Abbie Wightwick column.Byline: By Abbie Wightwick As someone who feels the best place to view a mountain is from the bottom in a deckchair deckchair n → tumbona deckchair deck n → chaise longue deckchair n → sedia a sdraio (weather permitting), I am baffled by climbers and lovers of all danger sports. I admire them for doing something I would never dare do and am happy to admit I am a cowardly custard where all physical risks are concerned. Like all good cowards I adore the thrill of being an armchair adventurer and have spent many happy hours with a bag of lemon sherbets and the real-life escapades of people such as Ellen MacArthur Dame Ellen Patricia MacArthur, DBE (born July 8, 1976) is an English sailor from Whatstandwell near Matlock in Derbyshire, now based in Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. She is best known as a solo long-distance yachtswoman who, on February 7, 2005, broke the world record for the (she of the alarming home video as she sailed single-handed and tearfully round the globe) and Joe Simpson Joe Simpson may be:
It's been a bad week for the fearless. Pauline Richards, the record-breaking skysurfer, died after plunging 14,000ft from a plane in Australia. Skysurfing sky·surf·ing n. The sport of performing maneuvers or stunts during free fall while riding on a skyboard. sky is the most terrifying sport imaginable. Pictures of Pauline in action show her apparently surfing in space hundreds of feet above cities. Skysurfers do just what they claim - they surf the currents in the sky. Horrid, invisible things too high up to contemplate without feeling sick. Just what is it that makes people do these things? There is surely a measure of insanity in assuming you can fly like a bird, stroll up Everest or contend with 60ft waves and get away with it? Perhaps those that do it simply have the bottle to contend with the same fear that keeps me rooted to the spot. Or is it that they are simply born fearless? It's not that I am scared of everything. I have gone to places where I have risked danger, but it was from people rather than the elements. I have walked in parts of South America where kidnapping was a real threat and visited Israel when bombing was a daily occurrence. Maybe fear is different for everyone. I'm stupid enough to believe I could perhaps persuade a Colombian bandit bandit: see brigandage. not to kidnap me but am too scared to go on a Ferris wheel. Perhaps climbers believe they can persuade the elements not to hurl them off a mountain. Perhaps they can " Just as I cannot understand their bravery it seems some of them cannot comprehend a lack of it. I was once taken on a hair-raising excursion by a boyfriend who was convinced I would share his love of sheer drops into oblivion. I had tried telling him that the top deck of a bus was as far as I usually went but it was to no avail. Blind love and stupidity found me hovering precariously on a tiny ledge hundreds of feet above freezing waves lapping the cliffs below. In a black panic I clutched the ground and refused to move. After slowly inching to safety convinced of my imminent death, I finally persuaded him that climbing was not my pigeon. Those in the know say that taking physical risk is in-built. If all humans were snivelling sniv·el intr.v. sniv·eled or sniv·elled, sniv·el·ing or sniv·el·ling, sniv·els 1. To sniffle. 2. To complain or whine tearfully. 3. To run at the nose. n. 1. cry babies like me, then we would never have crawled out of the primeval slime. My answer to that is simply that the slime has gone and I'm not keen to recreate it even though I have total admiration for those that do. Let's hope Pauline's having fun in the great surf in the sky. She deserves it. We need people like her to show us what can be done, even if most of us would never dare contemplate it. |
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