02Oct 2024 by Dave Macleod No Comments
[#88 Lesson] The Conundrum of Fear

[#88 Lesson] The Conundrum of Fear

BUCKET LIST, LESSON
This life lesson relates to my previous blog post #88 Swim with Sharks. Swimming with sharks; BASE jumping; driving. Go ahead, rank them in order of most dangerous to least dangerous. These all play a part in this next story. In June 2024 I set off on an adventure to Europe to learn how to fly my tracking suit in a BASE environment. New Zealand does not have massive shear cliffs, so my friends and I head to Europe in the northern hemisphere summer to practice terminal flight. And no, not terminal like “certain death”; terminal like “terminal velocity”. Terminal tracking in Italy While I already had 180 BASE jumps from lower objects, and without a tracking suit, this was a new discipline for me. However, I had been training…
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16Nov 2022 by Dave Macleod No Comments
[#98 Lesson] The Preparation-Fear Correlation

[#98 Lesson] The Preparation-Fear Correlation

LESSON
This life lesson relates to my previous blog #98 Go BASE Jumping. The thing that surprised me the most during my first BASE jump was the fact that my heart was not beating out of my chest. It was elevated, but not excessively. This didn’t make much sense in the moment, but I was overwhelmed with the urge to do it again, so the thought slipped away from my consciousness. It was only on the drive back that my brain had time to make sense of it all. While preparing for my BASE jump, I told myself that it was going to be scary as hell. I had done my first bungy jump at the age of 12 and my heart was racing. When I stepped to the edge of…
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02Nov 2022 by Dave Macleod 2 Comments
#98 Go BASE Jumping

#98 Go BASE Jumping

BUCKET LIST
This bucket list item was completed on 13th December 2020 in undisclosed, New Zealand. I had walked on to the bridge only a few months before, but this time it was different. This time, I was going to be jumping off it. And my body knew it. The moment that my feet touched the railway sleepers and I gazed down the tracks, my heart rate began to pick up. It became elevated, but not excessively. I knew there would be another step change once my body was on the other side of the rail. “Are you ready for me to take your pilot chute?”, Frank enquired. I responded with a concise “Yes.” Frank was set to do a pilot chute assist (PCA), which involves an assistant holding on to the…
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