Relitive Risks and Storm Chasing

I taught driver education full time at the high school level, and part time at the college level where I trained other instructors. I rode motorcycles and was an instructor for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. I got interested in driver education and motorcycle safety after an incident that happened to me in 1966, when I was 22 years old.

It was two in the afternoon on a bright, clear weekday. I was riding a newly restored BMW R-26 shaft drive motorcycle on a two lane, 65 mph-posted rural highway. Cruising along at 60 mph, I encountered a telephone wire hanging across the highway at neck-height. Lost visually against the backdrop of trees lining both sides of the road, I saw it a fraction of a second before it caught me in the throat. The wire took me off the Beemer and dropped me head first onto the pavement, which some people think accounts for much of my behavior ever since.

The point is, I was very lucky, as I have been much of my life. My mother-in-law, god rest her - had given me a helmet 2 days before my little flight sans wings. I had ridden for years without one. She was ahead of her time, Jo was. Just-in-time inventory has been credited to the Japanese, but my mother-in -law and I know better.

My luck continues as I chase storms and encounter other hazards with the potential to succeed where Ma Bell's wire failed. Let me tell you about a few.

Two Legged Critters

Two legged critters have gotten my adrenaline pumping pretty good on a number of occasions. I've run into Coyotes smuggling illegal aliens across the border and through the parts of Southern Arizona where I roam. They are always armed and prone to shoot at anyone without asking too many questions first.

There are also the drug smugglers and local dope dealers to look out for as they seek out remote places to live and work, many of which happen to cross the storm tracks we frequent.

Transients are another big problem. Many of them suffer from various mental illnesses and they tend to inhabit the abandoned structures in which we often seek shelter to shoot in the middle of a thunderstorm. Having around $20K worth of camera gear, some emergency cash and a car full of gas can make us attractive victims to one of these guys.

Add to this an occasional outlaw biker stronghold or a nervous farmer wondering who is prowling about his place on a stormy night and you can imagine that we have a few interesting confrontations with people who may do us harm.

More Legged Critters

Then there are the other critters. When you're out in the desert or poking around in abandoned structures, you will eventually run into the entire range of them.

They're as small as a fire ant and as large as a Brahma bull.. They include all varieties of biting and stinging insects, foot-entrapping hole-digging Haunta-virus caring rodents, web-in-the face spiders, rattle-in-the-dark snakes, howl-a-chill-up-your-spine coyotes, snarling packs of abandoned-by-my-conscienceless-owner ferril dogs, to name just a few.

The bull was one of the scariest. I was up at Rail-X Ranch in Catalina, AZ one night with a storm blowing up from the south. In order to get a windmill situated in the foreground, I had to climb into the feeding pen in which it was located. I looked around as carefully as one can in the short duration illumination coming for the sporadic lightning flashes and I thought it was empty. Once inside, I set up my 20 lbs. pound steel-legged Majestic tripod with my heavy Mamiya Universal camera. After carefully framing the windmill in the viewfinder, I opened the shutter and waited for a nice bolt to fall within the lens' angle of view. Then, between the thunder claps, I heard the snorting and ground-pawing . I turned and in the light from the next flash I saw what appeared to be a Guinness-class Brahma bull and it seemed to be unhappy with my presence in its pen.

I slowly folded the legs of the tripod and gingerly walked toward the the four-strand barbed wire fence.

Then he charged.

I beat him to the fence and used the big Majestic as a vaulting pole, praying that the telescoping legs wouldn't collapse and leave me impaled on the barbed wire. A dangling, bobbing toy for the bull to finish off.

I was lucky, the legs held and I cleared the wire. I'm still not sure why the bull stopped. I've no doubt he could have taken out that fence. If any of you guys out there are privy to how bulls think - let me know.

There's lots more, but I've got to go do a shoot right now. Check this spot again, later. From time to time I'll add a new adventure. - Bill. W.