I was watching Deadliest Catch tonight and early in the show two crab fishing boats passed two young crew members between the boats. They put these guys in survival suits, lowered them into the frigid Bearing Sea complete with 20ft rolling seas with nothing to hold onto but some rope and flotation bags. One of the exchanges didn't go so well and the kid got swept underwater a couple times. Frightening stuff. It made me immediately think of the time I was most scared in my life. It was three summers ago when I first put my boat into the water. I was sailing by myself in late May on an unseasonably warm day. I had been sailing and finishing up some sanding and the water beckoned me. I was in a nice quiet area of 12ft deep water on a large, quiet bay approximately a mile or so from shore. I anchored, put aside my tools, and dove overboard. The water was refreshing but cold. Really cold. I paddled around the boat once and then swam to the stern of the boat where the ladder was and... was surprised that it wasn't down. I thought I had flipped it down but in my rush to dive in the water I had forgotten. I didn't panic at first, after all the side of the boat was in reach and I figured I could just haul myself up. It was harder than I thought. My muscles were tightening up and while I could hold onto the side I couldn't find purchase for my feet against the slick paint. After trying and failing half a dozen times I was nearly spent. The cramps in my muscles were getting worse and as I looked towards shore I knew there was no way I could swim the distance. I tried climbing the anchor rope but that didn't work either. In the end I'm not even sure how I got myself out of the water. I managed to summon enough energy for one more attempt and did some funky spideman move with the tip of my toe off the rudder. I flopped down on the deck and laid there for a good ten minutes, thanking the powers that be for saving me. Focus: What is the most scared you've ever been?
I live in a city apartment now, but when I was a kid my family home was pretty far out in the woods. Growing up playing in the forest, even well after dark, I became stupidly fearless. Even to this day, I'm totally comfortable in the dark. Like all kids, I figured my parents were full of shit and that nothing in the woods would ever bother me. I'm a big, bad human. Everything is scared of me! So with that silly attitude in tow, one night I was taking out the trash after dinner. The way we had it set up, we'd dump our trash bags into the barrels in our shed, which was right on the tree line about a hundred feet from the back of the house. My dog, a very large German shepherd, was walking with me out to the shed while I carried the big bag of trash. So we're almost to the shed and I hear the familiar sound of coyotes, yipping and howling, and they sounded about a mile away, into the woods and down the mountain. I paused to listen, thinking it was pretty neat. My dog looked nervous, but he was always kind of a coward so I laughed at him. I swing the shed door open, lift the garbage barrel lid, toss the bag in, and as I'm replacing the lid, I hear a crazy rustling and crashing in the woods behind me. I figure the dog is fucking around back there, shrug and leave the shed. The sounds of movement continue, and as I lock the shed and turn towards the house, I whistle for my dog... ...and he's already at the house, on the deck, looking at me with an apologetic expression. Proving that nature has perfect timing, the pack of coyotes chooses that exact second to start howling about ten feet behind me. If you've ever heard a pack of coyotes when they get going, it's a chilling and disorienting sound. I screamed and bolted for my house, just KNOWING I was fucked. All my nonchalant confidence, all my common sense, everything that I knew that should have told me they would never attack a healthy human evaporated from my brain the instant I heard those howls. I can look back now and laugh, but at that time I was half the size I am now and all I could think was that my fucking dog had deserted me, and if that didn't spell "fucked" then nothing did. Now that I think about it, it almost seems like those coyotes were deliberately screwing with my head. I reached my deck in record time. I wish I could sprint like that whenever I felt like it; my feet barely touched the ground. It was the athletic high point of my life. I only paused to give my dog a dirty look and mutter "asshole" before we went inside. Fear is a funny thing. The moment those howls started up, I completely lost my mind and bolted out of sheer instinctive terror, and yet by the time I reached my house, seconds later, I was already feeling sort of silly.
I think that was more specific things or hypothetical instances, whereas this is more specific instances that have happened to you. And I feel like this thread was made for me. I'm a bit (ok, a lot) of a hypochondriac. I used to be scared of everything, which wasn't too bad, because I just avoided shit like heights, roller coasters, and full-contact sports. After some medical issues, I now firmly believe that any uncomfortable situation might result in my death, and any minor physical annoyance (like a bruise), is my body telling me it has cancer. [Though in all fairness, I did have migraines, of increasing intensity and frequency, for almost a decade, and some of the best doctors in the city failed to notice my brain tumor the size of a lemon that was attempting to kill me. So I feel like that stuff is somewhat justified.] I'll add more to this thread as I feel like writing up the posts, but the reason I no longer snorkel without a flotation device next to me is this, or in water deeper than I cannot touch: I was in Hawaii, had walked about a half mile or so down the beach to a good snorkeling part. It was all cool up against the rocks, but the great stuff was about 100 yards out. No big deal, there were dozens of people out there, so I headed out. Guess what? I got winded. And then I FREAKED. In salt water it is insanely easy to float, so if I just relaxed and caught my breath I would have been cool. But I was absolutely convinced I was going to drown. So I did the logical thing, and swam toward the jagged lava rock cliffs, found a piece that was occasionally sticking up, and held onto it for dear life. It was at this point that I realized I had narrowly missed about 200 sea urchins that also thought holding onto that same rock was a good idea. So I pushed off, and tried to swim back to shore. I could literally hear the Jaws music in my ears, but I didn't care. I am a very good swimmer, but I guess the tide was coming back out because I felt like (and it looked like) I was swimming in place. When I got to shore, I kissed the sand, literally, and dejectedly walked back to the hotel. Fuck snorkeling. They're just fish.
Waking up after being knocked out cold is terrifying no matter the situation. In my case, I woke up in the back seat drenched literally head-to-toe in blood (not my own) with the driver's car wrapped around a tree like a horseshoe. I (along with everyone) had my seatbelt on and was knocked out by the sheer impact of the car sliding into the tree, which killed the driver's best friend and the girl that I was dating. I had no idea of the extent of the damage during the accident from being in shock, I thought the others were just out cold as well after I pulled them out to give the A.R. because they weren't breathing. We were in the middle of the country at 4 a.m. and all the driver could think about was how much trouble he'd be in for being over the legal drinking limit.
Honestly? The most scared I have ever been was when I was a year out of high-school and my girlfriend (at the time) told me that she was "late." We got drunk one night, came home from a party and had unprotected sex. I didn't finish inside of her, but that mere fact did NOTHING to counteract the enormous paranoia that we were both feeling. "Are you sure you didn't go inside of me?" was a daily question, and it got to the point where I really started to second-guess myself. I did all sorts of research on how the female menstrual cycle works, and became something of an expert in a short matter of time. Her menstrual cycle was un-predictable at the best of times, so throw in a pregnancy scare and her cycle was all out of wack! Two weeks passed and she had yet to receive her monthly gift from Mother Nature. She took three different pregnancy tests, all of which came back NEGATIVE, but her period still refused to show up! Finally, on my birthday of all days, she sent me a text saying, "It's here." I can honestly say that I have never felt more relieved in my entire life.
Fuck barracuda. Rule #1 of swimming in waters where there may be barracuda: don't wear anything shiny. Down in the virgin islands, anchored out in a place called White Bay (I believe on the island of Jost Van Dyke), we decided to go skin diving for sand dollars. It was about 25 feet deep, so just take a deep breath, dive straight down and you've got about 5-10 seconds on the bottom waving your hand over the sand to uncover sand dollars beneath. Stay too long and you risk running out of air, and trying to swim up that fast, even with fins, is a bit of a pain when your lungs are exploding. At one point, I dove down right next to a patch of seaweed, started looking around on the bottom, couldn't find anything, and looked straight forward. I was maybe 5 feet from a barracuda. And it was at that point I realized I was stupidly wearing a chain around my neck. Fuck. I freaked, screamed underwater (which was probably not the smartest thing to do anyway) and realized I had let go of all my air. And I was still 20-30 feet down. B-line for the surface, I felt like I was going to faint I was so short on air. Even with fins, I still wasn't moving fast enough for my liking so I tried shedding my mask and snorkel to make myself more hydrodynamic. I must have shot five feet out of the water I was going so fast toward the surface, a combination of needing air and being scared shitless of the barracuda. I have another terrifying barracuda incident I'll post later (I get scared a lot, plus I have bad luck), this one got too long as is.
I'm only 23 and the more I think about this topic the more I think I should never be allowed to drive again. Way too many close calls. I typed up the scariest one, but put it in spoiler tags because it was longer than expected. Spoiler My Christmas present the year I got my license was to have a stereo put in my truck. Unfortunately, for this to happen we had to drive a couple of hours to a bigger city that offered those kinds of services. A couple days after new years my mom decided to take me. A snow storm had just passed through, but the roads were open and we didn't really think it was a big deal. Being a young male I was insistent that I drive my truck. So we set out and quickly realized that the roads were a fucking mess. I had never driven when the roads were like that so my mom was giving me an impromptu lesson. There were patches of ice pretty consistently and because of that all the traffic was backed up and everyone was going like 20 mph. A smart guy would have just turned the fuck around, but I was confident that the road would clear up. And it did. After a solid mile with no ice at all the string of cars that I'm following decides to kick it up to the speed limit. Relieved we might make it there before midnight I gladly sped up as well. But as soon as we get up to speed I see that the car in the lead of the string I'm in hit its brakes and wobble a bit. The car behind it immediately does the same. The SUV I'm follows suit and when I get to my brake I feel that we are on ice again. And so begins the scariest moments of my life. It's a two lane road and there is still plenty of oncoming traffic and I'm desperately trying to stay in my lane. We slide for at least 150 yards and I manage to stay on the road and more importantly my lane with cars going past us the other way. I came to a complete stop about six inches behind the SUV's bumper. I had been clenching the wheel so hard that it hurt to try and loosen my grip. My mom let out one of those loud relieved sighs and said "I'm glad you're a quick learner." I decided that a stereo wasn't worth all that shit and turned around. And I made my mom drive knowing I had already burned a years worth of driving karma. How I managed to get us out of that mess safely I will never know. The only other time that approaches what I felt doing that was when I was the first on a scene of a car accident and didn't have any cell phone service. Being 19 and trying to take care of a 15 year old girl that rolled her car isn't much fun at all.
The only time I've ever been scared for my life (had the whole "life flashing before your eyes" thing and everything) was in Afghanistan last year. We got inserted in by helicopter at 2 a.m. for the push into Nawa, Afghanistan in a field. It wasn't like the movies ether, because we all fell out and busted our faces coming out of the Blackhawks. The next day though the Taliban decided they wanted to show up and start shooting pop shots at us from behind a house that had kids inside. Not really scary, because they suck at shooting, but I was pissed because I had to haul a M240 Machine Gun and couldn't use it because they were using kids as a human shield. Later that day is when I almost shit myself. I've seen "walking-on" mortars before in training. It's when motarmen will shoot a round, see where the round lands, and adjust to hit the target. They miss the second time, they just keep adjusting and dropping rounds until they hit the target and then drop a shit load more to fire for effect. So there we were, sittin', chillin', saw two helicopters do a airstrike on a target from aways back, talking about how cool it looked watching two helos gangbang some poor 3rd-world jackass, then BOOM. About 300 meters to my right a explosion happens. Everyone stops talking, and just stares at it. Thats when my whole "life flashing before your eyes" shit happened. Turns out it wasn't (thank god) mortar fire, but instead a shitty rocket the Taliban had fired off at us. We figured this out when we saw the smoke trail the rocket had made was at a 45 degree angle. Mortars don't have smoke trails, they just drop straight down. The Taliban likes to take a large rockets and fire them off, with no sights/targeting system, at people hoping it will hit. About 30 seconds later after they fired the rocket off we heard gun fire from the direction the smoke trail of the rocket came from. Hopefully the gun fire was someone shooting those assholes in the face.
Last Friday night we were headed back to San Diego from Cedros Island Mexico, it is about a 260 nautical mile drive and in a 34 foot boat with 6 guys it is a bit cramped. Due to some motor problems we were having we decided to drive all night so we could be closer to the mexican mainland and San Diego and because I was the only sober guy on the boat I said I would drive all night. As we cleared the lee of the island and got a good look at the light house the wind and waves picked up significantly, significantly like it was blowing 30-40 knots and we were in 10-12 very confused seas. That was one of the longest nights of my life, driving at 5 knots, having to throttle down and up for waves, the autopilot quit working and it was impossible to keep on a heading. It was wave after wave and when the moon came up there was an erie look all over the ocean. There was not another vessel on the radar. One of the newer guys got up and asked me what would happened if we rolled, my response was we will all be dead with in a few hours, so go back to sleep. Glad that one is done.
I posted it on the old RMMB, so I'll sum it up here. We were out on a friend's sailboat, cruising to a creek to park overnight. A heavy thunderstorm came in quickly just before we got there. The rain was so thick that visibility dropped to about 50 yards. The lightning started to strike the water around us. We were in a 37' sailboat, with a 50' metal pole in the air, and the lightning is striking the water within sight of the boat. Being the only other person with any boating experience, I got to man the anchor and its chain. Lightning is striking the water around us, and I'm holding a metal chain that is in the water. Through some fuck ups like dropping the anchor early, and the dinghy's tow line getting stuck in the prop, we finally get into our safe harbor. I was so scared that it took all my mental focus and coordination to not shake the beer we had after into foaming out of the bottle.
When I first moved to Savannah, I had no dope connection, and a pretty solid daily weed and occasional weekend blow habit. Savannah as it turns out, is a GREAT dope town if you know the right people, but a great place to get shot in the face if you deal with the wrong people. During a class break I got to talking with a guy that was a small time dealer around the college and the south side, and made plans to meet up for drinks down at the river with him and some of his people that night. We end up getting robbed and he takes it over board, and this turns into the closest I've ever come to getting toe tagged that I can remember. Spoiler After the bars were closing, he asks if he can crash with me since I lived within walking distance to River street. Kinda weird dude, but we're high and drunk, and he just randomly found a $100 on the floor of the bar we'd grab a bag of weed with. We stop by the 'Crime Saver' gas station on our walk, which while closed at night, still remained active. First guy we talk to tells us to hang out and he'll come back with a bag. We don't listen when another guy comes around and says, 'yeah, follow me.' The guy heads into the housing project behind the store (when Broughton ends at MLK, it's those right there on the other side of MLK/the gas station is at the bottom of the Talamadge Memorial bridge) and goes from door to door looking for what we thought was a bag. That wasn't the case, he was looking for someone to lend him a gun. He comes out of the house sticks, what looks like a hand cannon in my face, and empties my pockets. I'm in 'fuck, I'm getting robbed mode,' and we're told to get on the ground. Then the dude I'm with starts going off about how fucked up this all is. By this point it's raining, I'm on the ground, and Mr. Man with the gun is now pointing at the other guy. Drunk and dusted he's rattling off about how "we're in the same game, this is fucked. You gonna take my chain?" (his chain was a crucifix). Dude with the gun is getting annoyed, the other dudes he's with start talking about shooting him and I'm realizing if this guy gets himself shot, I'm next. At this point I am now genuinely fearing for my life and thinking about being found dead face down in the projects. My guy starts rattling off the names of all the dope dealers he knows, and why he shouldn't be robbing him while I'm making peace with God, and amazingly that worked. Gun gets put away, WE GET A BAG OF WEED, and walk back to my place. As we're walking the initial guy we had talked to was just shaking his head telling us we should have waited. I never hung out with that dude again. Turns out he got busted for cocaine trafficking several months later. He said an undercover got him, but he was gonna beat it... but he needed to know if I knew anyone he could get some dope from.
There are two points in my life when I was scared shitless, both of them when I was away for the summer.The first was a couple years back and my buddies and I were swimming at the beach. We were pretty far out in the water since one of the older guys took his dads boat for the day. I was maybe a foot or two under water when my friend (who is by no means a lightweight) jumped and landed on my upper back. For what felt like a few minutes, I was paralyzed and couldn't move and aside from being under water I couldn't physically breathe either even when I got pulled out. It just felt like I was stunned and electrically shocked. They didn't realize what was going on at first but after a minute of not moving they clicked in. All in all I was under for just over a minute apparently and was unable to move for about 5. The other was one specific time where I had a gun pointed at me. Don't get me wrong, in the couple of times this has happened to me I've been scared but this one time I was down right terrified. I was 16 or 17 and out one night with the guys. Come to think of it, it was pretty much the same guys who were there in the other story including the fucker who jumped on me... Part of this group was three brothers who are known in town to be some of the nicest guys, but are absolute lunatics when brawls start, all three being in the military as well. As we're walking over to a restaurant this douche in a little red car keeps driving by up and down the street and at one point nearly hits this girl (tits like you couldn't imagine, mmmmmmmm, but I digress) so on his way back one of the guys calls the douche over. Brother A, brother B and myself walk up to the car to talk to him. Brother A asks him how he's doing, if he's ok, if he's from out of town and if he could please stop driving like a fucking lunatic. Douche and his friend in the car take offence and wanted to start shit which was fine. But something was off, aside from him being a bit drunk. He was a little over confident considering what the situation looked like. When we told him to either go home or step out of his car, he pulls a pistol on us. At this point my legs turned into jello but brother B whispers to me not to move so people don't see the gun and lose their collective shit. I really can't remember what brother A said to the guy to get him to put the gun down besides 'be a man, put your gun down and get out of the car' since I was too scared to do anything but stare at the gun. When they got out of the car, I along with the rest of the boys was told to stay back as the four of them went into an alley where the douche and his friend got the living piss beat out of them. By that time big tits girl was gone, I was still terrified but it was nothing a few cold beers didn't solve.
The summer after my senior year of high school I worked at a wastewater treatment plant. I usually just went around to different industries and tested their water, cleaned the outsides of tanks, and did other odd-jobs. At the end of summer, the city decided to put these sweepers into this 22ft. deep tank. My job was to go down into the tank and sweep all the shit out so the guy that installed the sweepers didn't have to work in all of the mess. This tank is a lot like the one I was working in: Spoiler After I cleaned it all up, I was climbing back up the extension ladder. When I got to the top of the ladder I put both hands on the side of the tank and right when I did that, the ladder slipped out from under me and fell all the way down to the bottom of the tank. So hanging on to the side of the tank (which hurt like hell because a metal piece was cutting into my hands) I had to use all of my strength to pull myself up and over the tank, which was tough to do if you look at the picture closely and see what I was trying to climb over.
I guess I really have had a lot scary-ass shit in my life, enough to where this didn't even register until you posted that story: Westsail-42, I forget how much it weighted, but it had three masts and a jib and that barely got it moving. It weighed like a fucking tank and was about as maneuverable as a 747 (this is important). We were headed back to the marina, but someone in my family forgot to check the weather report. 2:30 in the afternoon, middle of the bay, about 85 degrees outside, light breeze and not a cloud in the sky. 2:45 in the afternoon, still in the middle of the bay, now 45 degrees, raining sideways and we literally couldn't see more than 5 ft in front of us. Two things made this convenient: 1) Our radar happened to be out, 2) The marina where our slip was, was hidden behind a series of jetties, each of which had about a 30-foot cut in between them for boats to go. If we hit the jetties, which we couldn't see, both visually and on the radar, we were fucked. If we misjudged our approach to the cut between them, we were also fucked. So we guessed. And made front-page news the next day after we docked. Seriously, welcome to my life. I've never had a gun pulled on me (well, yet anyway), but pretty much everything else bad that can happen, does happen, to me. Maybe this is why I drink so much.
Once went swimming in barracuda infested waters wearing a medieval suit of armor.... just about drowned, that was pretty scary. Focus: When I was still using my street / strip car as a daily driver I was driving back home one day from a friends house on one of the "snow days" we get here in Texas. I was coming down I35 back to Dallas and hit black ice at the end of the on ramp. Instantly went sideways and was looking out of my driver side window at oncoming traffic, mainly an 18 wheeler that had my name on it. Luckily my tires caught grass in the median and spun me sideways, somehow stopping me perfectly parallel to the guardrail with less than 5 inches to spare. Honestly I have no idea how long I was sideways for, it only seemed like a few seconds but the whole time I was thinking "Wow this sucks I am about to wreck and I have spent all this money on my car and I am gonna have to start over from scratch." Once I had stopped and what just happened set in, it took me about 15min to stop shaking before I could finish the very careful drive home.
About 2 weeks ago now, that delicate woman up there (hard to believe but it really is) lifted her shirt and unzipped her jeans to show me the scar from her 4 vertical c-sections (the last of which was 22 years ago) before I had a chance to stop her. I now have PTSD and my night terrors have returned. Seriously, I'm deathly afraid I'm going to look like that (at least body-wise) when I'm 55 so I have vowed to fight it tooth and nail (save for the butter before cream-cheese thing). -------------- We were on a river rafting trip last summer in maybe Asheville NC, not long after a local man had been killed jumping in after his son and getting his foot caught in some rocks in an undercurrent. We had pulled our raft onto a big rock formation and were letting the kids ride down the little rapids and then they would grab the oar and we would pull them back onto the rocks. My little guy at the time missed the oar after a while and went hauling ass down the river. Since I was second trimester pregnant at the time and despite being the better swimmer, hubby jumped in after him. Little guy was freaking out and I'm trying to talk to him telling him to be calm but in my mind, I'm freaking the fuck out too! I'm sure I could live without my kids but I don't wanna. What's even scarier is that we had no idea just how deep it was past the rocks so when hubby jumped in, it was over his head and he got carried down river pretty quickly too. Thankfully, they both got out together a tad downriver but I was a puddle for the rest of the trip.
Ever see a mountain lion at night? I have. It still fucks with me. After a long day I decided that I would ride my motorcycle to the top of a local mountain, at night, where I would hang out and relax. I get there, hop off my bike, turns the lights off and walk out towards the flagpole. It was a full moon that night so I could see fairly well. After I take about 10 paces I decide that it was a dumb idea and that I should go turn my lights on. I don't why I thought of to do this. Maybe it was something supernatural helping me out, or not, who knows. Either way this thought came out of nowhere. When I get to my back I turn my lights on. When I turn my lights on I see a mountain lion walking away from from me. I didn't see its head, or side. What I saw was a mountain lion's ass and rear legs walking away. I would guess it was within 15 yards of me. The fact that it was walking away from me at that spot means at some point it was walking towards me or in a parallel path. When I saw that cat I freaked the fuck out. I hoped on my bike, turned the engine on and revved the nuts off of it to try and scare it away. After that I take off and ride that mountain road quicker than I ever have in my life. It still fucks with me to this day and that was 4 years ago.
On the lighter side... Back in my home town, there's a trail not too far from my home, excellent for biking and running. Used to bike out there with my Uncle T all the time. Well, it's a wide open trail with very little tree cover, save for the one area near the center of it. So, myself and T are biking along and take a quick breather just in front of the treeline and while we're panting and reaching for our water, a massive, wolf-lookin' dog comes bolting out of the trees and heads right for us! I'm 11 years old at this point, and I froze. T, being significantly older, didn't freeze and ran like hell, leaving his bike in the dirt. The dog tackled me, knocked me to the ground and I started screaming and yelling and struggling, all the while thinking that this was the end. Then the owner comes out of the brush and shouts at the dog, who hadn't bit or scratched me, and the dog leaves me alone, and even sits down right beside me. After I've calmed down the owner apologizes and T comes back, completely ashamed for abandoning his nephew in such a cowardly fashion. I do believe that was my first brush with thoughts of "This is it..." On a heavier note... I was 17, walking home from work as usual, and cutting through the alleyways and yards of several blocks of homes, as usual. My hometown was a reasonably safe place to grow up, and despite the constant tension between the whites and the indians, it wasn't like walking alone at night was a death sentence. Besides, looking like an indian gives me the obvious advantage there. So I'm cutting through an alley with a home that has a balcony reaching over the alley. There are a pair of white guys sitting on the edge of it, which I pay no heed to, until they jump down in front me and start hassling me. I don't recognize these guys at all, and they're obviously a fair bit older than me. At this time I had a white girlfriend, who I'd been dating for well over a year now, and they decided there weren't having any of it, giving me shit and pushing me around. I get pissed, but I'm outnumbered and I'm not carrying any extra weight so I figure I can just run. Done it before, but I didn't make it this time. Didn't even have a chance to turn around before a third guy, who I didn't see or hear, crosschecked me in the back of the neck with a crowbar and knocked me forward, at which point all three started to boot-fuck me. I turtled, and prayed for it to stop, and when they finally did I was laying on my back, upper body turned to the side, arms over my head, beaten all to hell. Then I felt the tooth end of the crowbar smash through my left knee, and it was then I figured I was fuckin' dead, that this is it. I thought they were going to kill me right then and there, but after shattering my knee they all bolted and left me bleeding in the alley. I haven't felt that kind of fear since then, even when I woke up in the ambulance after blacking out and being picked up some time later.
Toss up between the flight I was on back home and the pilot announced that they got a warning light regarding the hydraulics on the landing gear and we needed to assume crash positions (when the flight attendants collect everyone's eyeglasses, you know it's serious) and the time the bar ran out of Jager early on a Sunday afternoon.