I’ve recently accepted that I might be bad at risk assessment and this post is kind of about that.

When I started writing for the awesome travel blog GoSeeWrite, Amanda from A Dangerous Business suggested that I write about adventure travel. Because, you know, I have this reputation for being adventurous. Okay, cool, but my first thought was, Amanda, maybe YOU should write about adventure travel, because you’re the one who has gone BUNGEE JUMPING. MULTIPLE TIMES. HOLY MOLY CRAZY PANTS.

There are some things I will just never do and bungee jumping is one of them. There’s the whole heights issue, for starters, and I have a major hang-up about heights. Major, major hang-up. And then there’s the free-fall-to-being-jerked-around-on-the-end-of-a-string-like-fish-bait aspect which everyone swears is not nearly as unpleasant as it looks but I definitely DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. I mean, seriously, it looks horrible. But the truth of the matter is that nothing, LITERALLY NOTHING, could force me to jump off a 200ft platform with a rope tied around my waist. Nothing. So I tend to think of people who bungee jump as being a whole-nother-category kind of of brave.

Unrelated to bungee jumping, but Colorado is pretty!

Of course, the truth of the matter is that people rarely die bungee jumping. At least not with established companies. In fact, people rarely even get hurt. As someone who routinely rides my bike into trees at 30 miles per hour and almost always has at least stare-inducing bruise occupying the length of my thigh, I’m probably not the one you should ask for a risk assessment. Because, given the choice between bungee jumping with a company that has never, ever killed anyone, or going tubing on a river that has claimed multiple lives THIS YEAR because of abnormally high water levels, I’m going to choose the tubing. Because, you know, I’m an idiot. (Although to be fair, we did not know that anyone had died, but really that’s no excuse.)

In retrospect, our time in Durango was wrought with activities that other people would probably consider dangerous but somehow managed to not raise any alarm bells for me or any of my traveling companions. I am, however, quite thankful that we chose to do dangerous shit in Durango, as it really helps with the whole alliterative title thing.

We kicked off our dangerous-streak by picking up a smelly hobo on the side of a curvy mountain road at 10 o’clock at night. He turned out not to be an ax murderer (*phew*) but he was extremely intoxicated and supposedly legally blind . Apparently his “friends” had stolen his glasses and left him in the middle of nowhere CO between Ourey and Durango. We were rather concerned that he was going to vomit in the back seat of the van (which doubles as Sean and Emily’s bed) but we felt like good samaritans for driving him over the sketchy pass.

We did, however, deposit him somewhat unceremoniously on the side of the road when we reached the turn-off to our campsite and progressed to Dangerous Thing #2 — backing a 35-foot sprinter van down a teeny gravel road with a huge drop-off. In the dark, no less. This was probably the moment when my risk assessment instincts were working most effectively, which is to say, I was shitting myself. Sean, however, demonstrated excellent backing-up-large-vehicles skills and maneuvered us to safety before telling us about the last time he backed the sprinter down something steep and gravelly, in which the tires lost traction and he slid 20 feet into a tree. Let’s just say there were no trees to catch us in this particular situation.

Dangerous Thing #3 was the next day’s bike ride, a ridiculous descent off Kennebec Pass. I don’t usually qualify mountain biking as dangerous (when you do something every day it seems pretty normal) but the top of Kennebec is TERRIFYING. But it’s also incredibly fun and you should ride it. But be prepared for what mountain bikers like to call “exposure” and what the rest of the world calls “mind-crushing cliff faces that spell instant death.” But it’s all worth it for the views? And it’s not bungee jumping so you don’t actually have to jump off the cliff, thank god.

Photo: Nick Ontiveros

Dangerous Thing #4 was our accidentally-epic tubing experience. I’m not a huge fan of white water (I prefer my rocks to be dry, thank you, and also, breathing is nice), so for me, ideal tubing experience is, you know, calm. It should be kind of like a day at the beach only with movement. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t have to put your beer in a nalgene bottle and strap it to your tube so you don’t lose it. The occasional rapid would be okay, but our experience tubing the Animas took it a little too far.

Actually, it was completely fine until the last ten minutes, so I suspect most people who tube this river get out a bit before we did. And, to be fair, I probably would have found the last ten minutes to be fun, too, had I managed to stay in my tube. Sadly, I am massively uncoordinated so I fell out in the first big rapid and got dragged downstream, my feet and knees scraping on every single sharp, rough rock as I tried to scrabble my way back into my tube. It was about what I imagine sharing a washing machine with your little brother’s rock collection would feel like.

Then, once I finally got back into my tube, I promptly got stuck in an eddy and could not extract myself. (HEY, steering a tube is hard!!) Luckily a kayaker came along and nudged my tube back into the current with his boat. Thank you, bemused-and-slightly-annoyed kayaker. Without you, I would probably still be there, going in circles and cursing like a crazy person. At the time I didn’t really fear for my life (although perhaps I should have?), but I was a little banged up and annoyed about losing my favorite shirt and getting whacked in the face by my own beer. Goddamn you, karma, you suck.

What about you? Bungee jumping or mountain biking? How do you assess risk when you travel?