what is your limit for risk-taking?

No motorcycles, no skydiving, no bungee jumping, no recreational risky shit.

I had a girlfriend that really wanted to go skydiving and I repeatedly refused. "Nope. You can go, but not me. I'll be on the ground cheering for you." Eventually we broke up (for non skydiving reasons) and she wound up dating a skydiving instructor and jumped out of planes willy-nilly for a while. The instructor was also a motorcycle guy. Eventually he crashed, got brain damage and they broke up.

I was a chimney sweep for a while, and that was sketchy. Worst job I ever had. The boss was a scientologist and when we got rained out he would read to us from scientology children's books. He also sold bogus vitamin supplements. I got used to going up on two or three story houses with slippery moss, or frost. On my first day, I was working with a guy named Ron. He took me to his favorite lunch spot but they only took cash and I didn't have any, so he let me borrow a few bucks. Later that day it came up that he was an ex-con. I asked him what happened and he said that a guy owed him money, wouldn't pay him, and he busted up his knees with a baseball bat. I assured him that I would pay him back the next day.

A couple of years ago I broke my leg really badly (due to no fault of Ron's). My femur shattered right below my hip, all the way through so that my leg was at a wonky angle and any time I tried to move the weight of my leg would pull on the break and I was screaming. Like... before that I knew that there was really bad pain that could be experienced, but I had never felt REALLY bad pain. It redefined what "hurting" was for me and I never, ever, ever want to feel that again. I'm a more careful driver after that because I'm scared of getting in a wreck. I do not want to go on a roof, even though it's something I used to do professionally. I try to evaluate risk logically now, and I know that it's really easy to get too comfortable on a roof and get hurt badly, or worse.

I was a facilities manager for a history park in San Jose. A guy that worked under me fell off a roof trying to patch a leak in the rain. I wasn't working that day and what he did was stupid, but I might have done the same thing at the time. He broke his back and I had to meet with the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration people and insurance people while they investigated what happened. I remember one old guy, I think he was an insurance investigator. I got him to talking. He was going to retire soon and he had seen some shit. His biggest piece of advice was "if you ever fall into a wood-chipper, you want to go in head first." He talked a lot about people breaking their necks on roofs.

Having said all of that, I'm still very comfortable on ladders and lifts. I can be on a spider lift, 30 feet in the air and I'm fairly comfortable because those things are well made. But I'm the guy hassling the other guys to wear their harnesses and keep their asses in the cage.

I'll save time and skip ahead to the part where my friend says this...

"I'm totally shocked by what happened! He's made hundreds of jumps. It seemed like he was having chute trouble?"

So wait, I grasp the import of this statement, but I'm a little unclear on the subject: Did your friend's boyfriend die, or someone else from their skydiving group?

Excellent post though, Elvis Telecom.

inspired by the submarine nonsense, how far are you willing to go in terms of life's dangers? would you (have you) skydived? kayaked in dangerous seas? skied down deadly slopes?

or are you like me and you prefer everything to have a safety valve?

I know skiing terrified me the one time I did it on the easiest slope, I have a fear of heights so anything I do regarding heights better be at a theme park under heavy regulation for their rides. idk if I've ever done anything 'dangerous' other than live in Florida.

curious to see who ILX's Evel Knievels are

― the manwich horror (Neanderthal)

i'm sorry neanderthal but i am once more going to trans this shit up

as far as physical risk, i'm dyspraxic and uncoordinated. kayaking and skiing are right out, in dangerous seas or otherwise. i do wish i was better coordinated. i tried to do some self-defense training and honestly, if i find myself in a situation where i have to fight, i'm going to get my ass beat, even if i fight dirty (and if somebody is physically assaulting me, you fucking bet i am going to fight dirty).

i'm not all that afraid of being physically attacked, though. that's the whole, look, i know i sound like a wonky liberal nerd always talking about kahneman's research but to me, i work professionally in data analysis and risk management and knowing that there are _cognitive biases in how we assess and manage risk_ has been really helpful to me.

when i first transitioned i didn't want to leave the house for the first three months (after that COVID started and I wasn't leaving the house anyway). i was terrified that just, like, random people would come up to me on the street and shoot me or start beating the shit out of me. generally speaking that doesn't happen. part of self-defense training, the part i _can_ do, is risk assessment. since i know i can't fight, i get the fuck out of there before shit goes down.

i guess you could call that being "risk-averse". i wouldn't. because i _did_ start leaving the house again. and, i mean... i transitioned. that's the thing, my ex asked me once, look, all of this gender stuff, it seems to be really worrying and upsetting to you, are you sure you want to do this? that by the way is a shitty question to ask, don't ask someone questioning their gender that, she was pretty new to the whole thing and didn't understand how shitty a question that is. she knows better now.

i mean, transition is one of the bigger risks a person can take. you skydive and skydiving is actually, you know, it's more safe than driving a car, you know? a lot more people die in car crashes, even _proportionately_, than die from skydiving. and partly is that, you know, you jump out of an airplane, you pull the cord, the chute comes out, and after that you're back on the ground living your normal life.

me? no direction home, you know? (and bob, it feels pretty fucking good, a lot of the time. for the record.) a lot of the things i've done in my life, i still can't believe i actually did them. but i did them.

in some of those cases, and transition is one of them, is because i was more scared of _not_ transitioning. there's this thing that goes around trans spaces called the Null HypotheCis, and it's a perfect application of the null hypothesis imo, i mean it's like gibby haynes says at the beginning of "sweat loaf", "SATAN SATAN SATAN".

wait.

like this is the one question so many of us ask over and over and over again, yeah, but am i _sure_? we're all conditioned to ask it. we're all conditioned to be afraid of, you know, _irreversible damage_. and everything is irreversible! whether you did something or didn't do something, you don't get that time back. if i change my mind, that doesn't render what i did in the past null and void.

of course some things... because, right, i mean not only am i trans, not only did i transition, but i got my dick cut off, right? was i sure that was the right thing to do? hell no! i mean i don't see how one _can_ be sure of something like that. i mean i was _pretty_ sure it was the right thing to do, but can you imagine waking up from something like that and realizing that it _wasn't_ the right thing to do? i can, vividly, because it was a real possibility. i'd say having that procedure performed is one of the bigger risks a person with that particular anatomical feature can take. and for me, it paid off, the results are fantastic, it's better than i could have imagined because, again, it's not really something one can really _imagine_ without having experienced it. but the risk was there.

the point is one of our cognitive biases is that we systematically underestimate the cost of _not_ doing something we want to do. well, i did, i did for a long time. when i thought about transition, i thought of all the bad things that could happen, most of which have, in fact, happened, and i really didn't understand why anybody would _do_ that, why anybody would take that risk.

well i did it because i fucking wanted to be happy, you know? that's why people take risks, because there's some benefit to it that we wouldn't get otherwise. if i take a risk i'm gonna take it in the safest possible way, like, i take prep, if i don't feel safe i'm gonna get out of there even if i can't say _why_ exactly i don't feel safe, but some risks are just worth taking.

random people would come up to me on the street and shoot me or start beating the shit out of me. generally speaking that doesn't happen. part of self-defense training, the part i _can_ do, is risk assessment. since i know i can't fight, i get the fuck out of there before shit goes down.

totally. when i was younger i would totally talk back / start arguments with strangers who were probably not a good idea to engage? (I once did this with cops. Also a bad idea.) Now I am much more focused on de-escalation, not engaging, if I catch someone breaking into my car ... death is definitely irreversible. This woman who was a "total comrade" a couple months back caught someone breaking into her car in the parking lot at the bank I go to ... she chased the guy, who hopped into a car idling on the street, and she ended up getting dragged, and she didn't make it. ... it was actually really disturbing when I heard about it, because I had been at that bank only a few hours after this happened, and I had no idea this horrible thing had happened right there ... everyone was just going about their day ... I found out about it that night from a friend and later I think sleeve posted about it ... anyway, the idea that one's life can be "erased" like that.

One risk I don't take anymore and it sounds a bit limiting maybe is unless it's just completely unavoidable I won't drive anywhere late at night. Related to bad driving around LA,you periodically hear about drivers who get blindsided by a street race and wind up killed. Happened to a wife's coworker a couple years back. I hear cars going by here late at night probably 80-90 mph, because it's an open road, and I cringe bc I'm waiting for the sound of a collision.

I think one mistake people make is assuming others out there on the roads and in other situations are going to be rational, caring, not a sociopath, not a narcissist etc etc

So wait, I grasp the import of this statement, but I'm a little unclear on the subject: Did your friend's boyfriend die, or someone else from their skydiving group?

This goes along with Elvis' "normalization of deviance," but with a splash of stupidity.

A month ago, I went on a big hike on Blue Mountain. Got to the very end of the trail, where I expected from the map there to be a big loop back to the trailhead. Instead, there was a "Trail Closed" sign.

I wasn't about to walk all the way back from where I had just hiked! And I noticed that the other side of the sign said "Trail Closed". That wasn't true, since I had just hiked four miles up from the trailhead. Ergo, maybe this sign was left over from the trail's construction and hadn't been taken down yet.

About two miles later is where I came across the path grader. Then the guys with rakes and blowers. I had to clap my hands loudly to get the attention of the guy in the backhoe. I kept going down the unfinished trail because the young fellas didn't say I couldn't.

About eight miles that day. Carried no water.

For the next week, I mapped out a route on the Ouachita National Trail, which extends about 230 miles. I was only going to do 16 miles roundtrip. So I packed TWO bottles of water.

I am a moron.

Made great time on the eight miles to the turnaround point, about three hours. Took me seven to get back to the car.

Would you believe that during that time, it never really crossed my mind that I was getting so gassed because I didn't have enough water? That my organs were fighting to stay hydrated? That my frequent rests on boulders in the woods weren't just about fatigue, but about self-preservation? I just thought I had hiked too far!

(And then there was the thunderstorm. It was like Night on Bald Mountain out there with the lightening. They say the last place you want to be during a thunderstorm is under a tree, but where the hell do you go inside a national forest?)

I expected to be sore the next day, but I hobbled around the office for a week. Very humbling.

Yesterday, I hiked 14.5 miles on the trail. Had plenty of water, even a water filter for the streams. After I'd hiked the trail, I used the forest roads as express routes back to the car. My new motto was "It's okay to test your limits, as long as you don't exceed your limits."

It can be scary, like tripping acid and forgetting that you're tripping. You can get so far into the hike, and your brain just starts making jumps in cognitive logic that before you know it, you're crouched on a rock underneath an IKEA bag during a lightening storm, going "This is fine."

I feel like there's a mechanism in our brain that likes to troll us into forgetting about water, even if we bring it with us.

Also goddamn at the number of miles you hiked!

Before I scrolled up thought I was going to find an Aimless post.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I am fine with a great majority of risks— I've done all the drugs one can do without needles, I've hopped on and jumped off moving freight trains, I've hiked to the middle of nowhere with no reception without telling anyone, I've completed some of the scariest ridge hikes on O'ahu, bungee-jumped, jumped off of bridges and reservoirs into uncertain water, bombed through red lights on my bicycle, sailed into open water, etc etc.

Despite a lot of what I just wrote, I will say that the majority of the risks that I currently take are deeply related to the sport in which I engage the most, rock climbing. I'm not trying to free solo anything too tall, but I have climbed some high-ball boulders (~25-30 ft) with only the flimsiest of protection beneath me.

I nearly died because of a genetic cancer in 2019, and while I'd prefer to live— and here's the cheesy part— I'm also keenly aware that many of the things that I enjoy most in this life involve some risk, and I'd rather get hurt doing something I enjoy than be hit by a car while crossing the street.

Gregarious shopkeep chided me for not having a cellphone cover. I felt like Johnny Knoxville for the rest of the day.

thought I was going to find an Aimless post

Nope, but the sorts of things pplains described are hard-won lessons, most of which I learned decades ago by making my own blunders. It's always better to learn as much as you can from others' mistakes, but it's scary personal experience that burns those lessons into your brain. There's little excuse for making the same basic errors repeatedly.

My two top bugaboos when I'm hiking are hypothermia and dehydration and I take early steps to avoid either of them. The other big reason for fatalities among hikers are falls and injuries, but the only preventive for those are alertness and an abiding sense of caution, both of which are badly impaired by hypothermia and dehydration. So, there you go.

I went on a solo camping trip about 15 years ago on the Benton MacKaye Trail. Maybe about 6-7 miles in, but a lot of up and down. Uncharacteristically, I neglected to pack enough water. I don't know that I've felt anything as urgent as the thirst I felt by the time I got back to the car the next day. If I had been farther in, I might have been in trouble (and might have resorted to drinking unfiltered, muddy creek water).

There is a podcast called The Sharp End where folks tell their stories about backcountry accidents, near misses, and situations that grew out of hand. Episodes are usually good quality, frightening as hell, and fascinating in the forensics of when things go all wrong.
https://www.thesharpendpodcast.com

My perception after reading about many backcountry rescues (& fatalities) is that the commonest story is one of multiple small errors in judgment stacked one upon another until, compounded, they amount to a dire situation. Much less usual is one big catastrophic turn of events that was not possible to foresee or forestall.

For me, it’s “does this risky thing rely on my skills/coordination/strength/etc” vs luck

Eg I don’t drive because I don’t think I pay enough attention to my surroundings and have a poor reaction time. But I’d go tandem skydiving (maybe).

Also depends on my perception of the risk statistically - my perception is that sky diving is fairly safe but flying in tiny planes has a high crash rate. Seems like there’s a news report about a small plane crashing once a week but don’t remember the last time I heard about a sky diver dying. Hot air balloons I’m on the fence about.

I'll go out on an Irish summer in sandals and no socks so my feet freeze.sure socks would just get wet.
Bloomin danger freak innit.

i had a colleague who was a formation skydiver, at a national level from what i gather. most weekends he'd throw himself out a perfectly good plane several times. was interesting seeing the replies to his facebook post the first time his main chute got snarled up (basically it was like a club you joined)

i went on a hot air balloon ride with my dad and grandma for our birthdays (all in the same month) when i was 10 (dad was 40, grandma was 70) honestly wasn't scared at all -- none of us were -- it's not actually very scary tbh, there's no adrenaline involved. we went up in a blimp once too. both were quite placid experiences.

beyond that i will keep my risk-taking habits to myself

I have acrophobia so being miles up in the air for a long period of time and actually feeling the outdoor elements while I do it (as opposed to being in a plane) still makes me break into cold sweats.

But I'm less fearful than I used to be after many a rollercoaster