EXTREME(LY BORING)?

November 19, 2011

Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure. (Irving Wallace)

Sometimes it just isnt exciting enough, being on the brink of death

By Mariya Shcherbinina

A very good time of day and someone looking for an experience of night (or anything in between) to our a lifetimes are as follows (suck in your readers. As you may or may not have stomachs and hang on): known, Sport or Die Magazine has spent 1. Volcano boarding. Best spot? the last month evaluating all sorts of Nicaraguas Cerro Negro crazy things one could do in their free mountain. Worth it? Meh. time and building a list on the basis of 2. Limbo skating a.k.a. roller a poll we have put together for our skating under cars. Origin? India. excitement junkies. After an inux of Record? Aniket Chindak holds the responses, we have managed to put unofcial world record for skating together a list (which was very beneath 57 cars. adrenaline-inducing on its own, 3. Train surng. Legality? having to sort through all those pluses Questionable. All the rage? 1980s and percentages) of the craziest, in Germany. Germans do all sorts wildest things one could do based on of crazy stuff. your responses, my dear readers. 4. Crocodile bungee. Fun? Da-dum. Bungee jumping into a body of According to the polls (and water containing live crocodiles. extensive research on out part which Suit yourself. involved loss of more than one limb), 5. Cliff diving. Origin? Hawaii. the most idiotic things to do for Time? 3 seconds. Chance you

might pee your pants? A speed of 100 km/hour. 6. Underwater hockey. Dont ask. Its British. 7. AirKicking. If youre going huh? over this one, let me give you a visual: your adventurous derriere is put into a sort of Archimedean catapult and then youre launched into the air. Into a swimming pool. 8. Slacklining. Basically what you do is walk over a canyon on a imsy nylon rope. Records? Christian Schou for the highest slackline after crossing a Norwegian fjord at the height equivalent of 3 Eiffel towers. 9. Zorbing Ball. As you might have guessed from the rising amount of trauma reports recently,

EXTREME(LY BORING)? November 19, 2011

this sport involves sticking your pliable body into a transparent giant yoga ball and going downhill. 10. Bull running. Enough said. While you may not want to take part in something just so extreme (Ill give you a second to wipe the sweat and / or bloody tears off your face), we have prepared two slightly less life-threatening but just as exciting sports. MOUNTAINBIKING To be completely honest, my editor is forcing me to do this, but some of you may nd this interesting. Okay, so you have a bike. And then you have a mountain. Basically what you do is try to gure out how to apply one to the other with sustaining only minimal injuries, the risk of which is, like... huge. From cuts and scratches to spine fractures, there is a little something for everybody. In this case, being t and equipped is kind of a big thing. The bike comes rst, of course, and your job is to pick out one that is used specically for the road youre going to take. A city roller will not work with the Himalayas. Just sayin. Of course, the protective headgear as well as various knee-protectors and gloves have to be considered (because a corpse with their skull cracked open ruins all the esthetics or the Rockies). Fitness is another issue; if a rider is not in good enough shape to ride a certain class of trail, they will get tired and then they will get injured and then they will be dead. The good thing about mountain biking is that you really dont need any ofcial training for it - of course, agencies and programs exist (as they do for everything nowadays) but you dont need a fancy piece of paper to conrm that youre capable. Practicing a bit should help, though, since the bike wont magically skip over rocks by itself.

Otherwise, youre good to go. Say hello to the Intensive Care Unit for me.

SCUBADIVING If youre expecting another half-done sarcastic rant, you may turn the page this very second. The reason being, I am completely, irrevocably in love with diving and proud of it. There might not be another sport that relies so much on equipment - except for parachuting, maybe. See, if your bike breaks, you can just walk the rest of the way. If your ball pops, you can stop the football game. If your regulator hose rips... RIP. You may not look pretty but hey, at least youre alive enough to come home and tell everyone Scuba diving is itself a hazardous youve sport. To do it without any training is done tantamount to playing Russian diving. roulette with a loaded revolver. Another ROBERT F. BURGESS, The Cave Divers thing SCUBA requires is knowledge. And a good head on your shoulders. As with any extreme sport, experience is required but problem-solving skills are essential when youre thirty meters under and have very limited means of communication. As a recently trained rescue diver with all the lessons still fresh in my mind, I can tell you how much fun and danger diving really encompasses. If youre serious, of course. All those vacation divers doing one dive (I call it sinking, really) just dont get it. For me, its the process of learning to dive thats enticing. Sure, I enjoy the pretty sh and corals but oh my God, that moment of nally understanding how to manipulate your body to do amazing things underwater, things like easily staying buoyant at completely at ease in

an environment where you just dont belong... Thats real magic. Learning to dive involves books and exams... yes, I know. What you have to do rst is get an Open Water Diver certication from PADI or an equivalent from another diving agency. PADIs most common in holiday diving, anyway. To do that, you need to read the book, do a couple of conned water dives before doing sever open-water ones as well as a written test. During the course, you learn to do the most basic things (like breathing) and just get comfortable. I have to say, though, my OWD was the most stressful course Ive ever done. Being thrusted underwater and having to cope with it is psychologically difcult for some. If youre feeling up for it, you can take and Advance Open Water Diver course - it focuses on various skills and the best thing is that you have a choice of that you want to do. The two compulsory dives you have to do are Buoyancy control dives and Navigation (I sucked at it but then hey, I get lost in my apartment looking for the bathroom at night so what do I know?), and the three others you can chose from a huge list: Photography, Videography, Night, Boat (which is kind of pointless, since most of holiday diving is done from boats anyway) and a whole bunch of others. All of these Adventure dives can be later developed into a specialty. I would personally recommend Nitrox diving as a must-have spec.

EXTREME(LY BORING)? November 19, 2011

Nitrox, or enriched air, is just a breathing mixture which has between 32 and 36 per cent of oxygen, as apposed to the 21 in normal air. It reduces the risk of the bends (well talk about that in a second) and makes you less tired. It also lowers your air consumption signicantly. You have to specially trained to handle Nitrox and its specics though, but the course only takes a full day to complete, so why not enjoy the most of the deep blue? There is another course which I would totally recommend doing if youre starting to get serious. Thats rescue diving. I know it sounds frightening, believe me, I nearly soiled

my pants just thinking of the responsibility but in reality its pure, unadulterated fun combined with totally exhausting physical exercise. In the Rescue Diver course you learn to do just that - save people. First of all, you need to be Emergency First Response certied (thats CPR and rst aid) and that takes about half a day together with watching a very annoying, very repetitive, very American video course. Afterwards, you read the book, do the Knowledge Reviews, watch the (even more American) Rescue Diver Video and then gear up, spending about a day in the swimming pool developing skills like calming a panicked diver and getting

someone unconscious onto the surface. The most difcult thing is the famous Rescue Diver Exercise Seven, which involves establishing an unconscious divers buoyancy, establishing yours, checking for breathing, nding none, beginning rescue breathing underwater (CPR is kind of impossible) while getting of their equipment and then yours. The real problem is that you have to supply rescue breaths every 5 seconds while removing the equipment. You can imagine how much time that takes. Afterwards you just have to drag the victim out of the water and thank got my victim was skinny because with my stature and weight, I would have already given up if I had to save someone weighing more than Nicole Richie. Another reason to start diving is the community. Its amazing how people from all over the globe come

together to do one thing - dive. We, the divers, help each other out and spend time on the surface together when normally we wouldnt have given each other the time of day. I think the reason is that underwater everybody speaks the same language, as cheesy as it sounds. Its also quite nice that everybody looks past your age, and focuses on the skills you possess. I actually felt quite important doing the rescue diver training. A big con for diving is that the equipment - and theres a lot of - is kind of expensive and it needs to get serviced regularly so if youre not thinking of going really far with your diver training, youll have to rent but even that would cost a pretty penny. Another drawback is the potential risk. Not to stie the adventurer in you, but breathing from a limited air

EXTREME(LY BORING)? November 19, 2011

SCUBA diving is sensual. To breathe underwater is one of the most fascinating and peculiar sensations imaginable. Breathing becomes a rhythmic melody of inhalations and exhalations. The cracks and pops of fish and crustaceans harmonize with the rhythmic chiming of the bubbles as you exhale. Soon, lungs act as bellows, controlling your buoyancy as you achieve weightlessness. And, as in your dreams, you are flying. Combine these otherworldly stimuli and you surrender completely to the sanctuary of the underwater world.
TEC CLARK, forward, Karen Berger's Scuba Diving

source in a potentially lethal environment?... Yeah. Of course, well-looked-after equipment is seriously unlikely to die on you, plus you have the divemasters and your buddy to look after you. Mostly you just have to get over the fear of drowning. No biggie. Of course there are also the bends or Decompression Sickness which, together with lung over-expansion injuries comprise Decompression Illness - a very serious condition. In DCS, nitrogen that normally goes in and out of your body when you breathe aboveground, dissolves into the tissues and then fails to come out when you ascend. Thats why its pretty important to stay within diving limits and make a safety stop to let the nitrogen escape just a bit. Otherwise, you can get a rash, or joint pain, or if youre that unlucky, you could die if the bubbles block the nerves in your brain or spine. Heh, nice? Lung over-expansion is serious too, since the injuries range from pneumothorax (collapsed lung) to Arterial Gas Embolism (air bubbles forced through the alveoli into the bloodstream, effectively blocking the blood ow to some pretty vital organs which could cause an infarction of the tissues or a stroke if the bubbles end up in your brain). Another risk but not really is nitrogen narcosis, which roughly translates to being tipsy underwater. As the diver

descends, the nitrogen causes a narcotic effect, similar to drunkiness and if go deep on the wrong mixture, it could cause reckless behavior (like offering your regulator to sh and whatnot) and if you go really deep, you could seize and die. But really? So worth it.

So whichever crazy thing you chose to do, just remember to try and stay within your boundaries and for Gods sakes, read the damn manual.

Sincerely yours, Mariya Shcherbinina