ADVENTURE: IS IT WORTH THE RISK, OR EVEN ENJOYABLE?

Today, June 23, 2023, begins with news that a submersible carrying five adventurers to view the wreck of the Titanic deep in the Atlantic Ocean imploded on its way down, killing all on board.  They not only paid a very high price to go on the expedition, they paid the ultimate price.

All were wealthy people who could afford to follow their dreams but, honestly, why would anyone want to stuff themselves inside an uncomfortable death trap to view the remnant of a one hundred-and-eleven-year-old disaster lying so deep that no natural light can't reach it?  Obviously, these people did, and it is terribly sad that their quest went so awry.

This is the second tragedy in the last three weeks resulting from people trying to accomplish the extraordinary.  Last month an Australian man succumbed to altitude sickness after summiting Mount Everest.  Seventeen years earlier he had suffered spinal cord injuries in a car accident and had to learn to walk again.  Three years ago, he had another spinal procedure followed by rehab and wanted to prove he was still capable of doing anything he wanted.  He certainly succeeded, but at what cost?

I'm not here to judge.  Such people are entitled to do what they want and they show extraordinary motivation, but I wonder what their real quest is.  For some reason, I suspect that they are their own Titanics or mountains.   What is this need to push the boundaries?  We can all benefit from a challenge, but why do some people feel they have to outdo the challenges other people set themselves?

It is a strange thing, nay ludicrous, to see photos of recent ascents of Everest where there are climbers, over fifty or so of them, literally queueing for their turn to reach the summit.  Now, how special do you feel accomplishing something that involves queueing in a long line such as at a theme park, not to mention that you are paying around $50 thousand dollars for the privilege?

Queue to summit Mt Everest

Since the year 2000, we've seen people trying to break all kinds of records.  Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian, jumped from a hot air balloon 39 kilometers above the Nevada desert with a parachute and not only broke the record for the highest ever freefall, but the sound barrier as well.  Such an exercise requires a lot of money as well as a lot of skydiving experience.

Steve Fosset, an American businessman, held world records for five non-stop solo circumnavigations of the world in both a balloon and fixed wing aircraft.  He sadly died in a light plane crash in 2007.

There are people who walk tight ropes between skyscrapers and, also, people who free climb skyscrapers.  There seems to be no end to the way thrill seekers seek their thrills and this leads me to the obvious question.  Why?

Of course, I don't have the answer, but I do have a couple of theories.  One thing I felt that they all must have in common is outrageously good health; that was, until I read about the mountain climber who had suffered spinal injuries and then used his regained health and fitness to test his body to the limit.  I feel that, if you have enough obstacles in your everyday life, you won't have the need to create them.  In his case, I was wrong.

Another theory is boredom, after you have become a wealthy individual and have run out of ways to get your thrills.  I mean, you've gained total financial freedom so now what is there to conquer?  There's a lot to be said for conquering that mortgage or overcoming illness to keep a person gainfully occupied.  It may be less exciting but, at least, there's usually light at the end of the tunnel.

My final theory is also based around those with enough money.  Having conquered the material world, there is one last enemy to face: death, and you don't have to be afraid of death to want to make its acquaintance.  You may just want to know how you'll feel when confronting it and if you have the guts to deal with it.  So, what do you do?  You take part in an activity that brings you as close as dammit to the edge to test your courage and, by the time you've done this a few times, I bet it becomes addictive.  It would sure get your endorphins and adrenalin pumping.  I guess that's what such people are after, having lost the ability to get a thrill from more mundane situations.

If I wanted to seek a thrill such as those poor souls who perished in the submersible, locked into a small, uncomfortable space for hours, all I would need to do is book an economy class ticket on a commercial airliner going from Australia to Europe.  That would take twenty-three hours in a cramped seat.  If I wanted to make it worse, I would just lock myself in the toilet for an hour or two after ten or so hours in the air.  Honestly, what could be worse?

END

THE PERILOUS PURSUIT OF PHYSICAL FITNESS.

Lego Batman with Leg Replacement

 (With Apologies to the Lego Movie)

Sir Isaac Newton was credited with a number of discoveries.  One of these was gravity which was right under everyone's nose but no one thought to give it a name.  It was just considered a fact of life.  When Physics, of whom Newton is the founder, is mentioned as a science, quite often we think of it as something complicated.  It is simply the science of the physical: the interaction of matter and energy.  Newton was not just a scientist but a great entrepreneur.  He took the obvious, packaged it and sold it.

Any word with a 'y' in the middle of it tends to look complicated and intellectual and when 'ph' replaces 'f' it looks even more unfriendly.  Yet physics is fundamental and even more so when we talk about exercise and fitness.

Newton's other discovery was that 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction'.  This was somewhat more enlightened than his gravity theory as he really had to think and observe interactions to come up with it.  The trouble is that athletes don't seem to take this law of nature into account when they pound the pavements, lift weights or make war with inanimate objects such as very large sandbags.

Driving for a living brings me into contact with an enormous number of people and a large percentage of these have suffered exercise related injuries requiring hospital intervention.  Another large percentage have suffered work place injuries.  A large number of men, both young and old have had multiple knee replacements mostly because of sports they have played.  My job has made me very grateful for my good health, although it wasn't for a long time.

I drove a young woman recently who described herself as an endurance athlete.  She was also a busy executive with a husband and young children.  I think that even without the athleticism part, she must have endurance both to work and be a mother.  She had broken her heel in a silly mishap.  I asked her about her knees given the amount of running she did.  "Oh, they're fine", she said.  I explained that I meant how they would be when she grew older.  She really hadn't thought about it.   

That's where the law of equal and opposite reaction comes in.  Her knee cartilages will deteriorate.  She will have put them under unnecessary strain and one day they will complain and refuse to go on.  Being the type she is, she will no doubt have them replaced and start over.  How we do take modern medicine for granted.

I also drove a man in his twenties who had played professional Rugby in England.  He had had four knee replacements and could now no longer run, let alone play football.  You must love your sport to let yourself become crippled by it.

I foresee a time in twenty or so years when the twenty to thirty year-olds of today will be part human and part prosthetic.  But why do this?  What is the point of exercise that degenerates body parts at the expense of supposed fitness?  Isn't there a nice medium?  If you study nature, the hunters, such as large cats, do short term running and long term lying about and snoozing.  They are conserving their energy but remain fit enough to run after prey.  Humans could learn a lot from this.

Mind you we don't have to run after our dinner and this poses a conundrum.  Perhaps we should open a new type of restaurant that makes us pursue the food in order to eat it.  Wouldn't that be fun?  I do find, however, that eating straight after exercise gives me indigestion.  That's probably why hunting animals have a good sleep after eating.  They need all their energy to digest.  For example it can take a month for a python to digest a goat so it just lies where it is and looks deformed.  Mind you I'd kill for its digestive juices as I have trouble eating anything at all.  I eat half a sandwich for my lunch but not all at once.  I graze on it at intervals over three hours.

Humans have become lazy eaters.  As such we must exercise off the results of our consumption.  We buy our food mostly from supermarkets and although these are fraught with danger in the form of small children driving trolleys or running around the aisles, adults who block aisles as they decide on their purchase or elderly men who insist on walking slowly up the centres of aisles and veering this way and that as you try to pass them, this cannot be compared to a jungle.  Well, it comes close, but no killing is allowed no matter how much the temptation.

Bicycling is a lot easier on the knees but the danger of sharing the road with cars brings it into the realm of adventure sport.  Why bungee jump or parachute from a plane if you can just get on your bike and play war games with the traffic?  Some cyclists seem to be at war the moment they take to the treddles.  They weave, they tease and compete and, on top of it all, wear lycra beneath which, if you see them in the right light, there is no underwear. You can then have the pleasure of watching two little buttocks rubbing against one another through the mesh as the rider earnestly pushes the envelope to get up a hill.

And one last word about lycra.  It is the greatest benefit to exercise ever invented.  I found, when I bothered to go to exercise groups in the past, that putting on a lycra garment was so enervating that I really didn't need to exercise afterwards.  If I managed to do so, as I stretched one way, the lycra would fight against me like a good exercise partner.  It's an exterior muscle and clothing item all in one.  Perhaps that's why cyclists wear it; maybe it is doing half of the pushing.

END