It was the most Zen-like, inner/outer body and mind experience I've ever had. The fact that I did something so outrageous that went against every primal instinct of survival and did, in fact, survive was so exhilarating and filled with the feeling of the power of life itself that I had to do this again, not realizing of course that I had already been seduced and addicted. I felt completely and totally relaxed and in tune with my environment. I felt sort of a dream-like calm after the storm, and it lasted for days.
Paul Adamo, the owner of Adrenaline Dream Adventures in Pittsburgh, Penn., is not describing an LSD trip or some kind of deep meditation experience. He's describing his first bungee jump.
Those of us who live the ordinary life have gotten our adrenaline thrills from watching the daring ones--those we thought a bit touched in the head--jump out of airplanes or pile down the side of a mountain on a motorcycle. We've ooooohed and aaaahed over circus performers flying through the air, and gasped at Evel Knievel leaping his motorcycle over canyons. But these days more and more of us have left the observer's seat to do our own leaping out of planes, rappelling down mountains, kayaking over waterfalls and diving with sharks.
Some say mountain biking, which it seems almost everyone is doing these days, started the mainstream into extreme sports. Then came snowboarding. Now there's even mountain boarding--riding down the side of a mountain on what's essentially a skateboard with huge wheels and fat knobby tires that can roll over pebbles and rocks with no brakes and no steering wheel.
From 1990 to 1995 the number of people who dove out of planes grew by 5 percent; 2 million new participants joined in rock and mountain climbing; 19 million took up inline skating; 2 million took up snowboarding, and thousands of extreme skiers took to the slopes. Extreme sports have spawned their own daredevils who ratchet up their adrenaline rushes by bungee jumping while sitting in reclining chairs or inside dumpsters. We even have the summer and winter extreme sports equivalent to the Olympics--the X Games.
David Staffiery, owner of Extreme Adventures in Campbell, says the rush one gets from extreme sports is powerful enough that people doing them don't use drugs. "Well, maybe, except for marijuana," he adds. In fact, he claims that the after-effects of the adrenaline rush are healthy and can improve a person's physical and mental well-being and can lead to an increase in productivity at work. Extreme Adventures, at 2931 S. Winchester Blvd., Campbell, offers everything for the extreme adventurers' fantasies from equipment and lessons to a travel agency.
Gerri Kemp, 42, joined the X Club (an educational and social group that meets Wednesday nights in the Extreme Adventures building and numbers some 350 members) and has gotten a whole new lease on life. It took awhile to get up the nerve. She kept hearing the ad for Extreme Adventures on the radio but dismissed it because she is not the thrill-seeking type. Then she saw the Extreme Adventures booth at a beer festival and won a two-for-one scuba diving lesson.
"I've always been afraid of drowning," she explains, but she signed up. "My kids were almost grown. I'm single, and I needed a way to meet other people."
She braved the scuba diving lessons in the pool and then the dive into Monterey Bay and got certified. "My family can't believe it." Now she's taking kickboxing. She's planning to dive with other X Club members in the shark cage off Catalina, and tandem jump (sky diving strapped to an experienced skydiver) soon.
Someday Kemp might progress to an eco-challenge. A spin-off of the old Outward Bound survival challenges, eco-challenges are an assortment of extreme sports activities knitted together in one big challenge, sometimes with competing teams.
In the high desert near Palm Springs, Aaron Coons, owner of Eco Dynamics of Morongo Valley, recently set up an eco-challenge for 20 doctors who were attending a Palm Springs convention. They were not in particularly great shape, nor had they participated in extreme sports before. The group was bused by night to a place in the desert where they learned of their mission--find and rescue the injured person planted in Dead Indian Canyon. They received maps, compasses, headlights and backpacks with supplies. With a support crew to assist them, the doctors had to climb up and rappel down mountains, find, treat and bring back the injured man.
"The docs loved it," Coons recalls, "and it was even a blast for us. You'd be surprised at the barriers that go down in this kind of situation," he explains. "It's a great team builder. You can tell what people's strengths are, who are the leaders and who are the organizers." Corporations often contract with Coons specifically for the purpose of team-building.
Roland Chick, owner of The Adventures Game outdoor paint-ball field in the Santa Cruz Mountains, says Oracle and other large corporations contract with him for paint-ball challenges as a way to develop management's team-building skills.
Teams with special paint-filled rifles hunt each other. Chick claims--and Kevin Quant, a volunteer firefighter, agrees--that the "rush you can get from a paint-ball game is almost equal to that of jumping out of a plane." It's the thrill of the hunt, nailing someone or getting nailed or the escape that gets that adrenaline rush. Paint ball can become a pretty elaborate game with equipment that includes face masks, high-power rifles with high-power sights, night-vision goggles, complete camouflage suits, tanks and much more.
There's more than the adrenaline rush. There's the aftereffect. Sometimes for days people feel more at peace, Staffiery explains. They are more relaxed at work and more productive because they aren't as uptight about the little things. After all--they've survived what felt like a death-defying experience. Corporations, according to Staffiery, report that those who participate in extreme adventures have fewer sick days.
Most participants are middle-class professionals; the average age in the X Club is 33. One man is 75. Paul Adamo says they seem to be type-A personalities, outgoing achievers, people like investment brokers, doctors, lawyers, and achievement-oriented college students. They work hard, and a vacation lying on the beach isn't enough for them. Staffiery says they need to feel like they've done something. If they jump out of a plane or kayak down rapids, they have a sense of accomplishment.
It's not surprising that blue-collar workers rarely participate in these sports. It costs about $180 for a leap out of a plane, $150 to ride in a hot-air balloon, and about $85 to bounce off the end of a bungee cord.
Research shows that a certain segment of the population craves thrills; it's part of their personality make-up. The Zuckerman sensation scale, developed in 1964, measures the level of thrill-seeker in people. Mountain climbers score the highest. Surprisingly, women under 30 who are thrill-seekers score the highest of all, even higher than men. (Not so surprisingly, the craving tends to decrease with age and injury.) Research suggests a relationship between high-sensation scores and drugs and violence in teens. One study concluded that high-risk sports might be an antidote for teen violence and drug use.
The Tempe, Ariz. parks and recreations department is taking this to heart and has added an extreme adventure program to its teen activity lineup. The department built a rock climbing wall and started a league for grades 6 through 10. It has plans for climbing boulders and rappelling, and is looking into adding water slides to swimming pools, and bungee towers and wave pools to whitewater kayak.
In fact, rock climbing walls are sprouting everywhere. Companies like REI build them inside some of their stores. Malls construct them for special occasions. Staffiery says that those who participate in extreme sports yawn when they ride the rollercoasters at Great America.
What's driving people to extreme sports? Bungee jumpers say life is boring and jumping heightens feelings and awareness, makes them feel glad to be alive. Michael Apter, Ph.D., author of The Dangerous Edge: The Psychology of Excitement, agrees--in a way. He theorizes that America has become too safe for many people. "Risk-taking is essential to human beings," he says. "But our safe society has made that more difficult to attain." Extreme sports is a result.
There are always those who take their extreme sport too far, explains Adamo. They feel invincible. They stop taking the basic precautions. Patrick De Gayardon, a professional skydiver and the creator of sky surfing, died thinking he was invincible. One day he was testing his new creation, a diving suit that had webbing between his legs and on the sides from his elbows to his knees, to increase the length of horizontal flight during freefall. His chute malfunctioned, and because he wasn't wearing a reserve chute, he plummeted to his death.
The other problem is the addiction itself. "I know of skydivers who are so addicted to adrenaline," Adamo says, "that if the risk doesn't continue to increase, they feel ripped off. These types actually throw their parachute out of the plane and then freefall after it, grab it, put it on and then finally pull the cord."
They are the ones we watch nowadays, the ones we think are touched in the head. Merely watching someone jump out of a plane with a parachute has become a little ho-hum. Most of us know of someone who has done it. But then there are those of us whose thrill-seeking score is low, who get a little rush from hitting a golf ball from a grassy knoll. We will always get a rush watching the daring young man on the flying trapeze.
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
Photograph by Christopher Gardner
