Those were the days....

This was many years ago before we had GoPro Cameras and other fancy video recorders to capture that "first jump". This however wasn't my first jump, it was indeed my first free fall of 5 seconds.  Not much, but having to pull your own rip cord after 8 static line jumps it felt like forever. With me is Henk van Wyk, my jump master from Mossel Bay Skydivers and the same guy on the tandem picture from my previous post. I did a few more jumps after this but eventually stopped skydiving after I moved to Cape Town. I changed  over to paragliding and invested all my money in paragliding gear. Those were the days.....  

Blood stains on the carpet

Guess who's been having more fun than me lately?

I just stumbled upon a picture of a friend of mine on facebook where she did a tandem jump a few months ago. I spoke to her last night to hear how she was doing. Over the past few weeks she has been paragliding in Barberton, 4 x 4-ing (if you get such a word) in the Richtersveld, been to Mauritius for a break and then returned via Mozambique where she was deep-sea angling from a jet ski."I'm going to climb out of my skin" she said, "I am as bored as hell."

Two weeks ago after shark cage diving and returning from a trip to Prague I told my wife I am totally annoyed as everybody is doing fun things and I am about to cut my wrists, bored as hell. Depression was not only written on my forehead, it was tattooed across my whole face. My one biking buddy did a trip to Sutherland with his wife, the other went to Lesotho and saw the thickest snow this country has ever seen and I was at home dealing with boredom and bad weather. Yes, I have just been to Prague and stuck my head under the water to see some sharks, but that does not mean I can sit back and relax now and that I have done my outings for the year. No, it means that I kept myself sane for a few weeks longer during this cold and raining winter season which does not seem to have an end in sight. 

Where was I when my buddy took this photo? (Photo: Francois Joubert)

While talking to the "I'm-bored-as-hell" buddy of mine last night I realized that we both suffer from something most people won't understand. It has been bugging me since I was a child as my mother always wanted to know why I could not sit still. At a point I thought I was being selfish because I always wanted to be involved in some sort of adrenalin adventure. I even thought there was something missing in my life and that I was looking for it by doing dangerous stuff. I am not an irresponsible person otherwise I would not be sitting with a steady job and a beautiful family, but today there is DEFINITELY something missing in my life....I need to do something exciting or I am going to kill myself AND the people around me. I am sitting waiting for summer to return and I have a list of things I want (need) to do. So please Mother Nature, I beg of you, bring "Summer" back, I miss her tremendously...! 

We've made a date for the weekend to discuss plans on how we are going to make sure we going to keep ourselves "alive". My only salvation is the fact that I have slightly more activities I can get busy with when the weather does not play along, but we still seem to be fighting our own boredom wars alone while we could be sharing ideas and trips. I wanted to finally do my scuba course this year, but I think I would rather invest more time and money in my paragliding. I need a new kite for kitesurfing and she said she is going to give it a try too. Then for rainy days there is indoor rock climbing maybe. I also play squash a lot although I would not classify that under "dangerous stuff", but it surely helps for seasonal affective disorder. Sadly I am a sufferer of that too. Anyway, what I need is balance in my life because at the moment it is toppling over towards boring and suicidal and it has to be corrected. No-one likes cleaning blood stains from the carpet.....

A sharking experience

I have always wondered what the real differences were between adrenaline, adventure and extreme sports. I guess many people will have many views, but I am sure a particular sport can change from the one to the other depending the variation in danger elements or risks involved. Let's take a simple sport like swimming. When you do it in a shallow pool, I guess the words adrenaline and adventure never comes to mind. Do it in the open ocean and adventure sounds appropriate. Do it in shark infested water and extreme all of a sudden seems like the best word to describe it.

Last week on the Internet and e-mails a picture of a shark caught off the South African Coast was doing the rounds. An enormous monster weighing in at 700kg with a lenght of 4,3 meters. Because the pictures were taken in Mossel Bay, most people believe that the shark comes from there. The fact is that sharks have been followed swimming from South Africa to Australia and back. I believe most sharks come back after they have tasted one or two Aussies. Nevertheless, these creature are everywhere in our oceans, and they make the crime risks in South Africa look like a Sunday school picnic.  Btw, this one was caught off the Kwa-Zulu coastline.

I have been surfing for many years and I never viewed surfing as a adrenaline or extreme sport. Maybe just because I never had the opportunity to surf the massive waves in Hawaii, or risking my life above corals in Teahupoo. What I do know now is that I have been surfing in waters where these guys are lurking. Not knowing that fact drops the extremity a little, but show anyone the shark before he enters the water and I am pretty sure not many people will take the risk...making even swimming an extreme sports by my definition.

Shark sightings are common in South African waters, with some of the best pictures of breaching sharks taken in False Bay. I have surfed in areas where sharks are quite common, Durban, Wild Coast, Mossel Bay, Nahoon Reef...but I have only witness a fin about once or twice in my life. And I am not even sure if it was a shark or a maybe a dolphin. Maybe I was just lucky, or maybe I believe the riskier the activity the more enjoyable it becomes...and the luckier you get when you live to tell the story. There is a joke going around about the dude sitting in the a bar claiming that he made a good agreement with the sharks. The sharks will never go into the bar if he will never go into the water. I don't think I am prepared to make that sacrifice just yet. Hope to see you (and not the sharks) in the water soon...