I personally will never not trust my gut feeling.
Marrying.
Did it once and it’s going to last until death.
That’s pretty wholesome
Unless someone is getting murdered.
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It would be really weird if married couples stayed together until they both died.
Fire breathing
For context I’m a professional fire & sideshow performer. I have almost a decade of experience and am fire safety lead for a large fire arts retreat. But the name of the game is risk mitigation and fire breathing is too risky for my taste despite its popularity.
If you go on Wikipedia and type in fire breather, the second result is Fire Breather’s Pneumonia. I also personally know many people who have gotten large facial burns or have had to retire due to lung problems caused by excessive fire breathing.
The risks are technically still there with fire eating, which is one of my main skills, but I mitigate it by limiting my exposure and taking breaks. There’s also significantly less liquid fuel involved.
I’m an entertainer as well and thought about fire breathing. I spoke with a couple friends who do it and them all casually talking about collapsing a lung a few times turned me off that idea.
Sword swallowing too. My friends do it but I’ve heard the term “perforated stomach” one too many times
That one never caught my interest. It makes me so nervous. I’ve gotten into stilts and jumping stilts over the past couple years. I’d love to get back into juggling and unicycling but that will have to wait for a bit. I also really wanna try German wheel and aerial hoop!
Also editing to add: what made you wanna do fire and what’s your favorite way to use fire? I have a friend who just got a sword, another who favors fans, and most men I know use staff or poi. I personally have never spun or played with fire, but it fascinates me. Many of my friends will eat but not breathe it.
I started with fire before I ever really knew I wanted to be a performer, it just seemed fun, and things moved from there. My first prop was staff.
But a lot of stuff happened over the years and I hardly spin any more, other than at said retreat. Ok the flip side, I’ve carved out a name for myself as a sideshow performer doing dangerous and grotesque things. Bed of nails, blockhead, mental floss, butterfly knives, stapling, etc. But my expertise is fire, so I tend to always do that when the venue allows.
Fun fact, I invented two fire eating moves :) One is a split tongue torch hold, the other I named a black hole sun
That’s all so awesome. Have you always been doing it for work or did you get into it later? Sorry for all the questions and no need to answer obviously, just fascinated by everyone’s story in the industry. I’m too much of a chicken for much of your skills, but I love admiring it from the other side of the field. Hopefully one day our paths will cross in the performance world!
It’s not my full time gig, I have a day job that pays the bills since there’s very little money in it unless you go private/corporate. But I do get side money from it in addition to artistic fulfillment.
Definitely hope to cross paths, circus is my lifeblood. Here’s my permanently shadowbanned IG
Followed!
I’m just a dude, one afternoon when I was 12 me and the boys were doing bbq because it was a major religious holiday here.
I found a neat stick and I decided it would be fun to do a fire breathing trick with the kerosene. I hadn’t done it before but it worked and we had a blast.
I’m intact and in my 30s but I still cringe at the possibility of me getting a burned face that day.
Gender reassignment surgery.
Play paintball.
I started playing back in the 80’s when I was in college and everybody used paint guns that could only hold about 15 rounds, and fired one at a time.
I’m way too old to run around in the woods like I did 40 years ago, and the game has completely changed as well. People have guns that can hold hundreds of paintballs and shoot incredibly fast, so the whole strategy is unlike it was. I just don’t find modern paintball enjoyable at all.
Excessive speed on a bicycle. Alright, I did it more than once, until a slow car scared the shit out of me.
At one point I lived near a small mountain with a road going up. It was so slow and painful to get up, but a huge thrill going down. I didn’t have a speedometer but it was a 45mph road (and everyone speeds) and I consistently passed cars. It had only one lane in each direction and I regularly passed cars going over 45 mph, by a lot. Then one day I was about to pass the car and she slowed to turn. Panic time, huge continual squeal of my brakes that scared her into accelerating past her turn, and I still zoomed by on the shoulder before I could stop, hundreds of feet beyond.
Clearly way too fast for my vehicle and my (lack of) protective gear
It’s so much fun to dive-bomb down a mountain road, but as soon as you get a little rain, a little shimmy develops in your front steering column that cascades into being thrown over the handlebars… I’ve had a few close calls, where during a race and during a regular ride, where I almost ate shit hard… Yeah, I’ll just slow down a bit sooner next time 😳
Had a tamer but similar hill near my home growing up. Loved speeding down. It ended in a lot filled with gravel. Fortunately the day I spun out on the gravel lot was coming from a different, slower direction. Developed an extremely bad case of road rash all over one leg. When I realized what might have happened if I’d been taking the hill instead, that I probably would have broken my legs or worse, I stopped going down that hill. Realization of mortality can be like a bucket of ice water sometimes.
Paintball with 20-somethings. I expected someone to shoot me in the arse from five feet away for a laugh, I didn’t think they’d be on my team.
after a scuba dive almost went south, I agree on the gut feeling
I’ve always wanted to scuba dive. My ears are just so sensitive I don’t think I’d be able to
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Yep, I’ve topped out my Hayabusa and I feel the same way… Done it 4 or 5 times when I was a little younger but I don’t need to die that way.
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I’m sorry that happened to someone you knew.
Thats awful.
I’ve only done it on a remote road with a huge view, so no chance of another car - but plenty of chance of animals stepping out, or even just losing control due to road surface or wind gusts etc…
Its a silly thing to do.
Huge adrenaline rush, but so very silly. These bikes are ridiculously fast.
It’s not something I plan on doing again.
Once again, I’m sorry you knew someone who had such an awful end…
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Went to Sturgis for the motorcycle rally in the late aughts. Went to the Harley Dealership that was offering free test drives on all it’s latest models. The guy leading the test drive said that anyone who wanted to go fast should be right up in front behind him. I wanted to go fast, so I was second in line, right behind him, on a brand new V-Rod (I think it was the 2007 almost 1300 CC engine).
He lead us on a dirt road parallel to the highway for a minute, going like 65 mph, which wasn’t so bad, but I peeked behind me and the cloud of dust we were trailing was impressive, I wondered how the guys behind me were even keeping sight of us! Then, he turned and got on the highway. Man he opened his up so fast, I almost lost sight of him. I gased that V-Rod so hard just to keep him in eye sight, that the segmented white lines between lanes just turned into one solid line to my vision. I checked my speedometer and swear I was around 160-180mph. That shit was unreal, passing cars going highway speed like they were standing still, on a bike I had never ridden before.
And that’s why I won’t let myself buy a crotch rocket. Give me a 90’s model sportster that maxes out at like 90mph, because I’m scared if I have a machine that can go that fast, I may be tempted to try it again, and the idea of becoming a meat-crayon isn’t something I aspire to.
My Dad is a doctor who would bring home pictures of gnarly cases he worked on, and every single one of them would be motorcycle accidents. Doesn’t stop him from riding one, and with a fake-DOT helmet (if one at all), but it sure stopped me from ever wanting to emulate those speed-demons that go over 100 weaving through traffic and shit. Those people are insane to me.
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You’re probably right about it being closer to 150, I do remember turning my head and feeling the air push my head hard, fighting to get back into the lowered, hugging-the-engine position I was in. T’was nuts. never again! Maybe if I’m on the salt flats with mad protective gear, but not on roads, not on a new-to-me bike. That was just a flash of brilliant, youthful, death defiance that I’m likely never to repeat. Might as well bounce on a trampoline under whirring helicopter blades 😅
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I love the adrenaline feeling of driving at speed. Can’t imagine 180 on a bike though, I took a moped to 50 one time and the exposure scared the crap out of me.
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I went to bed with a full bladder…
drinking 12 espresso each with speed on one day (I almost had a hard attack and couldn’t sleep for like 1½days)
Apparently have sex ever again.
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Damn that’s tough
Difficult for your mum too
Skydiving. It’s super windy and loud. It’s a predictable struggle between gravity and air resistance. There’s a man firmly pressed up against my bum. You end up back where you started. Super inefficient and uncomfortable mode of transportation.
I actually really enjoyed akydiving
Panic attack (I hope)
It’s awful
Morning gym workout. Neck is still sore twenty years later. I know musculoskeletal injuries don’t happen from one event but that morning was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
OP, gut feelings are usually helpful, care to share what happened to you?
Getting wisdom teeth removed
This sucks
