subject: Extreme Adventure [print this page] Some people live off extreme adventuresSome people live off extreme adventures. They push themselves beyond the limits of whats conceivable and feed off the adrenaline. You know the type. Cant live without jumping off a bridge or swimming with sharks, but without a cage. These people love the thrill that most people would shy away from instantly. Many call these people adrenaline junkies, but we like to call them extreme adventurists.
While Im not crazy about most extreme adventures, I can appreciate those who do. So heres our top five list of Extreme adventures:
1. Skydiving Just last summer I got convinced by my Extreme Adventure friends to go skydiving. The friends basically live at the drop zone. They pack parachutes for money and then turn around and spend that money on skydiving. They cant wait for each weekend so they can go back to the drop zone, DZ as the call it, to free fall some more. They watch the weather reports daily and hope that rain only comes when theyre not jumping.
2. White Water Rafting Water rushing past you, rocks all around, paddling furiously just to keep the little control you do have. Maybe its just because I was tossed out of a raft when I was younger, but ever since Ive been terrified of rafting, tubing, canoeing, you name it. So to me, white water rafting is extreme, no matter how small the river. And you wont catch me anywhere near rapids.
3. Free Soloing Im an okay climber with a harness. The thought of Free Soloing, or climbing without any harness or safety precautions just scares the hell out of me. Im not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of falling. Its this rush that most free solo-ers live off of, but unfortunately, Im not one of them.
4. Marathon-ing I consider my colleagues extreme adventurists, even though I doubt theyd admit it. They run marathons and other endurance runs almost every weekend. Im not really a runner. I much prefer biking. But they, and thousands others, love the feeling of pushing your body by running for hours. And although the rest of us at UA think running marathons is no big deal it is. Its very extreme. (Why Im writing a post about extreme adventures instead of them, Ill never know.)
5. Adventure Racing I recently started following some Adventure Races. If you dont know what it is, Adventure Racing is getting from point A to point B, with some optional checkpoints along the way, as fast as possible. So naturally this includes hours and days of hiking, running, biking and swimming with barely any sleep or rest in between. To me, this is one of the most extreme adventures you can participate in. Its all about pushing yourself and your team to the limits and seeing what you can do. To me, its really interesting to watch, but I could never imagine participating in one of these without collapsing soon after. Or during.
So are you one of these extreme adventurists? What gets your heart going?
