores towers all have concrete ledges on every floor, running under windows and balconies, and these ledges are used by maintenance personnel & high-rise window washers, aye? After hours and with nobody to stop us, it wasn't long before my skateboarding friends & I were drunkenly roaming along the ledge which bordered the rich punk's flat. Once you were on the ledge, which had a smooth beveled 45* angle at its outer edge, there was NOTHING to grab if you happened to slip & fall... a guy would've gone right over in a heartbeat and fallen to his death, SPLATTERING on the broad concrete terrace 9 stories down. I ain't jokin' either, it was wide open and the drop was severe... so imagine my consternation the following day when a good friend told me I had been RUNNING along that ledge while TOTALLY HAMMERED. I had no memory of actually RUNNING, but my friend was no BSer either... and I did have SOME recollection of being out on that smoothly-finished concrete ledge. No getting around that...
I'll tell ya, that revelation SCARED ME, no two ways about it... and I vowed to NEVER return to that flat, since I had already DODGED a BIG-TIME BULLET. Even when my friends asked me to go down there again, I told 'em no dice, I just couldn't go. The thought scared me, and I'm not one who's easily scared either... I've always been good with heights, as a vertical skater and technical rock climber and whatnot, but it wasn't till AFTER this incident that I learned to have a healthy respect for heights. Gravity is a hard taskmaster, but when you're young & reckless, ya feel 10' tall & bulletproof. Looking back, I realize how EASILY I could've slipped and fallen from that ledge, yet at the time I was drunk and foolish... probably showing off for some gal at the party. As if---AS IF---any gal inside could've saved me if I had tripped and gone over the edge. Cripes, the very thought of it still gives me the shivers... my memory overall is excellent, and I can still recall stepping through the large sliding glass windows of that flat to access the ledge, but the running part I do NOT remember, I reckon that came later in the evening.
According to the Oriental Zodiac, I was born in the 'Year of the Tiger'---so I like to think I have nine lives to burn as I make my way through this journey, but I DEFINITELY burned one of those lives the night I dodged a bullet on that concrete ledge. I've dodged other bullets in my time, but none ever came so close... to this day, that thought gives me pause. Years later, my brother Pete (one of seven brothers, one sister) worked as a doorman down at the Shores, and one night a resident in a nearby tower committed suicide by leaping off a 12th-floor balcony; hearing the sirens and commotion, my bro secured his building and walked over to see what was happening. The suicide had SPLATTERED all over the concrete terrace... my bro said his head was nothing but a broad stain with skull fragments hurled in every direction by the impact. The building manager was a guy I knew from his visits to the surf shop, he had to identify the corpse and he said it was no easy task. Enough to make a person sick to his stomach, and we weren't lightweights in that department... by then, all of us had already seen death in various forms.
I actually think that I've seen more death than many of my so-called "peers"---I've lost friends and family members, and I've seen heller death in fatality wrecks on the road, not by choice but because I happened along right after the wrecks occurred. I've even seen & heard some poor folks burning to death in a fiery rollover wreck in the median of I-70 in Kansas. I've seen corpses lying at the side of the road, no time for responders to even cover 'em yet. Hell, half my graduating class in high school is already GONE... there's an attrition rate in life, and that's a fact, none of us will get out alive. Sometimes, I look back upon the "free solos" I executed during my climbing days, including one magnificent free solo of a granite crag high above Horseshoe Meadow in the Sierras, not far from Lone Pine & Mount Whitney, but those solos were carefully calculated risks, unlike the night I drunkenly ran along a concrete ledge of a 9th-floor condo in the Coronado Shores. I easily could've DIED that night with one false step... but somehow, some way, I survived, though I was later arrested and spent the rest of the night in jail for being 'Drunk In Public.'
NOT PARTICULARLY PROUD OF THIS INCIDENT, JUST WANTED TO SHARE IT BECAUSE IT STILL SCARES ME TO THIS DAY... AND I'M NOT EASILY SCARED, AYE? IT JUST GIVES ONE PAUSE FOR THOUGHT...
So we go down there, take the elevator to the 9th floor, find the right unit and enter to party. Now, those Shores towers all have concrete ledges on every floor, running under windows and balconies, and these ledges are used by maintenance personnel & high-rise window washers, aye? After hours and with nobody to stop us, it wasn't long before my skateboarding friends & I were drunkenly roaming along the ledge which bordered the rich punk's flat. Once you were on the ledge, which had a smooth beveled 45* angle at its outer edge, there was NOTHING to grab if you happened to slip & fall... a guy would've gone right over in a heartbeat and fallen to his death, SPLATTERING on the broad concrete terrace 9 stories down. I ain't jokin' either, it was wide open and the drop was severe... so imagine my consternation the following day when a good friend told me I had been RUNNING along that ledge while TOTALLY HAMMERED. I had no memory of actually RUNNING, but my friend was no BSer either... and I did have SOME recollection of being out on that smoothly-finished concrete ledge. No getting around that...
I'll tell ya, that revelation SCARED ME, no two ways about it... and I vowed to NEVER return to that flat, since I had already DODGED a BIG-TIME BULLET. Even when my friends asked me to go down there again, I told 'em no dice, I just couldn't go. The thought scared me, and I'm not one who's easily scared either... I've always been good with heights, as a vertical skater and technical rock climber and whatnot, but it wasn't till AFTER this incident that I learned to have a healthy respect for heights. Gravity is a hard taskmaster, but when you're young & reckless, ya feel 10' tall & bulletproof. Looking back, I realize how EASILY I could've slipped and fallen from that ledge, yet at the time I was drunk and foolish... probably showing off for some gal at the party. As if---AS IF---any gal inside could've saved me if I had tripped and gone over the edge. Cripes, the very thought of it still gives me the shivers... my memory overall is excellent, and I can still recall stepping through the large sliding glass windows of that flat to access the ledge, but the running part I do NOT remember, I reckon that came later in the evening.
According to the Oriental Zodiac, I was born in the 'Year of the Tiger'---so I like to think I have nine lives to burn as I make my way through this journey, but I DEFINITELY burned one of those lives the night I dodged a bullet on that concrete ledge. I've dodged other bullets in my time, but none ever came so close... to this day, that thought gives me pause. Years later, my brother Pete (one of seven brothers, one sister) worked as a doorman down at the Shores, and one night a resident in a nearby tower committed suicide by leaping off a 12th-floor balcony; hearing the sirens and commotion, my bro secured his building and walked over to see what was happening. The suicide had SPLATTERED all over the concrete terrace... my bro said his head was nothing but a broad stain with skull fragments hurled in every direction by the impact. The building manager was a guy I knew from his visits to the surf shop, he had to identify the corpse and he said it was no easy task. Enough to make a person sick to his stomach, and we weren't lightweights in that department... by then, all of us had already seen death in various forms.
I actually think that I've seen more death than many of my so-called "peers"---I've lost friends and family members, and I've seen heller death in fatality wrecks on the road, not by choice but because I happened along right after the wrecks occurred. I've even seen & heard some poor folks burning to death in a fiery rollover wreck in the median of I-70 in Kansas. I've seen corpses lying at the side of the road, no time for responders to even cover 'em yet. Hell, half my graduating class in high school is already GONE... there's an attrition rate in life, and that's a fact, none of us will get out alive. Sometimes, I look back upon the "free solos" I executed during my climbing days, including one magnificent free solo of a granite crag high above Horseshoe Meadow in the Sierras, not far from Lone Pine & Mount Whitney, but those solos were carefully calculated risks, unlike the night I drunkenly ran along a concrete ledge of a 9th-floor condo in the Coronado Shores. I easily could've DIED that night with one false step... but somehow, some way, I survived, though I was later arrested and spent the rest of the night in jail for being 'Drunk In Public.'
NOT PARTICULARLY PROUD OF THIS INCIDENT, JUST WANTED TO SHARE IT BECAUSE IT STILL SCARES ME TO THIS DAY... AND I'M NOT EASILY SCARED, AYE? IT JUST GIVES ONE PAUSE FOR THOUGHT...
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