[Closed] What life changing things did you manage to avoid?

Having children .

I didn't go to the Bradford City vs Lincoln City football match in May 1985.

Not surprisingly really as I'm a Leeds fan

But some of my friends at Bradford university did, very shaken up although lucky to be in the Midland Road stand on the other side of the pitch to the stand that burned down killing 56(?) people

Getting caught!

Dying - well the permanent type anyway.
The first three turned out was only temporary..

Her name was Louise.

Her name was Louise.

+1 (probably not same Louise).

Also:
7/7 - would have been in the area of the first bomb if I wasn't hungover and late.

Polonium poisoning - apparently I was on the plane that transported the gubbins that killed Litvinenko

Having kids - so far...

Bike ride with some friends to a garden centre when I was 8, 4 of them set off 3 returned.

Same year some other friends asked if I wanted go with them to arse around on the train tracks. I was busy helping my Dad, one ended up being seriously injured.

911 we were supposed to be NYC for our honeymoon but a few weeks before we went to book it our Lab pup was ran over and it took all our cash to sort her. We'd probably not have been at ground zero though.

I couldn't get to a flight that crashed.

Boxing Day tsunami, 2004, Thailand.

Mrs Stoner and I were in Thailand on our honeymoon 5 years ago. On boxing day morning we went for a swim in the sea at our resort in Khao Lak before breakfast.

At breakfast on the spur of the moment we decided we would check out and move on to explore somewhere else. We packed our bags and paid our bill then wandered up to the main road a little after 9am. We had no idea when the next bus was due but one turned up before long and we got on heading for Trang on the other side of the country. The road took us up over the headland and away from the coast. The wave hit Khao Lak shortly after 10am and destroyed it. It was one of the worst hit areas and many families died - predominantly Scandinavian and German. Our resort was wiped out and I found out later that almost everyone there died. There were a number of young families there and I still think of them.

We didnt realise what had happened until we got off the bus hours later and watch the BBC World channel news in a bar in Trang.

We decided then to head back to Bangkok and think about heading home. In Bangkok we read in the English language papers that the Red Cross were desperate for European blood donations. They were massively understocked of blood group types with much higher incidences in white European populations than in the far east. Luckily Mrs S is loaded with super blood O- so her donation was of great value.

We've still got a folder of clippings from newspapers but havent look at it since 2005. We dont really think about it much, but when it comes round in the news now and then I always think of those families at Khao Lak.

as per stoner but not me, my family.

ma, pa and bro plus his family (wife and 3 kids) all lived in phuket for a good few years a while back.
usually went to the beach at nai yang in the morning, but this morning they were running late due to sister-in-law forgetting something and having to go back to the shops.
by the time they go there, the beach was shut, police telling them to turn around and go back.

theyd have all been on the beach when the wave hit if it wasnt for that.

we drove up to khao lak on one of our hols a few years later, very sobering.

+1 (probably not same Louise).

Mine was from Tring.

Child birth

another Louise - from Bath

Was due to do work at Bishopsgate the day the IRA blew it up but job got cancelled.

More recently was two decisions away from being on the A27 at shoreham about the time the Hunter crashed but was talked out of working late by a colleague as it was a Saturday.

CaptainFlashheart - Member

+1 (probably not same Louise).

Mine was from Tring.

Christ what is it with girls called Louise!

Mine lived in Cirencester. Pretty, well read, very inventive in the sack 😀 & of wealthy parents but & its a big but she was borderline paranoid about everything anyone said. Every thing you said got psycho analysed for the hidden meaning.
The poor sod she eventually married jumped in front of a train in Kemble 🙁

Got flung from a the passenger seat of a Mk1 Golf GTi as it splatted into a rock face. Came round a wee while later in the ditch and walked away with a slightly hurty shoulder and broken glasses. Not even a graze 🙂

My brother, mate in the back and the car didn't fare quite so well.
Nobody died though, apart from the car. It was bigly deaded.

Pretty, well read, very inventive in the sack & of wealthy parents

There's a theme developing here! Not just the name Louise!

Great wealth and top health!

Hah yes - I also had a lucky escape from a Louise.

I was also on holiday for 911 and 77 and did get to thinking I was some kind of jinx.

Five girls called Louise?

Seriously?

Note to any single chaps - Avoid girls called Louise.

I can add a Louise to the list - also from Gloucestershire, not at all inventive in the sack and very clingy.

Escaped a head-to-head motorbike crash purely because I'd screwed up the corner I was in and drifted in towards the centre line- bike coming the other way overshot the bend and went through exactly where I'd have been if I'd just been a wee bit sharper. That would have been less than fun, if I'd survived. Life means near misses but a near miss that only misses because you made a mistake is pretty shaky stuff- what if you'd done everything [i]right?[/i]

Haha.... Another Louise.... Essex, this time.

Beautiful girl. Stunning.

Messed around for a year or two whilst at college. Lots of drugs and bedroom antics.... Although mostly, almost exclusively, not confined to the bedroom. It was at this time that I definitely saw the advantage to leather seats.

Think if we carried it on I'd still be living in South Essex... So definitely dodged a bullet there.

siwhite - Member

I can add a Louise to the list - also from Gloucestershire, not at all inventive in the sack and very clingy.

Not from Dursley was she? As I've just remembered another Louise 😮

8?

8 of them?

No-one called Louise.

But I'd have examined a parcel bomb left by the IRA about 5 mins before it blew, if I hadn't taken off an evening shift in order to take Mrs M to an expensive resto. She was just the girlfriend, then.

I also had an appointment cancelled which should have seen me at the site of a 7/7 bomb at just the wrong time.

had a rugby scrum collapse on me. me head was right under my chest, my feet off the floor. couldnt breath and was at the stage of blacking out. then the weight moved sideways and it got light and i could breath again.

played in a game a few years later when a lad was paralysed in the same way.

Louise here.

Bloody tramp she was. 🙂

Well a year ago I was out in a group ride and the rider next to me on the inside rear of the group hit the worst pothole you've ever seen, crashed onto his head and died, despite my best efforts to save him. A few seconds earlier and I was in his place, as we were riding through and off. The accident was caught on my Fly 6 video and used to exonerate the club at his inquest, where I was the lead witness for the club. He left behind a wife and three sons. I think of him every time I ride by a pothole.

Coroner's report to Surrey Concil has now been issued.

wow. TiRed. I read much on the loss of your club buddy, but hadnt read the coroner's report. Having seen some rubbish from coroners on cycling fatalities, it's good to see something well thought out and considered. I guess we all hope lessons are learnt.

I was biking home after dropping my son off at his Mums & was kind of training for a Polaris Challenge & went home the long way round. If I'd been 5 seconds slower going up Shincliffe bank near Durham I'd have been wiped out by a Renault 5 that went past me on it's roof.

Another near miss for me - a few years ago I was larking around with my mates in my front room (pretty well shitfaced) and jumped on my mate's back who was sat in a chair in my front room. Somehow I rolled straight over the top of him and smacked my head hard on the hearth of my gas fire. It was one of those fires with ornate spikes to either side of the unit and I missed the spike by mere inches. When I woke the next day with a huge lump and an unusually strong headache I started to have flashbacks to the night before and realised I could very easily have spiked my skull on the spike 😯

I used to get the train to and from school, between Welwyn Garden City and Potters Bar. During my time at school there was both the Hatfield and Potters Bar train crashes.

The Hatfield one I don't really think about, but if the points had failed at Potters Bar a few hours later I would have been stood on the platform the train crashed into along with a bunch of my friends.

I decided never to go to America, and thus narrowly avoided 9/11, the Sandy Hook massacre, the St Valentine's Day massacre, Little Big Horn, Pearl Harbour and any number of American girls called Louise.

I was a passenger in a car that had a scaff pole go through the windscreen on the passenger side, immediately prior to it I had been dropped off as I forgot something and had to go home to get it. Took the headrest off the passenger seat, rear seat and went out the rear window.

Walking through a scenic gorge in Romania a bloody great big tree fell off the canyon wall above and landed in among us. It brushed passed the wife so closely it gave her a skint knee 8O. My mother in law dived out the way and suffered a broken collar bone. I got away with some (very minor) scratches from flying splinters.

A few seconds earlier or later or if we had been in a slightly different place on the trail and one or all of us could have ended up a red splot on the floor of the gorge.

When I think back the whole incident seems utterly unreal. The consequences of it going another way are just too hard to imagine.

Nico - Member

I decided never to go to America, and thus narrowly avoided 9/11, the Sandy Hook massacre, the St Valentine's Day massacre, Little Big Horn, Pearl Harbour and any number of American girls called Louise.

Tragically, Nico was killed in the Bowling Green Massacre

Haha.... Another Louise.... Essex, this time.

Beautiful girl. Stunning.

She was a redhead. The physical scars my heal but the mental ones go on forever 😉

I had a Louise moment too, very accomodating but started to weird out a lot and then went full postal. I'll be honest, i've avoided Louises ever since.

I've had some hum-dingers, my nickname used to be "lucky dick" within a 4 inch radius of Little Scud, i've been stabbed accidentally by a kitchen knife when a chef, got serious frostbite in my thigh working in am abattoir as a student, got shot with a blank round on a Ash Ranges and stabbed myself with brake lever (along with dislocating shoulder and breaking arm) in the groin when rear wheel on MTB fell apart on hire bike riding down the "Worlds Most Dangerous Road" in Bolivia leading to huge blood loss as they missed the puncture wound and just pinned my shoulder!

In addition, i've been shot at and nd avoided a good few IED's in the army and was sat in the Libyan desert working when 9/11 happened leading us to high tail it out of there pretty quick (ferrying geologists and scientists about for oil company).

At 18 the Land Rover in which i was travelling as a passenger was hit by a milk tanker, the driver lost a leg and has severe head injuries, i walked away with nothing but back pain, any other vehicle and neither of us would be here today.

I had a Louise near miss too. We used to work in the same bar together, there was a bit of chemistry and flirting. It almost happened one night after closing till we were interrupted by the landlord's mother in law who was living in while the landlord was at his villa in Tenerife. I doubt that would have been a life changing encounter, but it was a bit of fun missed out on.

Tiffany, now she could have taken my life down a completely different path had circumstances been different.

Her middle name was Louise, does that count?

my first gf was a louise (early days of secondary school). She didn't turn out to be a mental, but if I'd stuck with her I'd not have had the 'fun' I had before settling down over a decade later

I came perilously close to losing my life in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Every day I thank my lucky stars that I was born 50-odd years later, in England and am not Jewish.

Louise got me too though. She was a PA to a chap that owned a very s****y converted Victorian orangery that he rented to a Liverpool footballer. She house-sat when he moved away on a loan spell. We tested his hot-tub, steam room, round bed with red satin sheets (I kid you not)... She threatened to tell my fiancé.

Batshit mental that one.

On the low side but makes you think...Cycled past a car on its roof in a ditch, on my side and facing me, wheels still spinning, occupants out and ok.

I knew* a glamour model called Louise - latterly famous for being a conservative MP's PA

* still can't decide if avoidance was best decision of mine 😳

Ha Ha another Louise 😕
Usual things as above...lovely looking, fun in and outside but the added complication of 2 lovely kids.....I still miss kids!!
Oh and West Yorks though!

I missed wining Tour de France again last year, I suspect it will be the same this year. Its hard work being unfit an not suitable for that particular challenge.

following this thread...... http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/12-week-scan-no-heartbeat

did not react well. I wasn't there for my wife when she needed me most, instead became a binge-alcoholic, that couldn't say no to just one more, leading to a few nasty incidents including sleeping rough and being robbed and twice vomiting in my sleep but avoiding becoming a statistic. It took a while to crack but I did it and I'm better for it.

more recently, have been suffering with depression brought on by stress and work pressure, to the extent of being stood on a tube station platform with my heart telling me 'two quick steps and this is finished'. Fortunately my head won out and those times have passed, largely. Work's still shit, but it's just work, and IDGAF about it anymore.

...Every little breeze seems to whisper "Louise."
Birds in the trees seem to twitter "Louise.".......Can it be true, someone like you Could love me, Louise. - MC

1st.

I went OTB into a ditch. Tried to stand up and couldn't. A tree root had embedded itself so far into my helmet, it took a good heave to get the helmet free once I'd unbuckled and and stood up without it.

2nd.

Having post GCSE party on Sidmouth beach and a few of us were going to go for a walk up towards the other end. We were about to set off when someone we hadn't seen for a couple of years arrived and we chatted for 10 minutes. Just as we were about to go, there was a huge cliff fall: I suspect where we'd have been standing had we set off when we intended.

She was called Caroline. Phew!

My dad was on Edda/Alexander Kielland doing 2 weeks on, 1 week off. He was on his 1 week off when it capsized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_L._Kielland_(platform)

Mods - can you please change the thread title to "Louises and how to avoid them"?

At the end of Uni I was offered a job in S****horpe. 😯
Thankfully I had an interview in Southern Scotland a week later, so refused the Scunny job in the hope of heading to Galloway...

Not all that dramatic compared to some, but I was once involved in a nasty car crash - really stupid one.

I was the passenger in the last car in a 3 car convoy or "dickhead boy racing party". The first car, a Renault 5 Turbo wearing over-sized wheels and fast road suspension flew into a sweeping left hand turn slightly too quickly and got away with it, a blink of an eye later the second car, a MK2 Golf GTI 16v wearing equally silly over-sized wheels and fast road suspension followed it in the great tradition of early golfs on 3 wheels, and a blink of an eye later we did the same - in a boggo Astra 1.4 GL wearing ditch finders and worn out standard suspension - it was a brave move by anyone’s measure - of course it didn't work - the car pitched and got up on 2 wheels, the driver just caught it by steering out and it fell back onto 4 wheels, span, hit 2 cars and a tree side on - passenger side on - the passenger door was destroyed and so was the passenger seat - I got away with a mildly bruised leg because when the car went up on 2 wheels the seat belt failed and I was tipped onto the centre console and came to a stop sat on it.

Cleo - 10th year at high school. We would have been 13....anyway, I got invited round for 'tea' at hers. My mum point blank refused to let me go. Cleo decides she's had enough of me and instead goes for my mate Sam, who DOES go round for tea. Few weeks later, Cleo is preggers....

For the sake of continuity, I'm happy to change her name to Louise...

Canoeing at school in the depths of winter.. the council used to have a flat barge that they used to clear the river banks..
As I'd done a lot more canoeing than the others in my class I ended up with our instructors slalom race canoe which was very unstable but very fast/agile.
Current on the Severn was really fast and we were having a race from school boathouse to bridge and back.
I was in the lead but started to get dragged towards the barge...last minute grab of the handrail and I managed to get my elbow over it. Canoe was pulled off me and proceeded to spin, upside down under the barge until I managed to get onto the barge to safety. Had I not been able to grab the rail I'd have gone under for sure.

edit:
it's a Claire for me, 9 years old, kissing on the table in our garden. She wouldn't speak to me for days after as she thought I'd made her pregnant

Mods - can you please change the thread title to "Louises and how to avoid them"?

😀 😀

A few -

1) On my scooter heading back from Maritime college in Bombay - guy opens his jeep door ended up slam straight into it, maybe it's cos I'm a tall guy but I pretty much fell off on the spot and see my bike sliding across the road and a truck coming down at the same time - the bike goes under the truck to the other side!

2) Apprentice on a Bulk Carrier - working in the tanks - lowering some anodes on a winch - I was in the tank on the upper stringer and got pinned between the load and the railing and nearly got flipped over the railing (20m fall to the bottom) - was absolutely shaken

3) A couple of road accidents
Road trip LA to Utah - fell asleep at the wheel had the car in cruise control at 90mph - woke up to see the car veering off and instinctively pulled the wheel over tapping the brake- skidded across the freeway into the central reservation - just two flat tyres but was absolutely shaken

Road trip to the Arctic - 60km out of Inuvik on the Dempster [i]Highway[/i] lost control of the car as we rounded a bend and flipped over... one of best road trips though

The Pinkster - Member

[i]Haha.... Another Louise.... Essex, this time.

Beautiful girl. Stunning.[/i]

Yep, same here, another Louise, also from Essex.

I know a Louise Essex though she married to gain the Essex name!

plyphon - Member

Her middle name was Louise, does that count?

My sisters middle name is Louise & she is on this forum 😮

During the storm in October 87 I stupidly had my nose pressed up against the window trying to see what was going on outside. As I turned away, I was showered with glass as a fence panel came through. Feel lucky I wasn't blinded.

No kids to start.
Fell between 2 trawlers on a stormy night whilst they were tied up. Skipper grabbed top of my head and pulled me out the gap before it closed and crushed me. Thanks Bob.
Recited England football team names to convince paramilitaries in Guatemala I wasn't in the CIA when they dragged me off a bus in middle of the night in 1996 and had a pistol pressed into the back of my head by a man wearing a balaclava. I may have soiled my pants but lived to tell the tale.

I met a loony Louise at school 30 years ago!
Married her and we're still together.
She's still a bit nuts though.

I only just avoided drowning in the beck at eskdale when I was about 12.
A Louise showed me hers in first year primary.

Lyrics NSFW...

I was listening to an interview with Victoria Pendleton today and had a lightbulb moment - a quick look on Wikipedia confirms her middle name is Louise.

The only Louise I know works on a site I visit occasionally and is extremely attractive but is as mad as a box of frogs.

About 5 yrs ago in Morzine, we had done the PPDS and were on a day of local exploring.
headed out of the " Goat village" [can't remember the name] and there were a number of fast road switchbacks back to Morzine. i was going far too fast and ended up losing the front end [mtb tyres and tarmac don't mix kids!!] ended up on the wrong side of the road on a blind corner. Missed an oncoming car by inches and collapsed in a heap in the undergrowth.
Never been with a Louise though....my nutcase was Julie!!

Riding down from the Col between Morgins and Chatel. Had been up rock climbing in the evening on a bike holiday (way back in the day). Had left all the bike stuff back at the apartment - stuff like helmet, armour, etc. Mate and I rode off from the climbing crag and neither of us clocked we'd pulled out on the left. Just as I hit warp speed down the road, a car came round the corner and I had a head-on with it. Don't like to think what the closing speed was. Broke my back and all sorts of nasty flesh wounds, but consider myself very, very lucky. Back healed up fine and I'm all good.

Beautiful-stunning-way-out-of-my-league-American girlfriend of three years on Erasmus prog went home a year late and sent me a Xmas card saying, "Merry Me" on it a few months later. Failed to understand what it meant and carried on my merry way. Penny dropped a few years later.

Liking Reggae, Spiced Food and the Labour Party.

late to the party here, I've been Louise'd also, pregnant within a month she was 😡

Haven't had a Louise in my life - am I still allowed to post? Though come to think of it there was a Louise in one of my classes at school I kind of fancied and with the knowledge derived of no longer being a teenager with no confidence around girls I probably stood a chance - it was her friend (not called Louise) I really fancied though, and looking back I'm 100% sure she was also interested.

From pretty much the same time I visited the Houses of Parliament on 18th November 1987. On the way home we went to McDonalds then the pub. If we hadn't gone to the pub then the tube train would probably have stopped at King's Cross - it was incredibly inconvenient when they kept the doors shut and we couldn't get off and go through the tube station to get our train home.

dirtyrider - Member
late to the party here, I've been Louise'd also, pregnant within a month she was

And how long was it until the next?

😉

World War 1 and 2.

I wasn't born yet.

And I also missed 9-11 by virtue of not being in the twin towers at the time. Or in the USA. But it was a lucky escape!

she's the baby mama, not the mother of my other children 🙁

3 things that stick out ! fell off my road bike in rain went to AandE to get ribs checked out and the doc found this on my chest 3 weeks later chest surgery to get the bugger out luckily it was not attached to anything vital.
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In Belfast had 16 rounds fired at my OP I was the only one in there no kevlar vest on, one hit me in the arm back on duty 1 week later :0)
Missed the Herald Free Enterprise Out of Zeebrugge due to getting there late

A girl i was at uni with (not called Louise) was on a flight in America. American Airlines flight 77, Washington to LA.

A day later, that exact same flight was crashing into the Pentagon. She was properly shaken by that one although she got a very extended stay in LA courtesy of everything being grounded.

Bit closer to home, my grandfather was supposed to be transferred between ships (WWII) but the ship he was on was involved in some action so was a day or two late back to port.
The ship he'd been due to go on sailed anyway and was torpedoed 3 days after that in the North Atlantic.

In a severely drunken and high state as a teenager I fell over a small wall, with a large drop at the other side. Woke up in a patch of grass with headache, cuts, bruises and a bit of bleeding. Right next to me there was a piece of concrete with a large bit of metalwork sticking out of it. If I'd have fallen a bit differently I reckon I'd have been impaled.

I also narrowly missed being drowned or frozen in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, by virtue of not being born when the Titanic sank.

My brother dated a Louise. She was attractive but also downright frightening.