we almost died multiple times in the same afternoon let’s talk about that good morning Chia Lincoln it is Thursday February 3rd 2011 yes now the there’s an we can’t avoid the fact that there is a snowpocalypse happening one third of the United States of America is being inundated with snow we can’t avoid the fact we can’t avoid the fact but we did avoid snowpocalypse I mean yeah that’s true it’s beautiful there in North Carolina you should move here well don’t rub it in Rhett you know you know we got to feel their pain okay we feel your pain the pain of the coldness so we thought it would be a good idea to tell a heartwarming story something to warm the soul if not the body if you find yourself in a region of the earth which is frigid today especially Chicago we know you’re cold out there but we just ask that you would just grab your significant other and warm up next to the this has to stop cuddle up with them next to the fire with a nice hot cup of cocoa and listen to rhettandlink talk about the time they almost died multiple times in one afternoon in high school a heartwarming tale of survival are you ready I’m ready let’s go now so we both had our driver’s license we were in high school there there was a time that was true we were 17 years old ish this was senior year okay 17 yep and you know I had turned 18 because this was February of our senior year okay I was 18 it was February and if you know here in North Carolina we now may not be inundated with snow all the time but it is cold but sometimes at the end of winter or in late February a day will come where there’s a ray of hope that spring is on its way it’ll be a day where it’s like beautiful and it’s is like 75 degrees outside so out of nowhere I don’t know where spring is here and we had a habit we had something that we had done since we were little kids and that was go swimming in the fear River which is a big river right there where we grew up and they made a movie about it called Cape Fear starring DeNiro it’s scary we used to swim in that all the time and we would swim in this like after school after high school you know when the school got out even if we were 18 years old if it was warm enough we go and we’d swim in this river we would find new places along the river to go swim so and to explore the woods around the river because but you know because the there was lots of hills and right so it was cool all of a sudden is February but it’s 75 degrees let’s go explore a new part of the river now we haven’t been able to go all winter we’ve been chomping at the bit one thing to keep in mind I’m on the basketball team I’m actually what some might call a basketball star I’m one of our key players and we have you might call yourself well I started and I was the leading scorer and I set a record okay I mean I didn’t write I didn’t make this up it just happen it’s a part of history look it up and I might also point out that you were on the soccer team okay now in in middle school I kept school for the girls basketball you kept school you kept score is it not an easy job so anyway I’m supposed to be at this the first round of the state playoffs for the basketball team this is important well that’s it like seven o’clock at night yeah you get out of school at three o’clock and it’s the most beautiful day of the year what else can we do let’s go down to the river let’s explore a new segment of the river that we never got to before winter set in I’ll be back in time for the state playoffs sure no problem so we drive my 1987 red Nissan two wheel drive pickup to it beautiful down to the river as close as we can get down this muddy dirt road and we get out and we knew this place we wanted to explore and it was basically you’ve got the keeper River coming down and we part of the kaepa River split off like a little tributary I don’t know if that’s the proper term but basically the little creek came off and and then it went back into the river so it formed an island we wanted to explore this island here and that’s all we had planned that’s how you need to plan right so we get down there next to this little offshoot of the river that we’re going to explore and it’s basically like a creek like 20 feet across right there’s no maybe third we’re sitting there and link is in front of me and we’re like like just go for it you know just step into it I mean it’s a creek what could happen and I will say that’s what we would normally do we would just it doesn’t matter how murky or nasty or stagnant the water was we would just step into it walk across it if it got too deep we’d swim across it so link I see this reflected first we take where’s like well let’s at least take our shirts off you know you don’t want to get here I had on one of my favorite t-shirts so I see link in front of me and he just takes a step off the bank of the river and I expect him to just you know land in like two feet of water you know up to his knees or something he completely disappears he completely goes under head gone so I I panic I’m like I I got to go to and I just jump in after him and what you didn’t know that I found out seconds before he was that the water was frigid I’m 40 degrees no it was 45 degrees so what hat I don’t know if you’ve ever gone swimming in water that cold with nothing but shorts and tennis shoes on even if you have clothes on your body goes into this survival mode where Rock he goes into shock so like I come up and I’m the cool sound like a chicken and I was still thinking I’ve got to get across it wasn’t I’m gonna go back so I feel right I start swimming across the creek and then I hear you splashing behind me and the way that your body works when it tries to not kill itself or allow you to kill it all the blood goes to the internal organs and leaves your extremities so your extremities begin to function a little bit differently it’s like you’re a tea also and you’re a t-rex it’s like an T Rexes I don’t know if you ever seen this before they do not swim well and they’re stupid an extremity is also your head so the blood leaves your brain at least in my experience and you get stupider and stupider so I’m like I can make it I can make it even though I’m gonna die I’m gonna die you cannot swim and it’s like trying to swim in concrete that’s setting because there’s no blood in your in your arms or legs but we eventually I was convinced that you were dead and I just had to make it all well that was a prong assumption we both made it to the other side and the only thing I remember is getting where I started to feel the bank and tear Xing my way up onto the bank and then laying there completely almost well ninety percent dead in looking over and seeing link looking at me like it’s like he was like ten feet away it was kind of looking at each other with this blank stare like we didn’t die but I thought she might be dead you look like a dead fish on the bank we we sat there motionless and speechless ten minutes because we couldn’t move it was I’ve tried to you know I tried to move and it was like ah it was like there was no movement in me but then we’re like well here we are on this island after a while we did recover let’s get up and explore we saw some deer tracks and it was like let’s track this deer it’s on the island it’s going to be trapped we can we can like get it to the point of the island and then we can tackle it so we’re like tracking a deer that we never saw we just saw the tracks we decided to we almost died and then we decide I’m not thinking about the playoff game I’m thinking about this deer gotta track this deer what we’re going to do cannot tackle tackle it maybe weight it take a bite out of it I don’t I didn’t know I didn’t know what the plan was we don’t have a spear or anything tame it so we tracked this deer all over the place and then we eventually get all the way up to the north end of the island and and this is where there’s just one Creek and we’re like okay if we can cross over this one little spot we can get back and we can go back home because we couldn’t find a deer and so it was this place that all these logs that kind of gathered it at the top of this little tributary and link started trying to cross and he was about to sink so he came back so we had to come back go down the island to the middle island and then start making our way back were like oh the the creeks a lot smaller here we can cross so we cross and then we realized oh no we’re not over here’s another Creek and then we had to cross another one make a long story short each time we cross the creek it was equally frigid and an equal near-death experience we had across like five times eight times the creek it was like a delta the creek had like broken up into different streams and we kept almost dying and then laying there looking at each other and then we would recover and then we do it again and it kept happening because we had to get back at that point and then I’m starting to worry like I’m the Sun is going down like I got to play basketball tonight you know I wasn’t gonna be physically physically ready for the game but I was thinking I wasn’t going to be physically present for the game so we finally get back we leave our shirts out there we don’t know where we actually came into the creek so where does two guys run around without our shirts off just like shorts in tennis shoes and nothing else and we’re like running back trying to find links truck we see the truck we get in the truck I’m like I’m like this time I kind of panic him like link I got to get back home I got to take a shower got to put my uniform on I got to get to get to the game I put it in gear Shh we’re in mud we’re stuck at the truck does nothing Linc had this 87 Nissan that was like it I don’t know if it was a malfunction or like a lemon or just like a toy car he had it didn’t have two wheel drive it had one wheel drive the back right wheel was the only will that had any power so he liked Florida in his just the back right Willie going poop spitting up mud everywhere so I’m like Rhett get out and push rhett opens the door and I decided to give it one more last move and when I do it throws mud up cakes the entire inside of the door totally messes up my speaker speaker right speaker never worked for the rest of the time that you owned that car and then you push it out you made it to your game and you won the state playoffs no we lost that’s our heartwarming story if you want more details you can you can make them up on your own let’s check in with T and Lincoln he looks like he’s tried to cross a frigid Creek and barely made it nuff said we’ll see you tomorrow every weekday this is what we do thanks for joining us