Invincible

If I stop to think about it, I am aware of how fragile life is. I know, as Richard Dawkins has written, there are infinitely more ways to be dead than there are to be alive. But often my experience of every-day life does not seem to concur. In fact, sometimes I have to conciously remind myself that I am actually not invinvible.

Ten days ago, back in Brisbane, while cycling to work on a Monday morning I was hit bit a car. Well, to be strictly accurate, I hit a car. I was cycling along the side of Ipswich Road (the only reason I was riding in that location was that road works have destroyed large portions of the south-east bikeway, but I won't get started on that here). I was travelling perhaps 40km\h, when the car beside me decided to turn left into a driveway. As I was directly beside the vehicle on its left, I was trapped with nowhere to go other than hurtling into the passenger-side front door. I had almost no time to brake, and the majority of my velocity was still present at impact. As it was a 4WD-style vehicle (an SUV as they would call it here in California), my head struck the passenger's window (chalk one up for mandatory helmet laws) and I found myself lying on my back on the road - my kinetic energy having been very quickly transformed into a lovely cocktail comprising a splash of noise, a sprinkling of heat, a dash of gravel-rash and a side-serve of bruised hip. Having assuaged the occupants of the vehicle of their fears that they had done me some permanent damage, I continued on my journey, cursing my bad luck and the fact that I was going to be five minutes later to work. It wasn't till a few hours later that I began to reflect on the many, many ways this could of turned out much, much worse.

Fast-forward six days, and I am in California with Doug and Geli (M-A's brother and his wife). Doug decides he and I will go mountain-biking for the day, up in the Soquel Demonstration Forest. Now Doug is a far more experienced mountain-biker than I (as is anyone who has ever owned a mountain-bike, sat on a mountain-bike, or even played a mountain-biking video game), but I wasn't about to let this deter me from trying to keep up with him. Perhaps, in hindsight, the result was predictable.

A warning for the kids at home: don't attempt a somersault while riding a mountain-bike.

Although this did get me to slow down considerably for the remainder of the ride (unfortunately, but not suprisingly, this fall happened rather early on, in the less difficult terrain), the fact is I completed another few hours of similar, but even more dangerous behaviour than that which had just caused me to part with some of my own blood. Once again, this most obvious of sensory feedback (in the form of physical pain) that the activity I was undertaking was a potential threat to my existence did not cause me to cease it. Once again, it was not until a few hours later that I reflected on the fact that had those sprockets, which made a series of punctures both above and below my eyes, taken a slightly different path across my face, things could have turned out significantly worse.

As humans have evolved, we have developed a few useful mechanisms to give us the maximum chance of survival.
Pain; the body telling the brain 'I am being physically damaged, please attempt to stop this from happening'.
Fear; an emotional response to a threatening situation that causes a number of physical changes in the body, proven to increase the chances of surviving the situation (ideally by removing oneself from the location).
Why is that modern humans not only ignore these inbuilt warnings, but actively pursue them in the name of recreation? Do we really think we are invincible, or our day-to-day lives so boring that we need to remind ourselves we can die in order to remind ourselves we are alive? Is adrenaline addictive?

I don't know, but the day after we hiked up to a place called Castle Rock, in the Santa Cruz mountains and went rock-climbing.

And tomorrow we leave for Tahoe to go snowboarding.

Invincible!