Plummeting, as a hobby
Skiing didn't make a lot of sense to me when I was younger, it seemed like a lot of effort, gear, and weather conditions to rely upon just to break my dad's ribs- a task that can be accomplished much more economically at a skating rink, and those are open year round. Besides, I'd grown up sledding, and it tended to accomplish the same goals of delivering you from point A to point B provided B was lower than A, and both were freezing.
Strapping wood to each foot, climbing a mountain, and aiming oneself optimistically at the gaps in the rocks never seemed to have any major payoff, but then I got to thinking. Some humans like to go very very fast, and prior to the invention of motorized vehicles, mutant horses (still in progress), and trebuchets, the only real means of propulsion we had on hand was good ol' fashioned gravity.
So, what, centuries? Millenia maybe? At some point in the past some guys look over a cliff, and figure "Well nuts, it's going to be at least another 200 years before we invent the parachute. But hey, we have branches and hills, perhaps these can be harnessed..."
Presumably this was before the advent of Goretex, hot cocoa, and expensive lodges, however, so I'm still up in the air as to how they didn't die of hypothermia or just get miserable from having snow-soaked pants. Maybe they used all the money they saved on lodges to buy bonfire wood.
Anyway, I went skiing this weekend. Great time was had, pictures incoming later.
Strapping wood to each foot, climbing a mountain, and aiming oneself optimistically at the gaps in the rocks never seemed to have any major payoff, but then I got to thinking. Some humans like to go very very fast, and prior to the invention of motorized vehicles, mutant horses (still in progress), and trebuchets, the only real means of propulsion we had on hand was good ol' fashioned gravity.
So, what, centuries? Millenia maybe? At some point in the past some guys look over a cliff, and figure "Well nuts, it's going to be at least another 200 years before we invent the parachute. But hey, we have branches and hills, perhaps these can be harnessed..."
Presumably this was before the advent of Goretex, hot cocoa, and expensive lodges, however, so I'm still up in the air as to how they didn't die of hypothermia or just get miserable from having snow-soaked pants. Maybe they used all the money they saved on lodges to buy bonfire wood.
Anyway, I went skiing this weekend. Great time was had, pictures incoming later.