Let me rewind a little and introduce myself. My name is Josh Aggars. I’m a traveller, surfer, rock climber, writer, dog walker and bbq extraordinaire. I love my friends, family, the love of my good lady and beer. I am a simple man of simple means in many ways and yet, for some reason, I seem to always dream up ways to challenge my biggest fear; Heights!
It’s a given that my mind and body go all wobbly when I’m exposed to certain distances from the ground. Such heights can be innocuous at times. I can be but 5 metres up and my legs start going all Bruce Grobbelar on me. Other times I can be at the top of a skyscraper tilting over the side and, whilst not 100% comfortable, I’m nothing compared to the stage fright of the aforementioned.
In short I suffer from vertigo. A silly condition which basically means I don’t trust my brain not to jump if given half a chance. If there is a decent barrier in the way I am fine. In fact I’ll do a Russian Cossack dance and act all blasé. Without the barrier I’m on my knees clinging to the nearest person wailing in my Hollywood best ham acting ‘please don’t let me fall, please don’t let me fall, I don’t wanna die, I DON’T WANT TO DIE!’
So how was it that I found myself 15,000 feet up with my legs dangling out of a plane I hear you ask? Well you see it all started when me and my compadres went to New Zealand, land of the ‘let’s do anything for an adrenalin kick.’
The fact is you can’t go to New Zealand and not do something stupid. It’s a given. There’s white water rafting, river sledging, parapenting, ridiculously high bungy jumping, sky diving, you name it, it’s all there. All it takes is you, a couple of whisky’s and a bit of bravado and before you know it you’re suddenly hurtling past jagged rocks at silly speeds whilst strapped into some harness or other. Excellent!