Crazy things you did for a beer.

I'll type a back in the Army story about two soldiers that braved a tornado and flash flood just to get a 12 pack of Busch.


Two men risk lives to go for a pint

Jun 22 2005

Daily Post


TWO men risked their lives walking along the beach from Southport to Blackpool while the tide was out so they could go to a pub.

The pair, both 25 and from Southport, refused to take a bus to the Lancashire resort where they had planned a night out.

But after trudging across the muddy flats, they found themselves stranded three-and-a-half miles from the shore as the tide came in, at 7pm on Monday.

A driver working late at a Southport sand plant spotted the pair and called Liverpool Coastguard. The Lytham St Anne's lifeboat crew came to their rescue and brought them ashore.

Liverpool Coastguard officer Paul Harrison said: "They were walking across to Blackpool because they apparently wanted a pint of beer.

"But they didn't realise the danger they were in. They are lucky to be alive. We have had a number of fatalities in that area in the past.

"The trouble is, from Southport, Blackpool looks so close and you can see the tower very clearly on these warm days.

"Unfortunately, the Ribble Estuary is in the way, and a lot of gutters that fill up very quickly. It is very treacherous. They could have drowned. There is no way you can walk it."

The men were uninjured.

The rescue came almost two years after a pair of boys became stranded in the estuary after attempting to walk the same route.

A search was launched involving two police helicopters, an RAF Sea King helicopter, five inshore rescue boats and three coastguard teams in August 2003.

[boneheaddoctor]

THose Two guys are in serious need of AA and strong medications.

Man Accused Of Taking Drunken Joyride In Stolen Plane

UPDATED: 7:56 am EDT June 23, 2005

HARRISON, N.Y. -- An intoxicated 20-year-old man stole a small plane in Connecticut and took two friends on a three-hour joyride early Wednesday that somehow ended with a safe landing at a darkened Westchester County Airport, authorities said.

Also: Storms Force Suspension Of Search For Missing Cessna When an airport security car met the four-seat Cessna at 4:15 a.m. and the plane doors opened, "a significant number of beer cans" spilled to the ground, said County Executive Andrew Spano.

The pilot, Philippe Patricio, of Bethel, Conn., was arrested with a blood alcohol level of 0.15 -- nearly double the legal limit for driving in New York state, said county Police Commissioner Thomas Belfiore. Patricio's two 16-year-old passengers were not charged or publicly named.

Patricio had no pilot's license and just seven hours of student flight time, Spano said. He said the plane, which left from Danbury Municipal Airport, was nearly out of gas when it landed, and Patricio may have been lost.

"We don't know if he knew he was in Westchester," Spano said.

The Westchester airport is on the Connecticut border, 25 to 30 miles from Danbury. Belfiore said he did not know where Patricio had flown during his three hours aloft but there were no reports of him trying to land anywhere else.

It was unclear how Patricio spotted the Westchester airport, which had closed its main runway for construction work and turned off the lights at 11 p.m. Tuesday. The landing, which Belfiore called an "accomplishment," was made on a taxiway in front of the main terminal, the county executive said.

Spano angrily asserted that post-Sept. 11 security measures in place at the Westchester airport were not duplicated at Danbury, where the single-engine Cessna 172 Skyhawk departed at about 1:30 a.m.

A stolen plane, he said, "could possibly be a weapon" and the Cessna "could have crashed into any number of areas," he said.

The theft, he said, "couldn't happen here in Westchester."

Paul Estefan, the Danbury airport administrator, rejected the criticism and said there was no evidence of how Patricio could have gotten in.

"We're all locked and fenced in here," he said, and he insisted that the owner, the Arrow Aviation flight school, still had the key to the plane.

Estefan and Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said they thought Patricio was a part-time Arrow employee and Estefan said airport officials would talk to operators about whom they hire.

But Anthony Debany, chief pilot with Arrow Aviation, said the suspect was not an employee, although he had flown with an instructor a few years ago.

"We have no clue" how Patricio got access to the plane, Debany said.

Spano called for an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and for security provisions to be administered and paid for nationally.

Arlene Murray, an FAA spokeswoman in New York City, would not directly respond but said the agency was looking into "whether there was any violation of FAA regulations and it's too soon to talk about that yet."

He said the plane ride was "dreamt up" while the three young men were at one of their homes on Tuesday.

Patricio was to be arraigned Wednesday night on charges of criminal possession of stolen property and reckless endangerment, said District Attorney Jeanine Pirro. Belfiore said county police had also charged Patricio with resisting arrest and driving while intoxicated -- for allegedly taxiing though the airport while drunk -- but Pirro said prosecutors were pursuing only the felonies.

Patricio had no lawyer on record by late afternoon, the district attorney's office said. A telephone message left at the only Patricio home listed in Bethel was not immediately returned.

[Brian Carlton]

A student pilot, with very limited air time, and barely able to walk (b/a at .15) takes a plane 30 miles in the dark and lands it on a taxiway at an unfamiliar airport, in the dark, because no runways are lit up.

It sounds like half a story. This is the creative half.