Toning Down The Honeymoon Adventures

Skydiving Tim: 2003 from Kylie and Tim on Vimeo.

Although I am not an adrenaline junkie, I have always enjoyed some pretty extreme hobbies: skydiving, hang gliding, scuba diving, rock climbing, mountaineering, and ice climbing are some of the highlights on the list. I do them not because of any rush, but because I love to explore new worlds and new experiences, especially those that are more unusual. (I steer away cliché past times since I can experience those vicariously through others.)

So as Kylie and I plan activities for our honeymoon in Puerto Rico, I of course looked into the extreme ones: skydiving, scuba diving, ziplining, caving, and hang gliding. Kylie really wants to do the ziplining and maybe the caving, but decided to pass on the rest.

However, as the wedding approaches (34 days, but who's counting ;), I am finding a new side of me emerging: I am actually quite hesitant to do many of these crazy hobbies! Before it was just me, so if I got hurt it wouldn't be that big of a thing (relatively speaking). But now that I have such a wonderful woman in my life, I feel this inner drive to slow down and take better care of myself.

One story that really echos in my head is that of Tammy Trent, which Kylie recounted to me after she heard her speak at a Women of Faith event. The jist of Tammy's story is that at the age of 22 she married her high school sweetheart. Eleven years later, while the two of them were in Jamaica, her husband died while enjoying one of his extreme hobbies: free diving (diving without oxygen tanks). She tells how he submerged and just never came back up! It took 15hrs of searching for rescue divers to find his body. (You can read her story here and here, among many other places.)

Tammy's story is very powerful. The tragedy that brought it about is not one I would like to voluntarily repeat, especially not on our honeymoon. This means that skydiving, hang gliding, kite-boarding and scuba diving are all out for our Puerto Rico adventure. Instead we're planning on going snorkling, kayaking at night in a bioluminescent bay, biking around Vieques Island, and hiking near Arecibo Observatory. Kylie still wants to do ziplining, so we'll keep that in the itinerary along with maybe caving.