{"id":886,"date":"2004-04-27T14:37:15","date_gmt":"2004-04-27T18:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/04\/out_with_a_splash\/"},"modified":"2004-04-27T14:37:15","modified_gmt":"2004-04-27T18:37:15","slug":"out_with_a_splash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/04\/out_with_a_splash\/","title":{"rendered":"Out with a Splash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A contestant makes a splash in a belly-flop contest but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rrstar.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20040427\/NEWS0108\/404270316\/1004\/NEWS\">never makes it back to shore to claim his prize<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dorl Gates, 52, was the fourth contestant Saturday in the Diamond Jim bar&#8217;s World Belly-Flop Contest. The bar, on Illinois 51 by the Beloit\/Townline Bridge, had advertised the contest with fliers and promised the winner $300. Rock County Sheriff&#8217;s Department Commander Tom Gehl said the contest originally was supposed to take place on the pier at the back of the bar, but some of the contestants wanted to jump off the bridge.<br \/>\nGehl said the bridge is about 20 feet above the river, which is about 15 feet deep along that stretch of the river.<br \/>\nThere were no boats ready to pick up contestants, he said, and the first three managed the jump and got to shore. But Gates jumped, bobbed up a couple of times and disappeared.<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\nHe said the department has conflicting information about how much Gates might have been drinking, and it also is still trying to determine if he could swim.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not to make too much light of the tragedy, but if you can&#8217;t swim and are drunk, it&#8217;s probably not a good idea to jump into a river.  Organizers of the next World Belly-Flop Contest might want to point that out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/04\/out_with_a_splash\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Out with a Splash\"><p>A contestant makes a splash in a belly-flop contest but never makes it back to shore to claim his prize: Dorl Gates, 52, was the fourth contestant Saturday in the Diamond Jim bar&#8217;s World Belly-Flop Contest. The bar, on Illinois 51 by the Beloit\/Townline Bridge, had advertised the contest with fliers and promised the winner [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}