Any activity that results in you being upside for any period of time, with the potential of falling and landing on your head, I would consider dangerous.
Well, that’s very different from the noodle incident.
Never mind…
Have you tried sildenafil?
Though he wasn’t free climbing at the time.
Correct – he was jumping and his rope failed (melted/cut).
I am puzzled by certain activities:
-“free diving”-you hold onto a weight, take a deep breath, and see how deep you can go (without drowning)-seems stupid to me
-cave diving-you enter water-filled caves and see how deep you can go. Nothing to see/pitch black
-wreck diving: you go down to sunked ships and try to get old pieces of china, other junk
-free climbing; you climb rock walls without safety ropes
I have no problem with these activities. Except, I don’t see why the rest of us have to pay to rescue people who get into danger while indulging their hobby.
Same can be said for ambulance and medical services for folks who are overweight due to smoking, overeating, and having sedentary lifestyles.
I am puzzled by certain activities:
Maybe I can help.
-“free diving”-you hold onto a weight, take a deep breath, and see how deep you can go (without drowning)-seems stupid to me
Okay, I can’t explain this one.
-cave diving-you enter water-filled caves and see how deep you can go. Nothing to see/pitch black
There’s a lot to see, new semi-isolated ecosystems, interesting geological… things and the like. And sometimes you get to discover/see something no one else has ever seen before.
-wreck diving: you go down to sunked ships and try to get old pieces of china, other junk
Some of those trinkets can be extremely valuable. For some people, it’s a sentimental or learning journey.
-free climbing; you climb rock walls without safety ropes
*While I don’t like this activity, personally, I can understand it.
If you gamble at a casino, but you know all the money you loose is returned to you when you leave, is it really an accomplishment if you make a few hundred dollars?*
That’s an interesting comparison. Eating a lot of fattening food and playing video games all day is fun, and tends to shorten one’s lifespan, yet it’s never occurred to me to think of it as a dangerous form of recreation.
(I admit I purposely failed to define the term in the OP, partly because I was hoping to see what kinds of activities people thought of as dangerous.)
Most activities when taken as a whole, are not particularly dangerous, be it driving to work, or rock climbing, or wild water paddling. Any activitiy, when taken to extreme, can be very dangerous, such as speeding while drunk, or free solo climbing, or class VI paddling.
Activities that most people do, such as driving to work, are generally not considered to be dangerous, wheras activities that are out of the ordinary and have some degree of woo-woo factor (now there’s a technical term), such as rock climbing or wild water paddling, are generally considered to be dangerous.
If we look at incidents of serious injury or death per participant hour, and then break it down by experience level and toss of the noobs and the nutbars, we’d have a better indication of objective danger for any given activity, and could compare it to other ativities. Through polls, we could also compare the level of objective risk of an activity against the public’s perceived risk for that activity.
In the early 90s, I came upon a very large tome in a college library that set out injury rates for hundreds of recreational activities. (Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name or the authors.)
It ranked the various recreational activities by both injury rate and also by participation rate.
The number one ranked recreational activity for participation was sitting in a chair. I shit you not. Sitting in a chair while reading, and sitting in a chair watching television, had different ranks.
So while I was standing there laughing, thinking about what it means when the most popular form of recreation is sitting in a chair doing sweet butkus, my hold on this very large and heavy book slipped, and I dropped it on my foot, causing a nasty bruise.
As one of the kids in my canoe club once said, “It’s toooo dangerous out there man, I’m stayin’ home man, in the basement man, with ma helmet on.”
Since I don’t like to have to waste my recreation time cleaning up other people’s messes, and don’t like seeing carnage, I keep clear of the noobs and nutbars whom I believe are getting in over their heads – e.g. a paddler with class III ability paddling in class V. It isn’t the activity per se that turns me off, it is the level of the person’s knowledge, ability and experience not being up to the objective risk that turns me off. Thus it is noobs and nutbars whom I distain, rather than people who through their knowledge, ability and experience reasonably mitigate the objective risks in activities that are perceived to be dangerous.
Look I can understand the thrill of risk-every human experiences it (to a greater or lesser degree0. But risking your life?? for a toatlly pointless persuit? Like diving to the Andrea Doria wreck: it is dark, its cold, and you only have a few minutes at the bottom. if you ascend to rapidly, you will die of a horrible condition called 'the bends". plus, you’ve paid about $5000 for the trip-so you poke around the wreck (careful, don’t want to get tangled in some fishing nets). You ascend with a piece of china-this was worth it??
Yes. If it was easy everyone would be doing it.
I was driving north on Sunday to do some backcountry skiing, an activity some may feel is dangerous. We take helmets and kneepads, I carry emergency gear. When we go into avalanche areas we carry probes/beacons/shovels.
I was caught in a 60 car pile up on I-93 along the way.
Which was the most dangerous part of my day?
You never feel as alive as the moment right after you finish a tough route. I’ve only done ridiculously easy routes with injury (as opposed to death) potential, but even then, the adrenaline’s pumping, your heart is beating a thousand times a minute, your eyes are WIDE open and there’s this almost trance-like focus on the here and now. It’s like the moment right before orgasm, but better. It’s about conquering yourself, your fears, and your mental/emotional/physical weakness. Then you breathe, hyperventilating at first, eventually slowing down to normal as you look around, seemingly on top of the world, and the wind’s in your face and you feel like you just took off into flight. It’s incredible.
…then comes the downclimb. Ugh. :smack:
Downclimb? Dude…you need to date smaller women or sumptin 