My friends and I used to roll ourselves down a large culm bank in the area, jammed into a 55 gallon drum. The metal ones, not the plastic ones they have today.

It was one wild ride. Spinning to the point of nausea(which is way cool), not knowing where the barrel was aimed. We almost always ended up on the point of disaster, but didn't really care. We were just having fun.

Man, I miss that barrel.

When I was a kid, my friends and I used an old shed built on the back of the garage as a club house. We would sometimes jump off the top of the shed just to get the thrill of "flying". Well, one time I jumped and landed on a board and ended up with a 16 penny nail through my foot.
That ended my sky diving career.

We used to play Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in an old pine tree that had fallen down in a forest.

This tree was el primo... you could sit up on the highest branches and drive the sub and climb down into all the lower compartments closer to the ground.

When the sub would hit disaster we could shake it fiercely and hanging on was quite the ride.

One day we decided to have a fire on-board. A dead tree in the heat of summer... one match and that tree, I mean the sub, went up like we had poured gasoline on it.

All the crew escaped alive and unburned (don't ask me how) and we managed to put the fire out. I never saw flames that high. Our heroic actions saved the forest. The sub was a total loss though.

So ended my submariner career.