Part of having an awesome life experience is having a realistic view of death. Death can come anytime, I’ve learned that in my own life a few different times now. Perhaps many of you have felt the sting of the death of a family member or friend. Here are some common but often overlooked things that will kill you before you know it.

1. Coconuts. As I was driving along a road full of coconut trees I remembered a little known or talked about fact. More people die as a result of coconuts dropping on their head than die from shark attacks every year. So, this is #1 in my list to kick things off. I believe it’s true as I’ve seen them hit the ground from 40 feet up a tree. I don’t really remember looking at coconut trees much in Florida or Hawaii, but the ones here in Thailand have monster coconuts that must almost weigh as much as a bowling ball. One clunk from 10 feet or so and that would be it.

2. Choking on a morsel of food. I was eating those long squiggly noodles the other day, instant noodles I’ll call them so I don’t use a brand name. I realized about mid-way through that I wasn’t chewing them at all, just kind of feeling them in my mouth and swallowing the fork-full. I had a brief thought about choking to death on noodles. You can choke to death on a teaspoon full of water, so why not soft noodles?

The problem with choking to death is that often times there’s nothing you can do. It gets caught in your windpipe and you can’t even cough. If someone doesn’t notice something is wrong with you it’s possible you die right there after you pass out. In this case, if you ever notice you are choking and can’t do anything - bang the table and point to your throat. Hopefully someone gets the idea and bear hugs you from reverse with the Heimlich maneuver. Or, you can jam the back of a chair into your diaphragm to try to expel the air. Don’t be shy about it - you might only get one or two chances, throw yourself on the chair.

3. Lightening. I lived in Tampa for 10 years. Tampa is lightening capital of the WORLD. There are more strikes per square mile there each year than anywhere in the world. Not sure why that is - but I believe it’s right on the money. In 10 years I saw lightening hit within 100 yards of me about 6 times, once within 20 feet of me. When I counseled people with traumatic brain injuries I worked with a man that was hit by lightening twice. He was 6′7″! When it rained he’d hide in the restroom at his mobile home. Twice I had to sit with him there and talk him through it.

4. Heart attack while swimming. There are more of these in Thailand than I can believe. It’s very often that tourists are found floating face down in the water, dead after having a heart attack from exerting themselves while swimming. Swimming is a VERY strenuous exercise, one of the best things you can do to improve your health, but also one of the worst if you’re not ready for it. Even swimming 30 yards will elevate an unfit heart to dangerous levels. Swimming is nothing to mess with!

5. Asthma. You might only have it a little bit. I do. I developed it at around 21 years of age while in New York City. My brother has it in a bad way, so I was prepared for it. Mine wasn’t consistent. I’d have a bad day a month or maybe 2-3 days a month. The rest of the month - no problems. Then when I moved to Hawaii - asthma was gone. Then when I moved to Tampa - it returned. In Tampa I almost died from an allergic reaction to Aunt Jemima’s pancake syrup if you can believe that. I was home alone and had finished up some pancakes when things went horribly wrong. I called 911 and they got there just as I was passing out from not being able to breathe. Take asthma seriously, even if you have it a little bit.

6. Shock. Some people are more susceptible to this than others. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do about it. Anything shocking, but usually something very traumatic - a car accident, a traumatic injury, exposure to cold or heat for an extended period of time. Shock shuts down your body, and eventually your mind goes with it. This is a real concern in the case of heat exhaustion.

7. A fall down some steps. Even a small fall from a standing position straight on your head, you know, in case you hadn’t time to put your arms out to catch some of the force, is enough to do it. Most days I climb 1,237 steps to the top of a hill here at a local Buddhist temple. The view is incredible and it’s a lot more fun to climb the stairs as exercise, meeting people from around the world than it is to run around an asphalt oval at the sports park. The steps are very uneven in steepness, surface, and they are more like a concrete ladder than steps a lot of times. I’ve slipped twice on the steps in 275 times of climbing them. I haven’t seen a tourist fall down a flight of them. I hope I never do, but the odds are… well, I hope I don’t see it. Once someone starts falling, it might be 30 or more steps before they were able to stop. IF they were able to stop. You have steps in your home?

8. An angry boyfriend, husband, or friend. Really, crimes of passion among people who know each other are very common. You may never know when you’re scraping like a cheese-grater on a person’s last good nerve. Or, just as bad, you might know and not take it seriously enough. Each of us hides a lot from the general public. People with a lot of problems hide a hell of a lot. There are plenty of psychotic and generally mentally ill persons in the USA, I know, I counseled many of them. Sometimes I talked them out of killing others. Really, it’s common.

9. Allergies. Yeah, those things that the nurse tested you for when you were 8 years old by pricking your back with a tiny amount of 120 substances that typically cause allergic reactions. Unfortunately they didn’t prick me with A. J. pancake syrup or jellyfish toxin.

I was snorkeling in Maui as I did most every weekend for two years and this one time I got a nasty sting on the inside of my left thigh. It left a road-map of chemical burn on my skin that stayed for over a year. After it stung I noticed that, while the pain was incredible what was more disconcerting was the way I was almost passing out. Apparently I was allergic to the toxin in the jellyfish. Who would’ve guessed? I’d been stung by Portuguese Man O’ War in Hawaii countless times while bodyboarding and never had any reaction other than the usual pain. Allergies are so deadly because you probably won’t have any idea you’re allergic to something when the reaction to it overtakes you. Otherwise you’d have avoided whatever it was, right?

Oh, I almost forgot. Here in Thailand’s northeast the thing to do is to eat fried scorpions. The big ones are about 7 inches from head to tail. I wanted to do some video of me eating a variety of bugs and things, like the Thais’ do here. I chose a big scorpion to eat last. All the bugs went down easily and even the scorpion went down fine. I finished filming and went running at a park. Well, before I knew it I was hallucinating, panting, salivating and having a lot of trouble breathing. I walked calmly back to the motorcycle and drove back to the room where my girlfriend took me to the emergency room. They kept me overnight and all turned out well. But, who’d have guessed that I was allergic to even the cooked venom in the scorpion? Not me!

Video - me eating fried scorpion that almost killed me >

Video - me in hospital as a result of eating fried scorpion >

That’s what I came up with. I didn’t want to go over the usual killers like electricity, auto accidents, spiders, snakes and things because most people are very aware of those and take great care to avoid them. Who thinks about dying as they walk down a flight of stairs? While snorkeling on vacation? After eating pancakes with maple syrup?

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Best of Life!

Vern

I’m not a dangerous person. I don’t consider myself a ‘thrill seeker’ by the usual definition. But, that said, I have had a few times that I’ve almost died while trying to enjoy this crazy thing called “Life”. This is a post about 2 such near death experiences that happened in the Pacific ocean while I was living on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. I call them ‘Awesome Experiences’ but they were awesome only because I came through them OK… alive. I faced something during both of these experiences that was scary enough to be labeled “possibility of death”.

I swam all my life growing up - in swimming pools in Pennsylvania. I was a good swimmer and yet at 18 years of age I still needed months of time in Oahu’s strong waves before I felt like I understood a bit of what waves were all about. It took months more to be confident in the water in all kinds of surf, and yet even so, I never paddled out in waves that were higher than 10 or 12 feet Hawaiian scale (15-24’ for all other scales).

It was 1986 and was just turning winter in Hawaii. Winter consists of 70 to 80 degree days and a cooler breeze at night than during the summer. I had been bodyboarding for almost 2 years at this point and I’d never really gone after the big waves. That summer I’d ridden 6-8 foot waves (Hawaiian scale) in Waikiki at “Walls” and those were the biggest waves I’d ever faced. It was so much fun that I had to go in search of a little larger wave to see if it was even more fun!

I loaded up the MGB convertible and went solo up to the North Shore of Oahu where I heard there was a nice swell beginning. Kasey, my usual bodyboarding fanatic friend had to work that day, and thinking back on it now it was really stupid to go up there alone in big surf.

Now, the thing about swells when they are beginning is that they are in the process of growing all the time. They might grow over a couple days, or they might grow over the course of one day. Looked at on a macro scale, they may grow literally from one set of waves to the next… and that’s the usual pattern for waves. There are the regular sets that roll in for 20 minutes at a time, maybe 50 minutes at a time… and then, bam, a bigger set or two roll through and then back to the regular sized sets.

I had watched the waves for about 20 minutes prior to getting in the water. They were quite a ways out away from shore and it wasn’t that easy to read them from that distance. I was at “Sunset beach park” at a break called “Backyards” which breaks very far out - a couple hundred yards from the beach. There were plenty of people out there already and so I thought I’d go check it out and see what it was like. From what I saw the waves were 8-10 feet Hawaiian scale and breaking very cleanly and smooth… They were essentially perfect waves. There were only about 20 surfers out and 2 other bodyboarders. It was around 9:30 am.

I paddled out, and I was amazed at the currents there. The rip current pulled me out of the way down current from where I wanted to be. It took quite an effort to get back to where the group was. By this time I was pretty tired, having been spoiled by Waikiki and the Windward shores close breaks - within 50-100 yards from shore. I caught my breath over the next 10 minutes and watched some picture perfect waves roll in. Some waves went without riders, that’s how many great waves were coming… the pros could pick and choose the best of the best, and they did.

Me? I waited until I was fully rehabbed and breathing regularly again before I was ready. When I thought I was ready I looked in back of me as I heard whoops from the other surfers that spotted the set that was to be my undoing. I saw glare from the wave faces far in the distance. When a big set is coming you can see the bumps of it FAR off in the distance, beyond where you were seeing the waves form before. The big sets give you a clue by forming earlier and they grow as they come in. By the time a big set reaches the spot the regular waves were forming you’ll get an idea how big they’ll be. This set was way in the distance, and yet was coming fast. It was HUGE. Far bigger than I’d ever been in front of in the water. Guys were paddling out to it so they could get a longer ride, as the big sets are rideable much further out than the regular breaking sets.

Me? I paddled out toward them too a bit, knowing that if I got caught in front of the set after it broke I was in a lot of trouble.

I decided on a safe strategy of taking the first wave in to shore and getting the hell out of the water just as the mammoth set erupted behind me.

Nobody was on the first wave of that big set, and that’s the good news because if I had to catch any of the others I’d have been on 20 foot + Hawaiian scale waves which were twice as big as any wave I had caught in Hawaii.

The first wave of the set is always smaller than the rest. As it turned out I found myself at the top of a 15 foot wave that was moving fast. It was so fast that I thought to myself as I came down the wave face, that’s amazing that the bottom of my board skimming the top of this wave is making so much noise… I knew I was on an epic ride because the speed I was moving was so beyond what I had done before.

I rode the wave as long as I could, and still I was 80-100 meters from the shore. I looked in back of me to find wave after wave, lined up like the pulses of a 20-30 foot tsunami unleashed on me.I frantically dove as deep as my bodyboard leash would allow (6 feet) and hoped that the wave wouldn’t grab me and pull me with it. I lucked out after that 2nd wave of the set, but the next one HAMMERED me. Sitting here in my one room flat in southern Thailand thinking about that event that happened 21 years ago and I couldn’t possibly tell you in words what it was like.

It’s not that I don’t remember because I remember it quite vividly, and I can feel something in my stomach as I type this on the computer. The fear of dying if I stopped trying to fight these waves was all I had to keep me going. I had no strength left after about the 4th wave as strength wanes quickly when there isn’t enough air to fuel the muscles to fight the million gallons of water thrashing me around and holding me under in loose foam clouds that were churning like a washing machine on super-cycle.

The thing about loose foam, the white water that happens as a wave pummels a surfer and holds him under is that it’s impossible to swim in. You can try, but there’s more air bubbles than water and so when you are trying to move in swimming movements, it’s more like you’re trying to fly through air than swimming. We all know, humans can’t fly through air. Neither can you swim in air. Basically you need to hold your breath until you float to the top. If you can’t do that, you’re gonna pass out and probably die inhaling water after that.

There were a couple times as wave after wave came and I was able to eventually float to the top after 20 seconds or a minute, that I reached the top and didn’t really realize I was at the top. There wasn’t elation at reaching the top, but a vague stillness that I guess was me in an altered state of consciousness where I just wasn’t getting enough air to understand what was going on all the time. Once I breathed a breath or two and dove again I was aware for the next 20 or so seconds and then I sort of relaxed and let the natural buoyancy of my body and bodyboard take me to the surface and did it again.

I don’t know how many waves were in that set, but there were over 15 and I was like a wet surf-rat by the time I floated lazily into shore, about 300 meters from where I entered the water… the current took me down shore but I could care less at that point. I had the worst time trying to remove my fins and the straps that kept them on my feet as there was some shore-break that was giving me the final insult to my ego as it played with me and made me look stupid like a grommet that overestimated his abilities to get in the North Shore surf during a nice swell.

When I stood up in the knee-high surf at the shore I stumbled and some people were there watching. Nobody bothered to say anything, they understood that I was ok since I made it to shore. Apparently they see a lot of people barely making it to shore there. Some don’t make it at all. I walked about 15 steps up the steep incline of the sandy beach where I knew the tide wouldn’t get me and I flopped down in the sand next to my board.I spent the next couple hours laying in the sand right there, 300 meters from where my backpack was up the beach. I had no cares about someone stealing my things or even taking the car… I was ‘alive’ mostly and that’s what mattered right then… I drifted in and out of sleep and finally had the energy to walk to the car after 3 hours of exhaustion and baking in the hot Hawaii sun.

After this ‘adventure’ I thought seriously about the possibility that I could have died there in the water. I think had it not been for the strength of my bodyboard and leash system (Turbo bodyboards) I think I probably would have died. I’m a slow learner though, and 16 years later because of poor quality equipment I almost died in the water in Waikiki!

Near death bodyboarding experience #2 at “Magic Island” in Ala Moana Park on Oahu’s south shore: May 2002

In May the south shore swells on Oahu were starting. This marked my favorite time of the year since I much prefer bodyboarding on the south of Oahu than in the northeast or at the North Shore. I heard that a swell was already in progress at one of my favorite places to bodyboard, Magic Island in Ala Moana park in Waikiki. Ala Moana is a large beach park across from the Ala Moana Mall. I’d guess it’s about 2km long. The part called “Magic Island” is a peninsula that goes out into the bay a bit and where there’s a pool of shallow water protected by man-made rocks and concrete to block the waves, even the big ones from hitting the kiddie pool area.

Beyond those rocks is where I liked to bodyboard. There were consistent and easy to read waves that broke there on a south swell. When I arrived I was almost in tears of joy as I saw 4-6 feet Hawaiian scale waves and only 5 guys riding them.

I had a $90 Morey medium-hard foam bodyboard with a plastic tube leash that was anchored through the center front of the board - just under my chin as I rode the board. It had a straight strap with two layers of Velcro to attach firmly to my left wrist. This bodyboard was much cheaper in quality than the bodyboard I’d had 16 years before on the North Shore when I had the near death experience. That “Turbo” board, built by Russ Brown I used was $120 back in 1985 and was very solid and heavy and was able to take the stress of hundreds of pounds of pull on the leash without failing.

The waves at Magic Island on this day were not that big and I thought the Morey board was ‘good enough’. After all, it was a $90 board, not a $30 board. There must be some difference in strength. I thought this board could handle 6 foot surf. I was really wrong.

I caught a couple of waves right off and they were phenomenal! They were coming fast and were almost curling into a partial pipe which was strange for this break. There were many people standing on the boardwalk watching us bodyboard and it was a beautiful sunny day and wave after wave of boardriding bliss.

I duck-dived one wave (dove under it) that started to take me backwards with it so I let the board go and I went further underwater without the board. It was attached to my wrist and I’d never had a good leash break before. What happened was not that the leash broke… the board broke. The leash was attached with a plastic rod that held the leash down through the center of the board and that had a large hard plastic cap on the bottom of the board that was supposed to prevent the leash from popping out of the foam. This it did. To the board’s credit, the leash did NOT pop out of the foam.

What did happen was that the center plastic piece that went through the board ripped the board almost 3 feet long-wise, shredding the board and leaving me in 10 foot surf without a board to float on. I heard people at the beach scream when they saw the board, they thought a shark had grabbed it since the foam was ripped in a jagged serrated pattern, not unlike a shark might inflict.

I was able to swim for a while, trying to head back into the rocky shoreline but the current was much too swift. I spent 20 minutes swimming hard against the current, unable to find a clean path through the coral and around the current. I was scraping my legs and fingers as I tried to swim gently over top of the coral. The waves had other ideas and raked my body across the coral at will.

Finally I was on the verge of panic since I realized that I was nearly depleted of strength. Luckily I saw a Hawaiian guy paddling out on his long-board and I asked him if I could hold onto his board for a minute to recoup my strength. He let me, despite us being overrun by waves every couple seconds. I asked him where the best spot was to get back into shore and he showed me the one path through the coral where I wouldn’t get too cut up. I took that path, and still got cut up as the current took me right over the coral again but, at least I was back at the shore. I found my board, took pictures and sent them to Morey, complaining that they’re crummy board almost got me killed. They promptly sent me an upgraded board free of charge and next day air. That was nice, they didn’t have to… but, knowing Hawaii is such a small place and that everyone would have talked about it - they did the smart thing!

I did the smart thing too from that point on - I only bodyboarded large surf 1. With a friend. and, 2. With a well built board that was built for big waves!

Here’s a page with some photos of waves that were similar to the ones I faced at the North Shore that day… the wave looked most similar to the one next to the entry for “Cribbar”.

; )

Best of Life!

If you need Hawaii appraisal services I have a good friend that does them on Oahu, Maui, Kauai and Big Island. His name is Christian Van Dyck and he’d love to hear from you! Tell him Vern sent you!

One of those awesome experiences in life, totally awe-inspiring and shocking to the core of your being is coming close to being struck by lightening.

I had one of those experiences yesterday. In fact, it was the COOLEST experience of my entire 41 year life! I’ll tell you why in a moment… Almost getting struck, or getting struck and being OK must be the ULTIMATE experience as it turns your entire body into pure adrenalin. You are wondering if you’re dead…

When I lived in Hawaii there was not much lightening. Usually storms did NOT have any lightening. In Florida - and especially the Tampa area, it is the lightening capital of the WORLD. There are more strikes per square mile than anywhere in the world. I regularly saw lightening strike so close to me that there was very little gap between the hit and the thunder clap (< 1 sec). I counseled a man in Florida (for a traumatic brain injury center), that had been hit by lightening 2 times. He was 6′ 7″ and over 280 lbs of muscle. He cowered in the bathroom when a thunderstorm came during our session.

The closest I came to being hit in Florida was while I was in Miami and attending the university. I was carrying my laundry basket toward the laundry room 10 meters away from my room in a pouring rain. It was so hard I couldn’t see more than 10 meters in front of me. I was half-way there when a bolt of lightening struck the laundry room (a clothes dryer, actually) and the earth shook with the noise. I was dropped to my feet in an instant, on my knees. I say “I was dropped” because there is no way in the world I could have a reaction that fast because it was as if I dropped at the exact time the lightening struck. No gap. I layed there in the rain puddle afraid to move an inch for a couple minutes, not believing lightening never strikes the same spot twice. I washed my clothes the next day!

The vehicle I was in on the way from Tampa to Pittsburgh was struck by lightening once. Anyone ever had that happen? The vehicle was a large jetliner that was flying right through the worst turbulence I’d ever experienced on a plane and I’ve had well over 100 flights.

I was sitting at the window seat immediately behind the right wing. My girlfriend at the time was pretty scared, she was no stranger to flying, but this flight was NUTS, passengers were crying and occasionally someone would scream or curse something when we hit bad pockets of turbulence that would have sent us crashing into the ceiling of the plane were it not for the seat belts.

The sound of the lighting striking the plane was as if someone was standing on the wing and hit the metal with a 100 lb sledgehammer - if someone could swing one VERY fast. The entire plane shook or steadied - it did something different from what it was doing, hard to tell. The lights went out and there was this aweful and very loud sound like the groan of a capacitor sucking up the million volts or so into safety coils so we didn’t all die. It was the sound of death for sure.

When the strike hit, the entire plane was quiet as death - because that’s what we thought we were about to experience.

But, within a few seconds everything revved back up - including the engines I think because it seemed like they turned back on. Emergency lights went on and we all were still VERY quiet despite the same turbulence throwing the plane around.

My girlfriend was locked onto my entire left side. If I would have stood up, she’d have been FIRMLY attached. She had a death grip on me. She asked me, “Were we just hit by lightening?” (she hadn’t seen the flash on the wing like I did).

I said, “No, I think the rain is just really heavy.” A BAREFACED lie, but anything to calm her. In fact, not many saw the strike but everyone heard and felt the result.

Well, we lived through it and it was one of the most awesome (scary) experiences I’ve ever had. THE scariest?

But those things were in the past… Yesterday’s experience was something novel, something so extraordinary… and an AWESOME experience, not a negative one…

I was at the top of a mountain and taking photos. The sky was incredible and I had already seen a rainbow in a small rainstorm and took many photos of that. Seeing a rainbow (’roong’ Thais’ say) is quite a rarity in Thailand!

I had been up at the top for a couple of hours, planning to meditate but on this day it was cooler, the sun wasn’t out full-force and I was plagued by mosquitoes at the spot I wanted to sit. Then the clouds started to change around the 360-degree view and I was happy taking photos. The sky started to grow into one massive storm. There was lightening once every 10 minutes or so. The rain was far away, about 4 miles I’m guessing. The lightening was sometimes as close as 2 miles, but not closer (counted to 10, 1 sec = 1/5 of a mile away).

I was taking photos of the storm (see top pic) when, DURING this photo a strong lightening bolt struck far away, toward the center of the storm and my entire body tingled as if God reached down from the sky and touched me. The hair on my entire body stood up and my skin “tingled” all over…

You know if you put your hand on the glass of an old TV screen and turn it on - you feel that charge and it makes you tingle? It was similar to that, but multiplied by a few factors of 10.

At the same time I felt this incredible sensation I heard the various antennae around me humming (for lack of a better word). I couldn’t move. I was asking myself for about 10 seconds, am I dead now? I was looking at my feet for a body - you know, like I could see it if I was already dead and separate from it! My mouth fell open and I just stood there looking around. One other guy was close to me (10 meters) and was doing the same thing as me… just looking around in an obvious state of shock. He too had felt the awesome power of the lightening bolt miles away.

There was a Buddhist monk and some girls from Denmark that were further away, maybe 30 meters and they didn’t feel it. There were some tourists climbing down the steps that I met up with (because I was getting down QUICK) that said they didn’t feel it either.

Feeling that energy - that charge that made my entire self vibrate, was the most awesome spontaneous experience that I’ve ever had. It was even more incredible than seeing the Northern Lights or bodyboarding a monster wave. I think what made it so cool was because I was totally unprepared for it, and because it really made me wonder in the most profound and truthful way… “Am I dead now?” I was actually considering that question…!

Best of Life!

Vern