Tired of your quiet routine? How about leaving your computer games behind and taking up an extreme sport?
You can ride a bicycle, right? In that case youre halfway1 to becoming a mountain biker. All you have to do is take your bike off the road and try some rough terrain2. Mountain biking was developed in California in the 1970s and became an Olympic sport in 1996. In the London 2012 games athletes had to navigate3 a 4.7-kilometre track in less than two hours.
Not challenging enough? Skypers jump from aircraft at an altitude of 1,000 to 4,000 metres. You have to be fit but theres no age limit with this sport. Dilys Price from Cardiff went on her first jump aged4 54. The minute she came down she wanted to go up again. I was hooked, said Dilys.
Some adrenaline junkies are even bolder theyve invented base jumping, in which people leap from tall structures, such as buildings or bridges, with a parachute. Many of their stunts5 arent legal, especially in urban areas. Dan Witchalls has jumped off The Shard6 - Londons 310 metre-high skyscraper7 - four times. He says: base jumping is scarier than jumping out of a plane. In a plane theres no perception of height, but when you are standing8 on the edge of the building you can see people and cars - it makes it very real.
It seems theres no lack of imagination when it comes to risking life to look cool and get the heart pounding. Surfing, scuba9 ping, rock climbing How about turning one of your chores into a daredevil pursuit? Extreme ironing isnt for wimps10! Pressing your shirt on TOP of a mountain could be dangerous, depending on the mountain. Extreme ironing is said to have been created in the 1990s in the English town of Leicester by a man who saw a pile of wrinkled clothes and felt bored. That was Phil Shaw who also won the only Extreme Ironing Championships ever held, in Germany in 2002. For him, the thrill of this sport comes from looking at the spectators faces. Shaw says: Sometimes they look confused, sometimes they laugh. Its fun to see how people respond to it.
