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I just think its funny that its big enough to be a problem for the military, but I am sure some of these troops suffer some serious bouts of boredom in the desert...I say let em have their fun! Its all about the little things. To those not familiar:

From Wikipedia: Ghost-riding - "when a person puts a vehicle's transmission in gear then exits the vehicle while it is still rolling to dance beside it or on the hood or roof"

The video is funny to me when paired with the ridiculous music!

http://motherjones.com/riff/2009/10/mil ... ost-riding

Via Noah Shachtman comes the shocking news that the Pentagon doesn't want its employees ghost riding the whip (or the MRAP, as the case may be). The military is actually encouraging social media, but telling soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines to use it carefully.

None of that means we can't reminisce, though:

[youtube][/youtube]

Seems to fit into the "hold my beer...watch this" category. Not smart, but amusing.

Close to 30 years ago, two students in my class at Ft. Rucker had a picture surface of one of them standing on top of a water tower somewhere in S. Alabama. During the later stages of the rotary wing course the aircraft would only have students in the cockpit. They hovered over the water tower while one jumped out and then took pictures of each other. The dumb part was allowing those pics to be seen by an instructor. If the same thing happened today, it probably would have shown up on youtube that night.

"Back in the day", we didn't call it ghost-riding. We called it "put the jeep down in granny and get out to stretch your legs". You could make a couple of laps while it idled along, water the flora, whatever.

It's all fun and games until somebody hits an IED.

Not something we could do with a Destroyer.

jimlongley wrote:Not something we could do with a Destroyer.

I'll bet Michael Phelps could do it.

OTOH, when I worked on the farm, it wasn't uncommon for the driver to rope the wheel, get out, and toss a few bales on the wagon with us kids.

Or, for that matter, for one of us kids to drive the truck. I was too short to reach the pedals and could just barely see over the dash, but the truck had a throttle on the dash and you could just set it at whatever speed and just steer. The steering wheel was HUGE compared to modern ones, no power steering, and it stayed pointed straight ahead very easily. We would get to the end of the row and old Mr. King would jump down and turn the truck around to line up with the next row, while the kid jumped back on the wagon, and then he would calmly walk back and jump on the wagon himself and then tell one of the kids to go "take a rest."

jimlongley wrote:OTOH, when I worked on the farm, it wasn't uncommon for the driver to rope the wheel, get out, and toss a few bales on the wagon with us kids.

Or, for that matter, for one of us kids to drive the truck. I was too short to reach the pedals and could just barely see over the dash, but the truck had a throttle on the dash and you could just set it at whatever speed and just steer. The steering wheel was HUGE compared to modern ones, no power steering, and it stayed pointed straight ahead very easily. We would get to the end of the row and old Mr. King would jump down and turn the truck around to line up with the next row, while the kid jumped back on the wagon, and then he would calmly walk back and jump on the wagon himself and then tell one of the kids to go "take a rest."

Jim, you beat me to it. That's just what I was remembering.

We didn't even rope the wheel; put the Ford pickup in first gear and let it idle, you could walk quite a bit faster than the truck went, occasionally go up and bump the steering wheel when necessary!

When I got a little older, there were days I would load the truck all by myself. Got a bit iffy on the third tier, though....

OldSchool wrote:

jimlongley wrote:OTOH, when I worked on the farm, it wasn't uncommon for the driver to rope the wheel, get out, and toss a few bales on the wagon with us kids.

Or, for that matter, for one of us kids to drive the truck. I was too short to reach the pedals and could just barely see over the dash, but the truck had a throttle on the dash and you could just set it at whatever speed and just steer. The steering wheel was HUGE compared to modern ones, no power steering, and it stayed pointed straight ahead very easily. We would get to the end of the row and old Mr. King would jump down and turn the truck around to line up with the next row, while the kid jumped back on the wagon, and then he would calmly walk back and jump on the wagon himself and then tell one of the kids to go "take a rest."

Jim, you beat me to it. That's just what I was remembering.

We didn't even rope the wheel; put the Ford pickup in first gear and let it idle, you could walk quite a bit faster than the truck went, occasionally go up and bump the steering wheel when necessary!

When I got a little older, there were days I would load the truck all by myself. Got a bit iffy on the third tier, though....

Threatening thread drift - After hauling the wagon all afternoon, Old Mr. King would pull the truck right through the barn, and Mike, Mike, Paul, and I would stack the bales. Mike, Mike, and I were all pretty big kids, but Paul was pretty small, so we put him on top to stack while we tossed. The first year that Paul worked with us, he didn't know to "dutch" the bales and the result was that the top got pretty unstable. Suddenly Mike and I swung and tossed a bale, and it came back down. We started yelling for Paul, and finally climbed up to see what was going on. Paul had stepped into one of the cracks he created and slid down several courses and was unable to climb back up, and couldn't make enough noise to let us know what was going on.

We had to tear down and rebuild or Mr. King wouldn't pay us.

We also built a little "room" back under the hay up against the wall, with a little tunnel leading to it, and on cold or rainy days that is where we would go to sneak a smoke and look at girly mags. When I think back, after a long life including 17 years as a volunteer fireman, I shudder to think of us smoking back there under the hay.

jimlongley wrote: Threatening thread drift - After hauling the wagon all afternoon, Old Mr. King would pull the truck right through the barn, and Mike, Mike, Paul, and I would stack the bales. Mike, Mike, and I were all pretty big kids, but Paul was pretty small, so we put him on top to stack while we tossed. The first year that Paul worked with us, he didn't know to "dutch" the bales and the result was that the top got pretty unstable. Suddenly Mike and I swung and tossed a bale, and it came back down. We started yelling for Paul, and finally climbed up to see what was going on. Paul had stepped into one of the cracks he created and slid down several courses and was unable to climb back up, and couldn't make enough noise to let us know what was going on.

We had to tear down and rebuild or Mr. King wouldn't pay us.

Been there, done that -- except I learned to dig my way out.

jimlongley wrote:Threatening thread drift -

Mission accepted.

Man... the days of "nickel a bale", and that was from field to barn, handling each bale at least 3 times. I think one year we got a dime a bale because the old man was desperate to get it in before the rain. When you put in a sunup-to-sundown day and made fifty bucks, you had surely done a man's work.

Most of my hay hauling was for my Ag teacher, whose farm literally bordered Oklahoma. We lived in a dry county, but the first beer joint was 50 yards from his driveway. He was always good to give us a little bonus along with the cash he paid us.

We also built a little "room" back under the hay up against the wall, with a little tunnel leading to it, and on cold or rainy days that is where we would go to sneak a smoke and look at girly mags.

I built plenty of "hay caves", but none of us smoked, and I don't think we had discovered girly mags by that time. But when we were 10-12, we had some pretty elaborate mazes in the hay barn.

chabouk wrote:

jimlongley wrote:Threatening thread drift -

Mission accepted.

Man... the days of "nickel a bale", and that was from field to barn, handling each bale at least 3 times. I think one year we got a dime a bale because the old man was desperate to get it in before the rain. When you put in a sunup-to-sundown day and made fifty bucks, you had surely done a man's work.

Most of my hay hauling was for my Ag teacher, whose farm literally bordered Oklahoma. We lived in a dry county, but the first beer joint was 50 yards from his driveway. He was always good to give us a little bonus along with the cash he paid us.

We also built a little "room" back under the hay up against the wall, with a little tunnel leading to it, and on cold or rainy days that is where we would go to sneak a smoke and look at girly mags.

I built plenty of "hay caves", but none of us smoked, and I don't think we had discovered girly mags by that time. But when we were 10-12, we had some pretty elaborate mazes in the hay barn.

To make matter worse, we used a candle for lighting. I often wondered how many "spontaneous combustion" hay barn fires were really started by some other means.

The song in the vid is

Have you seen STUPID? well there you have it. Just cause your bored, this is no way to have fun. Next I will hear how my neighbors car was sideswiped by a car in the night whlle the local idiot where GHOST RIDING. They all might as well be playing "pull my monkey".

What make these videos funny are the dancing and goofing off.. Park the vehicle and dance around it. Geez, why do I read this crap.

jimlongley wrote:
We also built a little "room" back under the hay up against the wall, with a little tunnel leading to it, and on cold or rainy days that is where we would go to sneak a smoke and look at girly mags. When I think back, after a long life including 17 years as a volunteer fireman, I shudder to think of us smoking back there under the hay.

We did this in my Grandpa's hay barn. Set up a "club house" sort of thing. All went well until my cousin's sister told on us.