Drowning, not waving

I have survived several hurricanes (including being in the teeth of Katrina and Rita) and major storms (e.g., Hesp et al., 2009), sliced my leg open in rough bush whilst surveying dunes (23stitches), sliced my foot from ankle to ankle (multiple stitches and told I would never walk properly again), sliced my arm with a bamboo stick in Northwest China, which then became severely infected (Hesp et al., 1989), been bogged on beaches, heads of rips, sabkha, and dunes more times than I care to remember, been in some zero visibility sand/dust storms, been sand blasted (e.g., Hesp, Hilton, and Konlechner, 2017), been frozen (Hesp and Arens, 1997), eaten some of the most appalling food imaginable (Hesp et al., 1989), and been briefly arrested by the Mexican paramilitary for suspected drug trafficking (Hesp and Martinez, 2008). I have been driven on roads in foreign countries where it appears no one values their life and the driver of our vehicle preferred only driving on the wrong side of the road, passing on blind corners, driving at twice the speed limit, and driving at night without lights. I have spent a night with companions in a Chinese prison (Rubin and Hesp, 2009). I have traversed muddy and icy roads sideways, backwards and spinning whilst driving in the field. I had severe aluminium poisoning from drinking water boiled in new aluminium pots and suffered intense vomiting, diarrhoea, and a semi-coma for 3 days and nights in a Northwest China desert resulting in an 8 kg weight loss in 3 weeks. Whilst surveying in the coastal dunes on the Skeleton coast, Namibia (Hesp and Hastings, 1998), my companion and I were sitting in our small 2-person tent when a large lion brushed by the canvas, luckily deciding we were not to be dinner that night.