I enjoyed reading that

How could you not wake your friends up immediately after you chased Bundy away?

Scary stuff, I have subscribed, ty!!

story

Best. Blog. Ever.

No kidding. If that is fiction, someone needs a contract pronto!

Thanks everybody. Yes, it is a odd true story. I think the part that makes it so unusual is that I'm a guy and that may be what saved me in the end. I feel bad for the women who were really hurt and survived (as well as the murdered ones). I don't think he had a conscience when it came to me, I think he just didn't have that insane compulsion to kill men.

I have no idea why my idiot friends didn't wake up after I got out of the bag. I know I was mad and I hollered at least once. Afterwards, I was stomping around camp mad. (I certainly wasn't getting back in that sleeping bag.) Who knows?

First sub ever.

Tyler, you have lived an interesting life. One of my favorite posters also. Subbed too.

Curious thing. My sweet little butterball looking innocent gramma, has a fascination with serial killers. She has a library full of them and always has, along with crime mysteries etc. I told her about your story and she was all, "huh. it makes you wonder how many he just missed."

I have a bookshelf full of serial killer books as well.

I'm...I'm not your grandmother, right?

He's really young tho

not sure. are you at this moment at the casino jamming $10 bills in a slot machine as gramps yawns and shakes his head at you from a distance?

Crazy story tyler, looking forward to hearing more about your life experiences.

Same here. Thanks for sharing.

No. Whew.

It's funny, because by the time you get to my age you do wonder how many bullets you did dodge over the years. Hitchhiking all over the country as a kid and facing lots of sketchy situations, I'm sure I got lucky many times, lol.

Somebody mod this man please

he would break the internet

He's way too good a poster to be a mod.

- sorta

"I've heard people say that if they were starving, they would eat an ant. The truth is, if you wait that long it's already too late..."

I'm not really sure why I decided that I would use part of my Summer break to do a survival class, but I always did enjoy an adventure. I saw a tiny article in the newspaper offering thirty day primitive survival trips for $200, walking across the Colorado and Utah desert, so I decided to give it a go.

I was in my late twenties and in very good weightlifting/martial arts shape, unfortunately that was almost exactly the worst training for this type of trip. I was much too heavy (even though it was muscle) and I should have been walking fifteen hours a day as training for this experience. I wish I had studied the meaning of "primitive" survival training before I went, because I may have rethought the whole idea.

I drove to Grand Junction, where we were to meet up with the guide, but decided to stick to my rigorous weightlifting diet, ignoring the instructions that said to eat as much as you could beforehand. We went out to the main park where the instructors went through our stuff and took away all contraband. We were not allowed canteens, bottles, food, matches, etc. (One person even had a hidden cache of candy bars, lol.)

The trip was designed to mimic the experience of primitive tribes and how they survived in such a harsh environment, so we were able take only our clothing, a coat, hat, scarf and a knife. We were told that our shoes would be taken away from us later in the trip, but that we would be taught how to make new walk wear using plants. The instructors said that if we could survive on the desert, we could survive anywhere...

We were driven to a river and told to drink water until we were sick, which we all did and then the instructors tied the scarves around our eyes and we were taught to walk by lifting our knees up high and to follow the sound of two rocks clicking together. After we felt comfortable walking blindfolded, learning not to trip over rocks and cactus, they told us that we should follow the sound out into the desert. We then walked for many, many hours.

When they said we could stop, we took off the blindfolds and it was dark outside. We were tired, thirsty and hungry and we hadn't even survived a half a day yet.

After taking off the blindfolds they told us that we would be walking for the next three days and nights. We started grumbling, but they said that this was the only way that they could take us away from civilization into thinking like an animal trying to survive in the shortest time possible.

Six people signed up for the trip for a wide variety of reasons. One guy was seventeen and had been in trouble with the law in NYC. His parents thought that something like this would straighten him out. One lady was thirty-five (the oldest) and sick of her four kids. One lady was a sergeant in the Army and wanted the challenge. The other two were men in their late twenties one of whom was a businessman going through a divorce and the other was an artist.

As we began walking, the instructor started talking about survival and what it took to live in the primitive world. First, (and always) it was a constant search for water. We were always heading toward rock outcroppings that might contain captured rain water and many times they did. The old saying about barrel cactus holding water is not true, they contain stuff that's the consistency of Elmer's glue. You can survive, but you are never sated.

We learned about plants that are medicinal, like yarrow, that can be used to help prevent infection and thistle that can be made into twine. We learned to think like a lizard, putting survival ahead of all other thoughts, primal and mean; while still understanding that by working together, we had the best chance to come out alive. We all believed at that point that the chance of us surviving was only fifty/fifty and the idea that this was just some class we were taking was long gone.

After about a day and half the hallucinations from lack of food got to me, I sat down on a rock and said that I wasn't going to get back up, that I wanted to die right there. The weird visions hit me earlier than the others because I hadn't eaten enough the night before we left. The group just looked down at me sullenly and kept on walking. When they became a speck on the horizon, I got up and walked two more days.

That was the first time in my life that I realized that there was something deep inside of me that I had never touched before. In all my experiences to that point I had never really asked myself how brave I really was, how much determination I really had and what it meant to me to survive out in the world. It was the first of many times on that desert that I would find things inside myself that I never knew were there. The many times when I was suffering so much and was never more thankful for what I had. It was the first time in almost thirty years that I was absolutely alive.

amazing

Couldn't you find enough ants to eat?

Eating ants? Luxury.

Please let the current story end with an encounter with Bundy in the desert.

Amazing stories Tyler.

You should write a book. . .

. . . so what did Bundy say after he saw you were a guy?