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Adrenaline Junkies
With your hands on the top of your head, constantly shifting your weight from your left to your right foot and back again, a long exhale is about the only thing you can do to calm your nerves. At the moment your balls win the battle against your brain, a rush of endorphins hits and you find a way to push off with your legs. You open your eyes again only to see nothing but air for 2 miles below you and your brain gloatingly says I told you so while maintaining your endorphin high so that you don't panic and end up doing something stupid. Your body rushes towards the fields below and you notice another poor soul moving his arms in a quite unnatural manner. In an instant, the 6 hours you spent on the ground learning hand signals and safety from the instructors rush back to you, and you realize you need to straighten out, and activate your parachute. Your sudden deceleration jolts your body, yet when you finally hit the ground, your knees feeling the pounding and begin to buckle beneath you. Finally, as you walk back towards the road where you will be picked up, you ask yourself, "Why on earth would I do that?" as well as, "When can I go again?"
I highly recommend if you go skydiving to choose the option where you begin your certification and dive alone the first time. The feeling of being unhindered and unattached to anything in the sky is amazing, and worth dealing with the class so you don't have to tandom jump. My brief summary of the experience does not come close to doing it justice, and I don't think I could give words to accurately describe how it feels. I live in Iowa which limits my discussion on extreme sports due to the lack of mountains and water. What else can give people a similar rush? I'm guessing windsurfing on an ocean would be fairly intense, and blistering down a mountain strapped to skis is fun. Please share experiences that had your heart pounding in your chest so that all of us can have more enjoyable free time. Though perhaps on a lower level than me, as we can see from the plethora of amusement parks filled with roller coasters, most Americans enjoy feeling like they could die at any second. Is there something wrong with us for enjoying "near-death" experiences? What drives us to do this? Also, as an aside, this guy is ridiculous: Crazy Heli-Diver |
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is it weird that i used to enjoy things that made me feel like i could die any second, and now im not very comfortable with that feeling? i used to love flying down the mountain on skiis yelling the whole way and hoping no1 got in my way and also hoping i didnt bang into a mogul and go flying into a tree, but now, i dno im much more reserved i guess. i went sky diving like a year and a half ago, but have no desire to do it again though i think it was an overall enjoyable experience. i dno, i dont have any desire to risk throwing my life away like i used to. why is that?
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raptor -
I assume everyone's sorta like me and starts to get a sense of their own vulnerability and mortality as they age. I'm not all that excited to see how fast I can drive on the highway or do other stupid stuff, although I can remember a time just a couple years ago when I loved that kind of thing. |
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That video, wow. I am speechless. 15 feet?
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What a [censored] nutbar. He would win the universe if he had skis on and just rode it out.
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That video is insane.
I used to love the adrenaline rush and did skydiving, etc. etc. but I crashed by bicycle in a fast descent a while ago and hurt myself bad, and I can't do it any more. It's not like I "realized I'm mortal" or anything rational, it's just that the thrill is gone and in it's place I just feel out of control and close to crashing whenever I do anything crazy. BTW fast bike descents are probably the easiest & cheapest way for anyone out there to do some seriously crazy exciting risky activity. Try it on a fixie with no brakes if that gets boring. I'm not really impressed by the thrill-jockeys, but when guys have horrible accidents and then jump right back in to the same activity and keep pushing the risks, that's impressive (in an insane sort of way). |
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Try it on a fixie with no brakes if that gets boring. [/ QUOTE ] Don't give me these kinds of ideas. |
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I am up for doing most things that I have control over. I will drive a car really fast, or go off jumps with a moutain bike.
But if someone else is in control of it I am scared to death. I hate riding on the back of motorcycles, theme park rides, etc. that video is crazy, but I thought he didnt have a parachute . I thought he was going ot sky. |
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that video was sick, nice link
i would definitely consider myself an adrenaline junkie. i love driving 200mph, skydiving, playing poker at the highest limits where big wins are huge and big losses really hurt, etc |
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Meh. It turns out the worst thing you can say at a funeral is "...but he died doing what he loved doing." Unfortunately I found this out after a roommate of mine fell off Mt. Shasta, probably onto his head, he was in a coma for a while but I don't think he ever made it off the mountain. Never made it to his 1 year wedding anniversary either.
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Meh. It turns out the worst thing you can say at a funeral is "...but he died doing what he loved doing." [/ QUOTE ] I disagree 100%. Of course it sucks if your friend or family member dies, but I think it sucks even more if someone quits what he/she loves to do because of someone else than him/herself. Most people I know (myself included) doing extreme sports choose willingly to risk their life because that makes their life worth living. There's been some studies that many (if not most) adrenaline junkies have regularly much lower serotonine levels than "normal" people and they do what they do to feel "normal". From my own experience I can tell this is very much the truth. A short but happy life is worth much, much more than a long but miserable one. |
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Most people I know (myself included) doing extreme sports choose willingly to risk their life because that makes their life worth living. [/ QUOTE ] I've done a lot of extreme sports and this isn't true for me. It was just something that I found fun and enjoyable. A lot of the time though, to be perfectly honest, I was just [censored]ing myself. |
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Strangely everytime I fly as we land I think to myself wow this is basically the highest I get over any other drug. I am hugely averse to "extreme sports" which involve being up in the air or some such because I'm petrified of heights. I have no real problems about water sports (but i can't say i've tried any of them in really really dangerous environments).
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[ QUOTE ] Most people I know (myself included) doing extreme sports choose willingly to risk their life because that makes their life worth living. [/ QUOTE ] I've done a lot of extreme sports and this isn't true for me. It was just something that I found fun and enjoyable. A lot of the time though, to be perfectly honest, I was just [censored]ing myself. [/ QUOTE ] Skydiving or scuba diving are things I find fun and enjoyable, not extreme at all. |
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is it weird that i used to enjoy things that made me feel like i could die any second, and now im not very comfortable with that feeling? i used to love flying down the mountain on skiis yelling the whole way and hoping no1 got in my way and also hoping i didnt bang into a mogul and go flying into a tree, but now, i dno im much more reserved i guess. i went sky diving like a year and a half ago, but have no desire to do it again though i think it was an overall enjoyable experience. i dno, i dont have any desire to risk throwing my life away like i used to. why is that? [/ QUOTE ] me too. right now i take more pleasure in food and relaxing with a book or movie. that video is insane! |
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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Most people I know (myself included) doing extreme sports choose willingly to risk their life because that makes their life worth living. [/ QUOTE ] I've done a lot of extreme sports and this isn't true for me. It was just something that I found fun and enjoyable. A lot of the time though, to be perfectly honest, I was just [censored]ing myself. [/ QUOTE ] Skydiving or scuba diving are things I find fun and enjoyable, not extreme at all. [/ QUOTE ] skydiving is pretty dangerous, is it not? |
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even though the adrenaline stuff isn't as big as it used to be for me, i'm still in the stages of "i haven't done everythnig i need to do like bungee jump or skydive or whatever but i can envision myself tiring of these things soon"
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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Most people I know (myself included) doing extreme sports choose willingly to risk their life because that makes their life worth living. [/ QUOTE ] I've done a lot of extreme sports and this isn't true for me. It was just something that I found fun and enjoyable. A lot of the time though, to be perfectly honest, I was just [censored]ing myself. [/ QUOTE ] Skydiving or scuba diving are things I find fun and enjoyable, not extreme at all. [/ QUOTE ] skydiving is pretty dangerous, is it not? [/ QUOTE ] An average skydive isn't that dangerous. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm [ QUOTE ] Risk of Skydiving Accidents Skydiving is a remarkably popular sport. The United States Parachuting Association has 34,000 members. It estimates that about 350,000 people complete more than 3 million jumps in a typical year. The big question is always, "How dangerous is skydiving?" Each year, about 30 people die in parachuting accidents in the United States, or roughly one person per 100,000 jumps. Look at the US Skydiving Incident Reports to get an idea of the types of problems that lead to fatalities. If you make one jump in a year, your chance of dying is 1 in 100,000. How does the fatality rate in skydiving compare to other common activities? Since most adults in America drive cars, let's compare skydiving to driving. Roughly 40,000 people die each year in traffic accidents in the United States [ref]. That's 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles. Therefore, if you drive 10,000 miles per year, your chance of dying in a car wreck in any given year is something like 1 in 6,000. In other words, we accept a higher level of risk by getting into our cars every day than people do by occasionally skydiving. You would have to jump 17 times per year for your risk of dying in a skydiving accident to equal your risk of dying in a car accident if you drive 10,000 miles per year. A logical question to ask here is this: Given these statistics, why do we think of skydiving as dangerous and driving a car as safe? * The first reason has to do with frequency. At 30 per year, fatal skydiving accidents are infrequent. That tends to make each one newsworthy, so you are likely to hear about them. On the other hand, there are about 110 fatal car accidents every day in the United States. In a city of one million people, 160 people die every year in car accidents. If you heard about every car accident, you would go insane, so you only hear about a few of them. That leaves you with the impression that car accidents are infrequent even though they happen constantly. * The second reason has to do with familiarity. Most people drive every day and nothing bad happens. So our personal experience leads us to believe that driving is safe. It is only when you look at the aggregated statistics that you realize how dangerous driving really is. [/ QUOTE ] |
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In my experience bungee jumping was much more frightening than sky diving. 10k feet of exposure was high enough that the sky dive seemed sort of surreal. Stepping off the edge of a 100' tower felt like exactly what it was, definitely a "this doesn't seem like the best idea" moment.
Anyone here have any experience with base jumping? I know a lot of other rock climbers who have moved into it but I'm not sure, it might cross the line between exciting and scary for me. |
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That video, wow. I am speechless. 15 feet? [/ QUOTE ] wingsuit "skimming" is the most insane, crazy, awesome thing evah... and you just thought those Scandi's were crazy poker players check this out |
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Sick.
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Welcome to the sky!
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Anyone here have any experience with base jumping? I know a lot of other rock climbers who have moved into it but I'm not sure, it might cross the line between exciting and scary for me. [/ QUOTE ] I won't recommend BASE jumping to anyone, because it's really dangerous, but it's easily the best thing I've ever done. It's so [censored] scary, but that's the point of it. |
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that video was sick, nice link i would definitely consider myself an adrenaline junkie. i love driving 200mph, skydiving, playing poker at the highest limits where big wins are huge and big losses really hurt, etc [/ QUOTE ] cts- do you think being an adreniline junkie has aided your poker results over the last few years? |
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I've been wanting to the the AFF (accelerated free fall) on my first skydive for a while. Will post a tr when I do.
Also, another sweet video: Extreme |
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Damn it. I knew I shouldn't have watch the video. Now I have a major migraine.
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Man don't post videos of people [censored] dying for christs sake.
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What caused the line twists in those BASE jumps? Poor packing?
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What caused the line twists in those BASE jumps? Poor packing? [/ QUOTE ] It's impossible to tell, but most likely it's the body position during opening. |
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Wingsuit low pull 180 + line twists = not fun 180 + line twists = no fun at all There's no room for mistakes when you fly your wingsuit close to objects Sometimes you might survive an object strike, but not always [/ QUOTE ] wow sick videos probably should put disclaimers on videos like this though |
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