Rochester Dare Day History – The Double Dog Dare Gone Wrong

We just celebrated National Dare Day, and I realized I needed to tell a story about the Double Dog Dare going horribly wrong. It was a cold January night, and a RCTC student would never be the same!

Back when I worked nights at KROC, I had an intern. Called him Vinny Barbarino, the Sweathog Intern. He was awesome, and up for anything. He was up for almost anything, so I created a feature just for him: The Vinny Barbarino Party Patrol.

Every Friday night he'd grab a bag full of prizes and scour #RochMN for the best parties. Most of the time, it was just a noisy good time. But one time, it was totally off the hook.

It'd been a very snowy winter. The plow piles were huge, and not just along the road. Apartment complex parking lots had mountainous snow piles. And a few party-makers turned this into a game.

On air, here's what I heard...

"Hey James, here's the plan...Ima start running from the back of the apartment, built up as much speed as possible, go out the deck door, jump off the deck, and land on the huge snow pile...here I go..."

So, to recap...

That was his plan.

"You don't have to do this, Vinny...it sounds incredibly dangerous!" I said.

He said, "I gotta...they double dog dared me!"

So he did...thru the apartment, this very in shape intern ran, built up a HUGE amount of speed, jumped off the upper deck and...landed safelyish on the huge snowpile. The cheers on the phone told me he was OK.

What I didn't find out 'til later was the rest of the story.

The police had been called because of the noise...and the jumping...and the booze...and Vinny slid down the snow pile, wwhoo-hoooing! the whole time, landing right at the officer's feet.

Fortunately, Vinny was totally sober, is a great kid, so they warned him to be careful, and he skedaddled to his car. No idea what happened after that, because he came back to the studio, having turned back into an angel.

AMBER ALERT CANCELLED!