I laughed out loud when I read this today.
Gut bugs
You always hear motherfuckers telling you to never drink unfiltered or untreated water when you’re up in the mountains. You’re gonna get sick, you’re gonna die or even worse, you’re gonna shit your pants.
They’re right. Absolutely and positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt right. That fancy booklearning paid off.
Must’ve been about 1987 or so and I was up walking the crest of the Sierra to the north of where 108 crosses it. When I know I’m going to hiking a ways and coming back the same route, I use an old trick Pops told me about – I calculate how long I’m going to be gone and how much water I need and every time I drain a canteen, I drop a full one. When I come back to that spot there’s a full canteen waiting for me. That way I ain’t gotta be lugging all that damned water around. If somebody comes across it and needs it, well, me skipping one canteen ain’t gonna kill me. They’re welcome to it.
I’m getting off subject here.
For some reason, I ran out of water that day. I don’t remember if it was a different route, I went a lot further than I intended or what, but I was out of water and thirsty – not in any danger, just had a dry on. I was crossing this little stream of snowmelt and I thought why not? It hasn’t traveled that far, I’m something like like 500 yards below the crest so it’s gotta be clean, right? Man, it was some of the sweetest, coldest water I’ve ever drank – so fucking cold it hurt my teeth.
About a week later, I was at work and it hit me. Giardia Lamblia. Beaver Fever. Now I had been feeling out of sorts for a few days but I’d been doing a lot of crank and drinking so I just wrote it off to Life In The Fast Lane (See what I did there? Life in the fast lane? Kenny Lane? Never mind.) and Charlie Miked.
So here I am at work at the ammo plant changing out the tooling on the machine I did set up for and just as I was reaching for HOLY FUCK I JUST SHAT MYSELF!!! I’M STILL SHATTING MYSELF!!! I CAN’T STOP SHATTING MYSELF!!! I mean, my sphincter flat out quit sphincting without any fucking warning whatsoever. 10 seconds earlier I didn’t even realize I needed to shit and now it was all over the floor and in my fucking Redwings for all the world to see.
My crew was shocked and they all looked real sympathetic, but as I was hobbling out the door I still threatened to burn their fucking houses down if I ever heard about it again.
Yup, explosive, projectile, nuclear diarrhea is one of the symptoms. It took me two days to get in to see Doc Barr because even though I had shit myself before 16 coworkers didn’t mean I was all that eager to do it in the doctor’s waiting room. I couldn’t eat at all or drink hardly anything trying to purge my system before I went in.
Doc listened to what I had to say, inquired about any new adventurous substances that I may have ingested and then asked if I’d drank from any mountain water – he knew I loved the area and has treated many injuries I’ve sustained up there.
When I told him he laughed, handed me a prescription for some antibiotics and gave me two weeks off work and then directed me to the nearest bathroom.
Ever since that day, I don’t drink anything I didn’t bring in with me or filter. I’ve got 5 or 6 of those survival straws to use as a last resort – one in both vehicles, my git kit, my hunting pack and one in my war bag. I do not fuck around when it comes to my drinking water.
same goes for eating at church functions , in particular those were everyone brings a covered dish….a lesson hard learned is never forgotten.
Flash , tell the truth .The real reason you shit yourself was before you eat you stuck you finger up your nose and then you scratched your balls.Blame your sickness on church people. Good grief.
Yup. Bin thar. Dun that. I must have ten or more filtering devices now.
Not recently, but back in my 20’s when I got off my fat ass and actually enjoyed walking/hiking, I drank water from running streams on quite a few occasions, and never got sick. I guess I just got lucky.
Tap water ain’t all that great either. Now I pretty much drink only bottled water, Poland Springs or Fiji.
bb
You can’t go a day without saying something dickish, can you?
flash’s point, a good one, has nothing to do with church people. It has to do with leaving food out, uncovered, often in heat …. something that will lead to a shitty experience.
Stay away from the potato salad if it’s made with mayo!! And, deviled eggs. A couple hours in the sun, flies shitting all over the food …. botulism heaven …. yeah, picnics are fun!!
Now THAT was funny stuff.
Yep, been there dumb that. At 13,000 F-ing feet in the Rockies. I gotta be able to drink this water…….. Nope…… And so many times before I had water from streams that NO one should EVER drink from and never got sick!!!
@Stucky Bottled water? Most of it is from the tap..not to mention the plastic shit container. Best to use reverse osmosis and then revitalize/structure and add minerals or sea salt. That way you get rid of the chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, and add oxygen. Been doing that for 10+ years and have yet to get sick or see a doctor.
As for church dinners…our little mountain church puts on a hell of a feast, especially the cakes and pies.
I’ve been laughing about this thing all day now. Beaver Fever. Now there’s a homonym.
When I was a kid we hunted and camped all over the place from NM to TX, CO, WY and MT. We always drank water out of creeks, rivers and lakes. Never a problem. Never even heard it discussed. We didn’t camp in SC because that place was too miserable for camping but while camping in Spain we had no problems either.
I got married, moved to the UK and upon retuning to the states in 1993 EVERYONE was warning us not to drink the water from streams and such. There were even signs put up all over the place. I still drink water from creeks in Yellowstone, Glacier and a couple of places in ID on sunny days where the water is shallow and quick moving but only on day trips and I’ve still never had a problem. UV light has a powerful effect on microbes. We use UV light in our water plant at work too.
The thing I always avoid is those free samples at the stores that people are sneezing on and talking over……no thanks.
Stucky says: bb You can’t go a day without saying something dickish, can you?
Everybody has a trope, bb – dicky comment, Billy – look at me comment, I/S – everybody shut the fuck up comment, hmm, haven’t heard from PJ lately – probably got preggers by accident.