“Bruce likes to terrify himself.” So began a story years ago in Success magazine.
One day Bruce led some friends 9,000 feet up Mount Hood, and decided to show them how much fun it would be to slide down part of the way. While zipping down an ice field at 30 miles an hour, Bruce suddenly realized he had forgotten to remove his crampons – the spikes that attach to hiking boots. His feet were useless as brakes.
Uh oh.
Bruce had the presence of mind to realize that jabbing the spikes at the ice whizzing past him wouldn’t work either – that would risk breaking his ankles and hurtling off the side of the mountain. So as the edge of the cliff came rapidly into view, Bruce flopped over on his stomach and jabbed repeatedly, frantically, with his ice axe. He finally came to a halt about 50 feet from the edge of the cliff. He later said that the thing that kept running through his mind as he got closer and closer to the edge was, “Boy, this is a stupid way to die.”
Uh huh.
Oh, and just a thought – if it’s a stupid way to die, then maybe it’s a stupid way to live. But hey, that’s just me.
I don’t know if Bruce ever went ice surfing again. And for all I know, he may be the ultimate LifeVestor. But on this day, he was a gambler.
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(A Turning Point Story)
What do you do when you encounter somebody who’s made a wreck of his or her life? What do you do when that that wreck of a life shows up in your place of worship? What do you do when YOU are the wreck?
The closest I ever came to having a horse was a 1964 Ford Tractor at my granddaddy’s, and a ten-speed bicycle I got for Christmas my ninth grade year in school. I put miles – miles – on that bike.
Now, years later, it leaned against the wall in my dad’s workshop in disrepair. But for some strange reason, Daddy and I were inspired, and decided to get it going again. A brand new front tire, new tubes, adjustments to the brakes, handlebars and seat – only one thing was missing. Our hand pump wasn’t strong enough to inflate the tires completely. So we pumped them up as much as possible, and decided to take the bike to a nearby service station to finish the job. We had to hurry, though, to outrun one of those afternoon thundershowers so common in Mobile during the summer. We took the short cut through the woods behind the house – I on my old trusty-rusty steed and my dad on my sister’s three-speed. We emerged behind a shopping center near the service station, only to be greeted by a sudden downpour.
So we waited.
It was frustrating to sit there, pinned in by the rain with our destination in sight. So when the shower let up a little, we decided to make a mad dash for it. We had a plan, sort of. We’d go across the parking lot, behind the Seven-Eleven store, through the little alley, to the Texaco station. Once we go the tires pumped up, we’d figure it out from there.
Off we flew! Across the parking lot. Around the back corner of the Seven-Eleven.
Just one problem.
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