by Julie Hammonds
I am lingering late over breakfast on a quiet summer morning, talking parasailing with the hotel manager. The brightly colored wings that dot the Alpine sky every sunny day here in Switzerland’s Bernese Alps have frequently caught my eye as I hike. Tim, who is earning his parasailing pilot’s certification at a local [...]

by Melissa Larsen
“Are you trying to tell me,” said Arthur, slowly and with control, “that you originally … made the Earth?”
“Oh yes,” said Slartibartfast. “Did you ever go to a place … I think it was called Norway?”
“No,” said Arthur. “No, I didn’t.”
“Pity,” said Slartibartfast. “That was one of mine. Won an award you [...]

by Peter Bronski
The beep of my altimeter wristwatch rouses me from my sleep at 11:30 pm, five all-too-short hours after I settled in for a nap. I crawl out of the warm cocoon of my sleeping bag, zip open the tent door, pull back the rain fly, and poke my head out into the thin, [...]

By Rebecca L. Dougher
Shane beckons me from the opposite bank of the stream, arms outstretched.
“You can do it,” he shouts over the noise of the rapids. “Just try to land on this rock.”
“You’re out of your mind!” A hard second look at the slippery moss-covered stone isn’t reassuring. Still, it’s the only way: either jump, [...]

By Tom Bentley
Dogs. Man’s best friend, perhaps. Man-on-bicycle’s best friend? I don’t think so. All bicyclists face the occasional pursuing dog, and when an actual chase occurs, it’s easy to give in to blind fear, rather than employ any rational technique to disperse the dogs or the fear. But what if you lived in a [...]

By Jennifer Williams
At low tide, the white sands of Mombasa’s northern beaches stretch nearly half a mile out to sea. The shore is framed by palm trees, run-down hotel buildings, and wooden stalls selling fried cassava chips and cold Coca-Cola; in the distance, the vivid blue of the Indian Ocean is flecked with the faded [...]

by Janet Forman
Tobogganing down the Cresta Run makes skydiving look like knitting.
“It’s a hell of a feeling,” sighs former racecar driver Gunter Sachs, “speed and courage mixed with exuberance.”
“It’s like flying loop de loops in a plane,” avows Raymond McKenzie, a strapping 38-year-old venture capitalist from Barbados. “At some points you think you’re airborne.”
Champion Cresta [...]

by Peter Mandel
How do the hungry drivers of NASCAR fuel up? With Ragu Rich & Meaty Spaghetti Sauce.
I snap off the TV. I flip past the magazine ads screaming about speed and about the men in helmets who achieve it.
I am sure that America’s top drivers burn calories thundering around tracks in sponsored [...]

by Jim Benning
It’s Friday night in a small Tijuana arena, the kind of rickety Mexican structure that can make you misty for American building-and-safety codes, and in the ring before me, masked wrestlers are smacking and flipping and generally abusing one another for my viewing pleasure.
Whap! The great Hijo del Santo goes down. That’s gotta [...]