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Got Lost

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posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 08:51 PM
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I have been into "orienteering" for a long while. Graduate of NOLS, and instructor. I pride myself in not being able to get lost. I do. I can always find my way. I can.

One night in SE Asia I took a group of people up onto a mountain (4x4 territory). I shouldn't say "night", because it was "day" when we started. I was a Camel Trophy Series navigator and pilot at the time. We had won many competitions over in East Malaysia and Borneo.

The afternoon in question we climbed up some steep logging trails and traversed some pretty severe ledges. (We were crazy). Our group was just some friends, not nearly as hard-core.

Imagine for a moment, a hard-core Land Rover, ropes strung across the bumpers. racks on top, jacks, tires on the hood, bridging planks...the real deal. Myself and a buddy were going to compete for the Camel Trophy. We had been in it the year before and got hopelessly stuck 150 miles in...not this time!

So people were interested, and we decided to take them out on a relatively "easy" 4x4 tour in the Malaysian hills one afternoon. Several people wanted to bring their own 4x4's. We were pretty confident, this would be easy.

Atop the mountain in the early afternoon the clouds closed in and it started to rain. In Malaysia "rain" is nothing like most people have ever seen. Inches of water fell from the sky in minutes, water, flooding water rushed in every direction. Roads that existed were washed out in minutes, and those which weren't were deeply rutted beyond description...and it kept on raining, just sheets of rain.

We feared we had made a horrible mistake (I did). Left to our own, we probably could have made it out, but it might have taken days. On this night people were afraid, innocent people who just wanted to have a fun day. Now, things weren't so fun.

Seriously, you've never seen rain like this!! Just absolute sheets of rain coming down. This was tropical rain forest, which typically gets 450" of rain per year...this rain just didn't let up! We (they) were stuck.

Well, the rain didn't let up, and people were starting to get nervous (especially when we started seeing wild boar in the jungle). It was time to go down. But, we would have to go down the mountain a different way than we'd come up. And, at the bottom, we would have many hundreds of kilometers to drive through a jungle we did not know. Just to get back to a road.

This is a true story, folks.

We would have to go down the mountain numerous times, and then come back up again, to show everyone a safe way. I can't even count how many times we slid off the road and over a cliff, just trying to find a way out. We were LOST in the Malaysian triple canopy jungles of SE Asia.

We lost a Land Rover that night (my buddy's). There wasn't even a person in it, and it wasn't moving, it just slid over a ledge and down an embankment in the mud. (never did figure out why the "assurance" company never even called us about that one!).

We did get down that mountain that night, but it wasn't pretty, and I banged the crap out of my rig getting down (got in a fair amount of trouble for that). Fortunately we got everyone else down the mountain without too much damage. It was a fair way out to the road, and then a couple tries to figure out which way was home, but we eventually did figure it out...

...back into Bangsar Baru, Malaysia (north east of Kuala Lumpur) that night.

Sometimes, you live, and other times you just stay home.

I would likely never do that S# again (just completely CRAZY), but I'm glad I did once. (makes a person ALIVE)



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 08:56 PM
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a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Holy shiz man....I have done some VERY questionable things in my life but nothing like that.
For some reason I kept feeling like I was reading a script to a new Jurassic film!



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 08:58 PM
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a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Weird that we are never as alive as when our lives are at risk.




posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 09:02 PM
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Well... were you really lost if you found your way back?


Seems like a heck of a trek, and I'm certain you learned plenty from it.

What would you say is the most scenic place you have driven, and could you perhaps tell us about it?



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 09:08 PM
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Crazy story man.. It is weirdly thrilling to find yourself on the ragged edge. The important thing to know is when to not do that again.

I always tell the wife, I am never lost... I know exactly where I am and I know exactly where I need to be, I just might not know how to go to travel from A to B.



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 09:19 PM
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They dont have the whether channel in Malaysia?



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 09:36 PM
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a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

It's one thing to have to pull your own fat butt out of the fire, quite another when you are responsible for other(s) soul. Good work keeping that together.



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 09:45 PM
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Fear is a motivating thing!



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 09:57 PM
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a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

There are many things we have done when young that hindsight today says, "Golly Gee Whiz we were lucky"! Lucky to survive.. A mountain anyplace in S.E. Asia can become unassailable both up and down even on foot so I would say what you experienced was a life changing event...or at least it got your attention !



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 10:12 PM
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a reply to: 727Sky

it DID...that day!

I actually got skeerd once.

ETA - I'm sure you remember such a day, perhaps many...flying the legendary "Whisper".



edit on 11/29/2018 by Flyingclaydisk because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 10:16 PM
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a reply to: Flyingclaydisk


...jet



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 10:29 PM
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a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Thanks so much for sharing your story.... well written, and highlights the point that no matter how much experience you have, you can find yourself in a situation that only increases your EXP Level...

Thanks again



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 11:03 PM
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a reply to: JacKatMtn

There are so many stories I could tell.

I've tried to live life to the absolute fullest!

I've paid or it too...and I'm getting to the point where it's only the stories.

However, I'm not there just yet. I've still got a few stories yet to be told.

It's all about LIFE!!!



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 11:09 PM
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a reply to: JacKatMtn

I will skid into my grave, broken and tired, talkin' S# and slingin' rocks the whole way!

It's about FIERCELY loving life!!

I remember every moment, I remember why, sometimes it wasn't right, but I remember how.

I never regretted one thing.

...and my wife thinks I'm completely CRAZY!

No Fear!!



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 11:10 PM
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a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Nothing like having your life at risk, and relying upon yourself, to pull you through....

Self Reliance...

Fortunately for me, I haven't put into that situation, so far, but...

I learn from experience's shared, like yours, to help me build a knowledge base, that I hope helps me when I face a similar situation....



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 11:18 PM
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a reply to: JacKatMtn

One day you will be faced with a situation where you have to make a choice.

Those choices won't be pretty, and you'll have to take a risk based on love or honor.

And, you'll either jump in the water...or you won't (and you'll run away).

Then you'll know what you're made of.

You'll live the rest of your life with those choices.



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 11:34 PM
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a reply to: JacKatMtn

For me, I've always tried to make those choices, as a test, earlier rather than later.

Perhaps you might say I "dare' myself, or put the limit, just so I will know the right choice when the question comes.

You see, this is why some people do crazy stuff, because they don't understand how they will react when the real question comes.

Oh, the stories i could tell.

(clinging to a simple rock, 4,000 feet above a lake below, straight down...my (then) wife panicking as the ice formed with no hope of return). And the wind blowing about 75mph. Surely we would die that day, but just sheer determination wold get me and her down the mountain. (It took a while, but we got down)

And I look back on those days as 'good' days. (??)



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 11:36 PM
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a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Agreed, but I feel much better that I will have that decision to make myself...

and not put my life in the hands of others via a 911 call....

Self Reliance is now a rarity, when it was one of the strengths of the USA....

Risk Assessment was once the responsibility of EACH CITIZEN....

Too many times these days, is GUBMINT will help me!!

BS, Gov't is too LARGE and should be reduced to founding principles...

IMO..



posted on Nov, 29 2018 @ 11:41 PM
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You sound like you have been all over the place, Asia?

I have been disoriented by electromagnetic fields in a few places, I could not sense north one place and the compass spun in circles on top of the hill and pointed towards the hill from a thousand feet away. I can understand the compass, but not my being mixed up, I actually looked at the compass because I could not figure the way back to where I came from. A hunting buddy spent the night on that knob, I used the sun position to get out, it clouded up about an hour later and his compass led him to the hill. In the morning the sun rose and he found his way to where he had to go to get picked up.

There was some sort of crystal or ore body in the area you were in, it threw off your sense of direction. I read how those geomagnetic abnomalies cause birds to go off their path and sometimes they get messed up and wind up flying in circles.



posted on Nov, 30 2018 @ 12:21 AM
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edit on 11/30/2018 by Flyingclaydisk because: Another day



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