Sky diving has been on my list for quite some time. What has always stopped me is that I have read the probability of a broken ankle is significant. It's not so much the broken ankle itself that stops me ... it's that it would mean being off the bike and off the skis for a month or two ... and that's no bueno.

But I will admit that if the opportunity presented itself rather than my pursuing it ... I'd probably go for it. I mean ... we don't have all that many years left, so there is that much less left to lose.

One thing did some years ago was bungee jump. Oh, was that a "pucker time" event. But when you hear the specifics, it really wasn't all that unreasonable.

I did it in New Zealand at one of the places that first started the sport (or activity ... whatever). They weigh you to 0.1 kg. The bungee they use is very high grade, and is tested daily. It is rotated out on a very frequent basis. How confident are they that they have the variables under control? Well, when I got to the top to make the jump, a kid with a backwards facing skateboarding hat asked me if I wanted to "take a dip."

"What is that?"

"It means we adjust things so your head and shoulders go in the water, but that's all."

I shrugged. "OK."

The hardest part was doing what is essentially "walking the plank." Your feet are tied together and you have to penguin over 6 feet or so to get to the edge. For some reason, I was terrified of falling to either side. But I got to the edge, put my arms out, and did a good old swan dive off the top.

Let me tell you ... you pick up speed FAST when you are airborne. And you bounce quite a bit after hitting bottom. Oh ... and they got the distance perfect. My head and a bit of my shoulders got wet ... nothing else.

At this point, they motor over in a boat to get under your dangling self and they release you and catch you without landing head first in the boat. Frankly, THIS is the most dangerous part of the process.

Was it worth it? Oh hell yes. I got a great pix of me doing that swan dive!

There is another tourist attraction nearby at the Shotover River. Highly trained boat pilots zig-zag up that river at high speeds, dodging rocks and shallow water. Each boat holds maybe 20 people or so. We did that too, and yes it was fun.

But what was the most dangerous? In terms of injury history, the Shotover River thing is orders of magnitude more unsafe. Why? More variables, and many of them difficult to control. They occasionally crash.

But it FEELS less dangerous. It is far more popular than the bungee jumping, which has very few things that can go wrong.

Damn ... I should post a pix of that swan dive. It was aweome!