Live Oak Blues What happens.

I recently asked an airboater I know if he would be willing to pull me and my kayak at top speed on Newnan’s Lake–a body of water rarely mentioned without the adjective “gator-infested.” I was serious and he played along. “Sure,” he said, “as long as you let me video it.” See, my mind was fixated on the thrill of reaching hull speed in a kayak, and not so much on how this episode must end. Because kayaks don’t really have brakes and the back end of an airboat is more or less wide open…you know, in order to facilitate the kayak-and-sinew-shredding monster propeller in the back.

Turns out I had access to some real-world experience on this experiment from a friend who decided to tow (read: water ski) a canoe behind his boat. As he whipped his buddy back and forth across the wakes, the canoe behind him became airborne, dug nose first into the water, and then launched its occupant 25 feet into the air and into the gator-infested waters of Newnan’s Lake. It did not occur to me to ask him why he or the canoeist decided to do this (it obviously included some planning and ample opportunity for sanity to take hold), because “why” was self-evident. The operative question to me would have been “why not”…without bothering to hang around for the answer.

I have no desire–none–to sky dive or bungee jump or do any of the usual (and comparatively safe) daredevil activities, because I am actually a wimp, who once freaked out while zip-lining. So why the desire to get into situations that are clearly not smart? Is it a death wish? Midlife crisis? The spiking of my fast-depleting stores of testosterone? The answer (and I am not alone, by the way) could be a dissertation. But for the moment, I will chalk it up to over-suburbanization, a species of boredom where instead of yardwork and car washing, I’d rather be climbing a mountain or shooting a rapid or taking some kind of risk I might not come back from.