IOW: Trust next to no one.

A risk I would not take is skydiving. For me the reward is not high (pun intended) enough. For others it definitely is worth it. OTOH, I would tandem parasail with a professional.

If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not the activity for you.

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!

Cyclezen, I'm about ten years behind you. But I've got two long-standing injuries to soft tissues that have served to constrain what intensity and "power" I am able to accomplish during physical activities. With cycling, I've never been a hard-charger. It's always been an A-to-B transportation means for me, with the inherent healthful and happiness benefits.

As an adult, I have always kept my skills and abilities well within the difficulty+risk "curve" of the routes I ride. I won't ride on frosty or icy conditions. I won't ride if it's almost certain to rain heavily. I won't ride on certain types of roads, where if I am forced to "ditch" it's almost certain I'll land hard or badly (as I can't afford to no longer "bounce"). And so, most of my rides are fairly sedate by the standards of many riders. Has been this way for more than 25 years. I'm okay with that.

It works, for me. Keeps me safer. I'm on routes with surfaces that have good traction and few impediments (crud in the road). I avoid trails, except the hard-packed, well-maintained ones where there's precious little to go wrong. And I avoid routes where there aren't good "outs" for a cyclist who runs out of options. I also ride at a pace where, if I were to lay the bike down, I'd have a very good chance of avoiding serious injury.

Boring. But, these days, boring's good. I like boring, injury-wise. Back in my twenties and thirties, I could afford to "wring out" a trail or route. No can do, any longer. And that's fine. I can enjoy the cycling with vastly less risk, fewer obstacles to avoid.

I have bungeed twice after mustering all the courage I had. I figured no one had died, YET, so gave it a go. After the trepidation came pure adrenaline and exhilaration. One was from a crane at a fairgrounds. I was hoisted so high, people looked about 1/20th scale. After giving the thumbs up, the only way was down and like. Biker 395 said, it was fast.

To quote myself, whom I consider a reliable source, I read yesterday a sky diving instructor fell out of a plane with no parachute. This was after helping a student out. Didn’t go into details about balance or what not.