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May 19, 2016
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The big news in Calgary this morning is that a small plane ran out of fuel before reaching the airport and was forced to land on 36th Street at 16th Avenue at about 6 am.

The radio station that I listen to in the morning is talking about how lucky the six people on board are and how they have cheated death, and of course they are taking calls and texts from people to hear their own experiences of cheating death.

Now, I'm not really the type of person to want to call into a radio station to share my experience, but it does remind me of a crazy night I had many many years ago.

I was visiting a friend on his farm south of Wetaskiwin, and I had to return to Edmonton to work a night shift. I had been up all day, so I wasn't really looking forward to being up all night at work, so I really thought that contributed to the feeling that I had that I just shouldn't go. But I'm not the kind of person to shun my responsibilities, so I jumped on my bike and headed north anyway.

As I hurtled down a secondary highway at a speed of probably 130km/h, I remember thinking how strange and ominously dark it was. There was no moon, and the only thing I could see was what was directly in the headlight of my motorcycle. Looking side to side was just pure blackness, like nothing existed around me, it was just the relatively small area that was ahead of me, like I was on the outside of the world looking in through this little peephole.

I don't even know how it happened. It was too fast for my mind to even comprehend, and too dark to have seen something coming out of the darkness until it was too late. It was purely an instinctive reaction, but reactive to what.... I do not know. I grabbed the brakes hard enough to lock the rear tire and pitched the bike sideways at a hard angle, like a motocross bike on a dirt oval. I felt something hit my left boot, and something pushed against the left side of my helmet, something reddish-brown and dirty white that flashed on the surface of my visor, and then it was gone. As I fought to regain control, my helmet was filled with this odd smell. Like poo. And dead animal.

As I came to a stop, my brain finally started to catch up with what was going on. It was a deer, and I had somehow managed to just clip its hind legs, and the angle had allowed me to slide under its ass. Sure enough, there was deer hair stuck in the visor on the side of my helmet. The next day I would find tufts of hair in my mirror, the left footpeg, and the rear left turn signal.

It scared me pretty good, and I had to take a break for a few minutes to calm down the shaking before I could continue on, and I did so at a much slower pace. I was doing about 80km/h to be safe when maybe six kilometers further down the road a small animal tore across the highway in front of me. I didn't even have time to touch the brakes. It was about the size of a fox, but more gray. Maybe a jackrabbit, but it wasn't hopping, it was running, and it was fast. Bobcat? I don't know. I don't think I could have hit it any more perfectly, right smack in the middle of the body. I bounced over it like a huge speed-bump.

I could see the lights of Wetaskiwin at this point, so I slowed to about 60km/h and plundered on. I just wanted to get to town so that I could stop at the Mohawk and take a break. As I reached the access road to the trailer park and the first streetlight, a cat darted across the street about forty feet in front of me. "If I'd been going just a little bit faster...." I thought.

I spent about twenty minutes at the Mohawk gas station calming down and getting my wits back about me. I felt like I needed to let some time elapse before I got going again. Like somehow, if I changed the timing, that everything would be good. I made it about two kilometers to the intersection at A&W before fate struck again. The light before me was green. As I approached, I saw a westbound car coming toward the intersection too fast to be stopping for the red light. I piled on the brakes hard enough to lift the back tire off the ground and sure enough, the car flew right through. W T F is going on?

I was scared and nervous all the way back to Edmonton. I rode slowly, wide-eyed and attentive to everything. When I finally got onto Highway 2 at Leduc, the increase in traffic and much-faster moving cars was making me dizzy with paranoia. At Nisku, I decided that I needed another break. As I pulled off the ramp and in toward the truck stop, I hit a patch of sand which sent my bike sliding sideways. I counter-steered out of it and recovered, but holy damn! What is happening!?

I bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked two of them, just sitting on the curb under the lights of the gas station, looking at the weird patterns that the smoke made in the air while my body shivered uncontrollably. What was happening to me? Was I supposed to die that night? Was this my time and I was just refusing to go? What was I supposed to do now?

I didn't know what to do, but there was no point in staying there. I continued on and got to Edmonton without any further incidents. I really was planning on just going home at that point and calling in sick for work, but even with that thought in my head, I drove to work anyway. I worked the 11pm-7am shift at a Mohawk gas station and convenience store at the east end of Jasper Avenue. I was on edge all night. I'm sure the coffee didn't help the headache. My eyes hurt from being open so wide. My stomach hurt from being so tense.

A little after 4 am, a young guy came into the store and headed to the back corner by the bank machine. I could see that he had a hoodie over his head and it was tied up close to his chin. He looked like ET, but his hoodie was grey. He spent several seconds in that back corner moving slowly around the household items and feminine products. I didn't like the look of it one bit.

The counter that I worked behind was on a raised platform so that I was a good ten or twelve inches above the main floor. It helped me to be able to see what was happening around the store. The counter was quite large, probably four feet of counter between me and the customers, and then another five feet or so behind me was another 3 foot counter against the window.

As he approached the counter with his head down, I could see him pulling a black cloth (like a hankerchief) over his mouth and nose with his left hand, and his right hand was behind his back. I knew he had a knife before he even showed it. As he pulled the blade out from behind his back (it was a kitchen knife about ten inches long), I backed away from the cash register to the back counter, putting a good 8-10 feet of distance between us. In the back counter I had two squeegee handles that I grasped in each hand. I could feel my bottom two fingers on each hand digging into the thread of the handles, and it felt good. Like my hands were interlocked with these handles and there was no way that I could drop them.

I don't really know what my thought process was in that moment. I wasn't going near the till or close to him, so if he wanted the cash he was going to have to get it himself. There was only two ways to get to it. Over the counter, or all the way around (which was 12-15 feet to the only access), which left me thinking that if he came over the counter I was going to beat him senseless with my sticks, and if he came around, I would jump the counter and get out of there. For a tense moment we locked eyes. He put the heel of his right hand (the one with the knife) on the counter as if to start to climb and I stepped forward raising the stick in my left hand and pointing the other toward his face. He jumped back and started to rush toward the other end of the counter (my only proper exit), and instead of jumping the counter like I had intended, I turned to face him at the narrower space between the counters where he would be entering from. Thou shall not pass.....

As he appeared in the opening between the counters his feet slid. He didn't fall, but he was off-balance enough that it changed the dynamic entirely. His eyes changed from focused and determined, to wide and scared. He turned tail and bolted out the door.

When I finally opened my hands to let go of the handles, the one in my left hand stayed stuck to my second-last finger. I had been gripping it so tightly that my finger had gone into the threads right to the hilt, and stuck there. I had to literally peel it off and broke the skin doing it. I had a welt in the shape of the thread in my finger for hours, and had to explain to the police why I was bleeding.

The boss came in, and by the time we were done with the police and everything it was 6:30. I got to go home a half an hour early. My lucky day. I took the squeegee handle with me. I kept that thing for years. It reminded me of the craziest night of my life.
 
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Holy Crap Jordy. Death was knocking on your door for sure. I was freaked reading that, let alone having gone through it. Something bigger was obviously shining down on you that night. :thumbs:
 
My compliments on the choice of words for documenting your multitude of experience within a single night.
:Wideyed: what a read :Wideyed:
 
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WOW!! You had a guardian angel looking over you that night Jeremia! Thanks for sharing and again, just wow!!
 
Unbelievable! I'm sure that day changed you life. Glad to hear you sidestepped death. Thank you for sharing, great read.
 
The big news in Calgary this morning is that a small plane ran out of fuel before reaching the airport and was forced to land on 36th Street at 16th Avenue at about 6 am.

The radio station that I listen to in the morning is talking about how lucky the six people on board are and how they have cheated death, and of course they are taking calls and texts from people to hear their own experiences of cheating death.

Now, I'm not really the type of person to want to call into a radio station to share my experience, but it does remind me of a crazy night I had many many years ago.

I was visiting a friend on his farm south of Wetaskiwin, and I had to return to Edmonton to work a night shift. I had been up all day, so I wasn't really looking forward to being up all night at work, so I really thought that contributed to the feeling that I had that I just shouldn't go. But I'm not the kind of person to shun my responsibilities, so I jumped on my bike and headed north anyway.

As I hurtled down a secondary highway at a speed of probably 130km/h, I remember thinking how strange and ominously dark it was. There was no moon, and the only thing I could see was what was directly in the headlight of my motorcycle. Looking side to side was just pure blackness, like nothing existed around me, it was just the relatively small area that was ahead of me, like I was on the outside of the world looking in through this little peephole.

I don't even know how it happened. It was too fast for my mind to even comprehend, and too dark to have seen something coming out of the darkness until it was too late. It was purely an instinctive reaction, but reactive to what.... I do not know. I grabbed the brakes hard enough to lock the rear tire and pitched the bike sideways at a hard angle, like a motocross bike on a dirt oval. I felt something hit my left boot, and something pushed against the left side of my helmet, something reddish-brown and dirty white that flashed on the surface of my visor, and then it was gone. As I fought to regain control, my helmet was filled with this odd smell. Like poo. And dead animal.

As I came to a stop, my brain finally started to catch up with what was going on. It was a deer, and I had somehow managed to just clip its hind legs, and the angle had allowed me to slide under its ass. Sure enough, there was deer hair stuck in the visor on the side of my helmet. The next day I would find tufts of hair in my mirror, the left footpeg, and the rear left turn signal.

It scared me pretty good, and I had to take a break for a few minutes to calm down the shaking before I could continue on, and I did so at a much slower pace. I was doing about 80km/h to be safe when maybe six kilometers further down the road a small animal tore across the highway in front of me. I didn't even have time to touch the brakes. It was about the size of a fox, but more gray. Maybe a jackrabbit, but it wasn't hopping, it was running, and it was fast. Bobcat? I don't know. I don't think I could have hit it any more perfectly, right smack in the middle of the body. I bounced over it like a huge speed-bump.

I could see the lights of Wetaskiwin at this point, so I slowed to about 60km/h and plundered on. I just wanted to get to town so that I could stop at the Mohawk and take a break. As I reached the access road to the trailer park and the first streetlight, a cat darted across the street about forty feet in front of me. "If I'd been going just a little bit faster...." I thought.

I spent about twenty minutes at the Mohawk gas station calming down and getting my wits back about me. I felt like I needed to let some time elapse before I got going again. Like somehow, if I changed the timing, that everything would be good. I made it about two kilometers to the intersection at A&W before fate struck again. The light before me was green. As I approached, I saw a westbound car coming toward the intersection too fast to be stopping for the red light. I piled on the brakes hard enough to lift the back tire off the ground and sure enough, the car flew right through. W T F is going on?

I was scared and nervous all the way back to Edmonton. I rode slowly, wide-eyed and attentive to everything. When I finally got onto Highway 2 at Leduc, the increase in traffic and much-faster moving cars was making me dizzy with paranoia. At Nisku, I decided that I needed another break. As I pulled off the ramp and in toward the truck stop, I hit a patch of sand which sent my bike sliding sideways. I counter-steered out of it and recovered, but holy damn! What is happening!?

I bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked two of them, just sitting on the curb under the lights of the gas station, looking at the weird patterns that the smoke made in the air while my body shivered uncontrollably. What was happening to me? Was I supposed to die that night? Was this my time and I was just refusing to go? What was I supposed to do now?

I didn't know what to do, but there was no point in staying there. I continued on and got to Edmonton without any further incidents. I really was planning on just going home at that point and calling in sick for work, but even with that thought in my head, I drove to work anyway. I worked the 11pm-7am shift at a Mohawk gas station and convenience store at the east end of Jasper Avenue. I was on edge all night. I'm sure the coffee didn't help the headache. My eyes hurt from being open so wide. My stomach hurt from being so tense.

A little after 4 am, a young guy came into the store and headed to the back corner by the bank machine. I could see that he had a hoodie over his head and it was tied up close to his chin. He looked like ET, but his hoodie was grey. He spent several seconds in that back corner moving slowly around the household items and feminine products. I didn't like the look of it one bit.

The counter that I worked behind was on a raised platform so that I was a good ten or twelve inches above the main floor. It helped me to be able to see what was happening around the store. The counter was quite large, probably four feet of counter between me and the customers, and then another five feet or so behind me was another 3 foot counter against the window.

As he approached the counter with his head down, I could see him pulling a black cloth (like a hankerchief) over his mouth and nose with his left hand, and his right hand was behind his back. I knew he had a knife before he even showed it. As he pulled the blade out from behind his back (it was a kitchen knife about ten inches long), I backed away from the cash register to the back counter, putting a good 8-10 feet of distance between us. In the back counter I had two squeegee handles that I grasped in each hand. I could feel my bottom two fingers on each hand digging into the thread of the handles, and it felt good. Like my hands were interlocked with these handles and there was no way that I could drop them.

I don't really know what my thought process was in that moment. I wasn't going near the till or close to him, so if he wanted the cash he was going to have to get it himself. There was only two ways to get to it. Over the counter, or all the way around (which was 12-15 feet to the only access), which left me thinking that if he came over the counter I was going to beat him senseless with my sticks, and if he came around, I would jump the counter and get out of there. For a tense moment we locked eyes. He put the heel of his right hand (the one with the knife) on the counter as if to start to climb and I stepped forward raising the stick in my left hand and pointing the other toward his face. He jumped back and started to rush toward the other end of the counter (my only proper exit), and instead of jumping the counter like I had intended, I turned to face him at the narrower space between the counters where he would be entering from. Thou shall not pass.....

As he appeared in the opening between the counters his feet slid. He didn't fall, but he was off-balance enough that it changed the dynamic entirely. His eyes changed from focused and determined, to wide and scared. He turned tail and bolted out the door.

When I finally opened my hands to let go of the handles, the one in my left hand stayed stuck to my second-last finger. I had been gripping it so tightly that my finger had gone into the threads right to the hilt, and stuck there. I had to literally peel it off and broke the skin doing it. I had a welt in the shape of the thread in my finger for hours, and had to explain to the police why I was bleeding.

The boss came in, and by the time we were done with the police and everything it was 6:30. I got to go home a half an hour early. My lucky day. I took the squeegee handle with me. I kept that thing for years. It reminded me of the craziest night of my life.
It’s not your time yet but eventually it will. 😳😎
 
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