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Are Extreme Sports an Answer to Shackleton?

Is it crazy to read about Ernest Shackleton's adventures when our modern world lacks real adventure? Everything on earth has been seen. If you were to sign up for XYZ Adventure Tours, they would have you sign legal disclaimers, despite nothing genuinely dangerous being permitted. And you would be encased in safety equipment.

In the world of travel, people who might see themselves as "adventurers" are actually like a lazy student who looks up the answers in the back of the book, rather than attempting to work the problem out on his own. With Benchmark and DeLorme atlases, Wikipedia, websites, blogs, and Google Earth, everything is known.

So are we just looking back at the good old days of Shackleton, when men were made of iron and ships were made of wood, with romantic nostalgia?

But there is still this thing called extreme sports in the modern world; marathon running, peak bagging, bicycle racing, etc. These don't offer the glamor of the unknown, nor are they particularly dangerous. But, as with Shackleton, they do give people a chance to climb way out of their comfort zone.

Actually, when you go outside the comfort zone, you are going into an 'undiscovered country', in a sense. It isn't "undiscovered" in the same sense as it was for Magellan or Shackleton, but it still counts.

I experience "extreme" sports a little bit, when acting like a pseudo-racer in the winter bicycle club in Yuma. There is something of value there. Ordinarily, I would be repelled by the repetition needed to get physically fit. Recall my standard stump speech in favor of not going past the point of diminishing marginal utility. Endurance athletes and racers go way beyond this point.

Perhaps that is the real value of a snowbird winter: to take a vacation from our usual way of thinking even if we like our usual way of thinking.

Comments

XXXXX said…
I would bet that if Shakleton had his choice, he would take your life any day over his.
But he had two mistresses...
XXXXX said…
No wonder he died of a heart attack at 48. He also had a wife.