Adventure Sports

So we got back to Queenstown the other day after 5 days of being gone, and realized the summer crowd has infiltrated the city.  Seriously over the time span of a few days, thousands of people made it into the city.  As we were sitting in town eating delicious protein in burger form (we just got back from hiking and all we wanted to eat was hamburgers) we realized how uninformed we are living in our bubble.  We don’t watch the news or have internet readily available so we are able to check world events.  What we do keep up on is the Lakes Weekly Bulletin.  This is basically a Queenstown area classified with coupons for restaurants and bars in the neighborhood.  We love reading the bulletin so much it was to the point that Ash, our Roommates, and I were all sitting in a coffee shop reading our individual bulletin catching up on the sales and coupons as soon as it was delivered to the shop. 

Well during one of these regular pow-wow’s in the coffee shop we decided to make a list of things that we want to get accomplished before leaving.  The list includes but is not limited to:

*Blowing Bubbles in the Park  *Selling Rice Crispies  *Camping  *River Surfing  *Skydiving  *Finger Painting

In order for Ash and I to get a working visa here in New Zealand we were required to  

buy insurance.  Basically it just covers incidentals, but all in all it seemed like fairly good coverage.  Well after we purchased the insurance we were reading what was not covered.  Basically it does not cover any injury related to adventure sports including hiking, bungy jumping, skydiving, mountain biking, etc.  After reading these clauses we were a little depressed, because those were all of the things we were planning on doing while we were in the adventure capital of the world.   We decided we were just going to be careful, but mainly we found a loophole in the insurance policy.  When skydiving, the participant does not get injured…. they die.  So, we won’t need insurance for that anyway.  Serious loophole. 

The other day Ash, Dana, Tatty, and I all jumped out of a perfectly good airplane at 15,000ft.  You may think this sounds like an act of insanity, but it was seriously one of the most amazing experiences.  I was so excited and there really wasn’t enough time to second guess jumping.  First of all you are strapped to the front of a huge man, and basically he leans into you and you fall out of an airplane.  There isn’t enough time to turn back.  Tatty reminded me “It is exactly like all of the dreams I have had about flying”.  I am now considering a profession in skydiving, but that maybe expensive and time consuming.  But hey it’s worth looking into.  Mom, I know this freaks you out, but that’s why I didn’t tell you I was going before hand.  I just told you now so you would know I lived.