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I had a close call this summer whitewater rafting on the Upper Animas River in Colorado and it has caused me to re-think every serious risk I take and has chang

I had a close call this summer whitewater rafting on the Upper Animas River in Colorado and it has caused me to re-think every serious risk I take and has changed me in a big way. I was participating in a multi-day trip run by one of the local guiding outfits through the Upper section of the river, a much more difficult and serious undertaking than the Lower Animas, which is frequently run by average day-tripping tourists. We were on the No Name Rapid [1] and our boat capsized at the entrance to the rapid. I was stuck below the boat, my body somehow entangled in rigging, and was dragged underwater for some distance through a very fierce class V rapid. I was finally able to free myself enough to get my mouth above water and breathe, close to drowning. I managed to fully free myself and swam to shore at the first opportunity. When I made it, I kissed the ground and promised that I would never needlessly risk my life in the pursuit of adrenaline again. I cried like a baby when I returned home that evening and held my kids and wife again. Prior to this trip, I had done many adventurous and dangerous activities: rock climbing, ice climbing, lots of mountaineering, off-road driving, backcountry skiing... it really brings it all into perspective when you have a close call. All of that adrenaline-chasing just seems completely ridiculous to me now. [1] The No Name Rapid. We capsized at the spot pictured at around 0:04s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjO37ABQ6mI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjO37ABQ6mI

mark_h 9y ago
I have a couple of friends, both white-water guides and accomplished outdoorsmen, and they both put whitewater in a different category of risk: you can do everything right, and still die just due to the unpredictability of it. One of them said he had an instructor who basically said "if you stick with this long enough, either you'll die or someone you know will". They were both in the latter category.
- auxym 9y ago
  A pretty popular avalanche safety book [1] has, in the introduction, an actuarial table of your survival probability if you keep going out in avalanche terrain x days a year, year after year... [1] http://www.mountaineersbooks.org/Staying-Alive-in-Avalanche-Terrain-2nd-Edition-P512.aspx http://www.mountaineersbooks.org/Staying-Alive-in-Avalanche-...
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  Yeah, I've heard both wingsuiting and ice climbing described similarly. Possibly not as high-risk, at least for ice climbing, but they have the same issue with random disaster. If you hit a death block somewhere, that's the end, and lifelong ice climbers build up a lot of chances at that no matter how good they are.
- ganeshkrishnan 9y ago
  It depends on the class of rapids you navigate through. I have done couple in Himalayas below class 5 and in most of them the guide said the risks are pretty minimal.
  - rhombocombus 9y ago
    That said, it's a river. You don't get to choose when bad luck hits. I have been a paddler for most of my life, and I have paddled over flatwater sections that have killed people just as handily as if they were a waterfall or a class VI rapid. We go to great lengths to be conscientious and meticulous in our preparation, and most of the time it pays off. I have run whitewater for many years in rafts and kayaks, and seen folks get hurt, but one of the worst injuries I have seen took place in two feet of calm water. I still go out, and I take my family on the river, but I always try to be meticulous in my preparation. That doesn't prevent calamity, but nothing will do that.
emerged 9y ago
Had an experience like this while surfing, years ago. I trusted a friend and went out surfing when it was double overhead. Had no business doing that, being a fumbling idiot on a board but trusted him. Made it out and caught a wave and wiped out -- can remember fighting the white water for what felt like 20 minutes, tumbling end over end and trying to time my gasps and keep cool. Just hoping I'd be washed inland if I just kept balancing the conservation of energy with forward progress. Life isn't a joke and we shouldn't take it trivial. There are such joys all around us which don't require unnecessary high risks.
- nanodeath 9y ago
  "double overhead"?
  - olivermarks 9y ago
    http://www.surfline.com/surf-science/wave-heights---forecaster-blog_22495/ http://www.surfline.com/surf-science/wave-heights---forecast...
  - bebop 9y ago
    If you stand 6' tall then double overhead is a 12' wave (generally). Kinda depends on Hawaiian vs mainland scale, but pretty good size to be sure.
tootie 9y ago
My very first whitewater rafting experience I went overboard on the first rapid. Boat just disappeared from under me and I was underwater not knowing which way was up. I had a lifevest and was nowhere near drowning, but it pretty well soured me on adventure sports for the rest of my life.
dvcrn 9y ago
Nowhere near that close for me and a lot more soft, but still one of these “oh shit” moments was when I decided to go swimming when waves were bigger than usual due to a coming storm. It was all fun until I realized I wasn’t able to swim back to the shore to where I can stand. Every time I tried, a wave knocked me further into the ocean and my leftover stamina kept dropping. I was freaking out and had no idea how to get out of there. Luckily the waves went smaller for some time and I was able to swim back to where I was able to feel the ground and pushed from there. I knew that in the worst case the coastguard or other swimmers would have jumped in but still.
- enriquto 9y ago
  It is better to swim parallel to the coast until you find an easier place to approach. Fighting the currents is exhausting.
  - crocal 9y ago
    I confirm. I grew up near the Atlantic Ocean, in an area of high current. It is something that was taught to us as teenagers.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I think knowing that and having the presence of mind to do it as you drown are two different things.
  - 725686 9y ago
    I found that the hard way. I was caught in an outward current and was desperately trying to swim towards the beach with waves constantly hammering me. When I was about to drown a lifeguard appeared from nowhere and dragged me sideways out of the current and then towards the beach.
- tarsinge 9y ago
  Also waves come grouped in series of 3-10 (at least in the Atlantic Ocean) so the strategy is usually not to panic (easy to say) and wait for a small calm moment
base698 9y ago
Eight or nine years ago, I lept off a tower from about 800 ft. After opening the parachute and scanning for my landing area I turned towards it to the left, which was slow and felt off. "Maybe I'll turn to the right and come around from the back", at which point the parachute collapses and spins violently from behind. I reach up and grab the left riser, the strap that connects you to the harness, and stopped the spin. When I let go the spin started again violently I again grabbed the riser and got the parachute over my head. I was descending fast below tree top level and I saw my shadow in my peripheral vision. Knees together and crash. I immediately pat myself down to check for compound fractures. Safe. On the ride home it was all really brought into perspective: if I didn't want to deal with such life threatening situations I'd of stayed at home. I made another couple of jumps that weekend.
- __s 9y ago
  Just a nit, because I spent years not realizing this due to my accent, but it's "I'd have" not "I'd of". It sounds like "I'd of" because "I'd've" gz on surviving the fall so that you could have random people correct your grammar in the future. Glad to hear you kept with it-- people are surprisingly risk adverse yet will ignore passive danger
  - lukas099 9y ago
    Possibly the use of "I'd of" had authorial intent, e.g. to sound more colloquial. In my opinion this is valid usage in English.
    - lorenzhs 9y ago
      There's nothing valid about it, it's a misspelling and a grammatical mistake.
      - lillesvin 9y ago
        It's language evolving. When the misspellings/misinterpretations of "a napron" and "an eekname" became common enough we got "an apron" and "a nickname". If anyone — especially native speakers and others with a high degree of mastery of English — claims to have difficulty understanding "I'd of stayed home" then they're most likely being deliberately obtuse or needlessly contrarian.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
Not to "umm actually" your excellent story, but rock climbing is not that dangerous. It's about as dangerous as driving, which people do all the time without even thinking about it. Mountaineering is where the danger is there, primarily.
- saiya-jin 9y ago
  I guess it depends how much you push things and yourself, if it's bouldering, sport climbing or trad (lets skip free soloing for this one :)) I don't have micromort stats around, but for example sport climbing, when not pushing constantly your limits and on bolted route that has not-very-old and reasonably placed protection, it feels as dangerous as some trail run in the forest. Risk of rock falling suddenly is next to 0, same goes for equipment failure. bouldering & trad are different for obvious reasons, but again depends.
- CyberDroiDz 9y ago
  One accidental sweat slip on a 60 foot climbing wall can paralyze you for life. Trust in your line, I guess.
  - bartread 9y ago
    I have a friend who was a recreational climber. One day she's at the climbing wall with her boyfriend. She's climbing, he's on the ground holding her line. For those who don't climb, and I don't (although I've been on a climbing wall), the idea is that if you fall the other person is holding on to the rope and and managing the slack so that you don't fall any distance and can be gently lowered or grab back onto the wall. Her boyfriend wasn't paying attention; he was chatting to some friends of his and hadn't noticed how much slack there was in the line. She's quite high up the wall, loses grip, falls, and doesn't stop until she hits the ground because there's so much slack. She's paralysed from the waist down, in a wheelchair for life. The boyfriend is, well, not her boyfriend any more. She's made the best of the situation, has a good career, and has met someone else she's now engaged to, but she's still angry about it, and I can't say I blame her.
- dahart 9y ago
e40 9y ago
In my 30's I drove a motorcycle, the crotch rocket variety (Kawasaki 750). I had a few very close calls, then decided I had had a good run and a lot of fun, but it was time to hang it up. I could see the writing on the wall: keep doing this and I would have a serious accident, that would either leave me dead or seriously injured. I was, at the time, planning a family, and to this day miss riding but think it was absolutely the right choice.
- simonh 9y ago
  A friend of mine had a relatively minor accident on his motorbike when his wife was pregnant, decided he'd been lucky and packed it all in. Sold his bike and gear within a few weeks and never went back.
- chadgeidel 9y ago
  Rode a sportbike all through college. I was - of course - a hooligan and rode with a bunch of other hooligans. After few of the folks in our group died (I didn't see the accidents, just heard about them) I stopped riding with them and slowed down. I recently got married and just gave up riding completely. I think I'm a pretty safe rider, but the odds are just against me.
- aaroninsf 9y ago
  It was the right choice for a long and full life for sure. My brother hung up, after being the < 1 in 10,000 to survive a banal accident on a freeway. Rounded a curve, was looking at the upcoming exit to see if it was a candidate lunch spot; looked back forward and traffic was at a standstill a couple hundred feet in front of him. He was going 70. Laid down his bike, impact threw him over the median into oncoming traffic. When they put him in the helicopter he had zero blood pressure, a collapsed lung, and a snapped tibia sticking out. He wasn't wearing the armor my wife and I bought him as a Christmas present a few months earlier; it was too hot. Heart surgeon got to his aorta when there was one layer of cells left. If it had also split, he would have bled out in < 90 seconds. No one who worked on him had ever even heard of someone surviving injuries of his type. Happy ending in this case. Rod in his leg but he runs 5ks. Happily married. Works in this industry. But it's made me the annoying guy who stops colleagues and friends who ride (once) like some crusty Ancient Mariner to say, I'm that annoying guy who's going to urge you to not ride, because ... Glad you made it!
amelius 9y ago
I've heard that skydiving triggers this experience at some point. The first time it's frightening. The second to fourth time it gives you an adrenaline rush. The fifth time suddenly you think "holy shit, what am I doing?" At least, that's what a friend told me.
- jly 9y ago
  Skydiving is actually a very safe and low-risk 'adrenaline' activity, from what I've heard. There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mercy of randomness like with winsuits, climbing, or whitewater rapids. The deaths that do occur are almost always from experienced jumpers that not following recommended safety processes, often in the pursuit of pushing things to the edge. The point is that unlike some other extreme sports, most skydiving deaths are preventable by conservative jumping.
  - dahart 9y ago
    > Skydiving is actually a very safe and low-risk 'adrenaline' activity, from what I've heard I'm sorry, but you've heard wrong. Skydiving is super dangerous, relative to other sports. Less than wingsuit flying, but more death per participant than most other sports. There's an unfortunate infographic that's made the rounds that makes skydiving look relatively as dangerous as football, but they made a mistake with the numbers and left people with an incorrect and extremely misleading impression. A lot of people are now saying that skydiving is "as safe" or "safer" than football, and that is flat out false. I hope nobody is motivated to skydive thinking it's super safe, because it's not. > There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mercy of randomness like with winsuits For a single jumper, there's one redundancy - a spare chute - and they fail and/or tangle at about the rate of 1 in 800 jumps, from what I recall. For a BASE jumper, there's no redundancy, they don't normally have a spare. Almost everyone who jumps more than a few times does formation jumping or other group activities, if not get into BASE or wingsuit. Formation jumps put you at the mercy of other people, which are less controllable than mountains or trees. I stopped formation jumping after a couple of bad ones where I had close calls that were other people's mistakes. Most of the people I knew during my time skydiving are now dead, more than a dozen people.
paddy_m 9y ago
I ride dirtbikes and ski regularly. I wear all the protective gear and am satisfied with the risk/adrenaline profile. I am often looked at as an adventurous risk taker, but I think people often underestimate other risky activities which impart nowhere near as much adrenaline. Case in point, I was in Thailand last winter. Tourists who otherwise aren't adventurous ride scooters freely because everyone in Thailand does. They ride scooters wearing flip flops without a helmet. The worst was when I was at a bar with an otherwise boring couple, we wanted to go to another bar so they suggested that I get on the back of their scooter, all three of us. They weren't hammered but had been drinking and had little overall two wheel experience. Riding on a scooter in the first place isn't particularly fun, riding with two other people on a scooter is downright dangerous, why risk it. I hired a tuktuk.

mark_h 9y ago

I have a couple of friends, both white-water guides and accomplished outdoorsmen, and they both put whitewater in a different category of risk: you can do everything right, and still die just due to the unpredictability of it. One of them said he had an instructor who basically said "if you stick with this long enough, either you'll die or someone you know will". They were both in the latter category.

auxym 9y ago
A pretty popular avalanche safety book [1] has, in the introduction, an actuarial table of your survival probability if you keep going out in avalanche terrain x days a year, year after year... [1] http://www.mountaineersbooks.org/Staying-Alive-in-Avalanche-Terrain-2nd-Edition-P512.aspx http://www.mountaineersbooks.org/Staying-Alive-in-Avalanche-...
Bartweiss 9y ago
Yeah, I've heard both wingsuiting and ice climbing described similarly. Possibly not as high-risk, at least for ice climbing, but they have the same issue with random disaster. If you hit a death block somewhere, that's the end, and lifelong ice climbers build up a lot of chances at that no matter how good they are.
ganeshkrishnan 9y ago
It depends on the class of rapids you navigate through. I have done couple in Himalayas below class 5 and in most of them the guide said the risks are pretty minimal.
- rhombocombus 9y ago
  That said, it's a river. You don't get to choose when bad luck hits. I have been a paddler for most of my life, and I have paddled over flatwater sections that have killed people just as handily as if they were a waterfall or a class VI rapid. We go to great lengths to be conscientious and meticulous in our preparation, and most of the time it pays off. I have run whitewater for many years in rafts and kayaks, and seen folks get hurt, but one of the worst injuries I have seen took place in two feet of calm water. I still go out, and I take my family on the river, but I always try to be meticulous in my preparation. That doesn't prevent calamity, but nothing will do that.

emerged 9y ago

Had an experience like this while surfing, years ago. I trusted a friend and went out surfing when it was double overhead. Had no business doing that, being a fumbling idiot on a board but trusted him. Made it out and caught a wave and wiped out -- can remember fighting the white water for what felt like 20 minutes, tumbling end over end and trying to time my gasps and keep cool. Just hoping I'd be washed inland if I just kept balancing the conservation of energy with forward progress. Life isn't a joke and we shouldn't take it trivial. There are such joys all around us which don't require unnecessary high risks.

nanodeath 9y ago
"double overhead"?
- olivermarks 9y ago
  http://www.surfline.com/surf-science/wave-heights---forecaster-blog_22495/ http://www.surfline.com/surf-science/wave-heights---forecast...
- bebop 9y ago
  If you stand 6' tall then double overhead is a 12' wave (generally). Kinda depends on Hawaiian vs mainland scale, but pretty good size to be sure.

tootie 9y ago

My very first whitewater rafting experience I went overboard on the first rapid. Boat just disappeared from under me and I was underwater not knowing which way was up. I had a lifevest and was nowhere near drowning, but it pretty well soured me on adventure sports for the rest of my life.

dvcrn 9y ago

Nowhere near that close for me and a lot more soft, but still one of these “oh shit” moments was when I decided to go swimming when waves were bigger than usual due to a coming storm. It was all fun until I realized I wasn’t able to swim back to the shore to where I can stand. Every time I tried, a wave knocked me further into the ocean and my leftover stamina kept dropping. I was freaking out and had no idea how to get out of there. Luckily the waves went smaller for some time and I was able to swim back to where I was able to feel the ground and pushed from there. I knew that in the worst case the coastguard or other swimmers would have jumped in but still.

enriquto 9y ago
It is better to swim parallel to the coast until you find an easier place to approach. Fighting the currents is exhausting.
- crocal 9y ago
  I confirm. I grew up near the Atlantic Ocean, in an area of high current. It is something that was taught to us as teenagers.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I think knowing that and having the presence of mind to do it as you drown are two different things.
- 725686 9y ago
  I found that the hard way. I was caught in an outward current and was desperately trying to swim towards the beach with waves constantly hammering me. When I was about to drown a lifeguard appeared from nowhere and dragged me sideways out of the current and then towards the beach.
tarsinge 9y ago
Also waves come grouped in series of 3-10 (at least in the Atlantic Ocean) so the strategy is usually not to panic (easy to say) and wait for a small calm moment

base698 9y ago

Eight or nine years ago, I lept off a tower from about 800 ft. After opening the parachute and scanning for my landing area I turned towards it to the left, which was slow and felt off. "Maybe I'll turn to the right and come around from the back", at which point the parachute collapses and spins violently from behind. I reach up and grab the left riser, the strap that connects you to the harness, and stopped the spin. When I let go the spin started again violently I again grabbed the riser and got the parachute over my head. I was descending fast below tree top level and I saw my shadow in my peripheral vision. Knees together and crash. I immediately pat myself down to check for compound fractures. Safe. On the ride home it was all really brought into perspective: if I didn't want to deal with such life threatening situations I'd of stayed at home. I made another couple of jumps that weekend.

__s 9y ago
Just a nit, because I spent years not realizing this due to my accent, but it's "I'd have" not "I'd of". It sounds like "I'd of" because "I'd've" gz on surviving the fall so that you could have random people correct your grammar in the future. Glad to hear you kept with it-- people are surprisingly risk adverse yet will ignore passive danger
- lukas099 9y ago
  Possibly the use of "I'd of" had authorial intent, e.g. to sound more colloquial. In my opinion this is valid usage in English.
  - lorenzhs 9y ago
    There's nothing valid about it, it's a misspelling and a grammatical mistake.
    - lillesvin 9y ago
      It's language evolving. When the misspellings/misinterpretations of "a napron" and "an eekname" became common enough we got "an apron" and "a nickname". If anyone — especially native speakers and others with a high degree of mastery of English — claims to have difficulty understanding "I'd of stayed home" then they're most likely being deliberately obtuse or needlessly contrarian.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

Not to "umm actually" your excellent story, but rock climbing is not that dangerous. It's about as dangerous as driving, which people do all the time without even thinking about it. Mountaineering is where the danger is there, primarily.

saiya-jin 9y ago
I guess it depends how much you push things and yourself, if it's bouldering, sport climbing or trad (lets skip free soloing for this one :)) I don't have micromort stats around, but for example sport climbing, when not pushing constantly your limits and on bolted route that has not-very-old and reasonably placed protection, it feels as dangerous as some trail run in the forest. Risk of rock falling suddenly is next to 0, same goes for equipment failure. bouldering & trad are different for obvious reasons, but again depends.
CyberDroiDz 9y ago
One accidental sweat slip on a 60 foot climbing wall can paralyze you for life. Trust in your line, I guess.
- bartread 9y ago
  I have a friend who was a recreational climber. One day she's at the climbing wall with her boyfriend. She's climbing, he's on the ground holding her line. For those who don't climb, and I don't (although I've been on a climbing wall), the idea is that if you fall the other person is holding on to the rope and and managing the slack so that you don't fall any distance and can be gently lowered or grab back onto the wall. Her boyfriend wasn't paying attention; he was chatting to some friends of his and hadn't noticed how much slack there was in the line. She's quite high up the wall, loses grip, falls, and doesn't stop until she hits the ground because there's so much slack. She's paralysed from the waist down, in a wheelchair for life. The boyfriend is, well, not her boyfriend any more. She's made the best of the situation, has a good career, and has met someone else she's now engaged to, but she's still angry about it, and I can't say I blame her.
dahart 9y ago

e40 9y ago

In my 30's I drove a motorcycle, the crotch rocket variety (Kawasaki 750). I had a few very close calls, then decided I had had a good run and a lot of fun, but it was time to hang it up. I could see the writing on the wall: keep doing this and I would have a serious accident, that would either leave me dead or seriously injured. I was, at the time, planning a family, and to this day miss riding but think it was absolutely the right choice.

simonh 9y ago
A friend of mine had a relatively minor accident on his motorbike when his wife was pregnant, decided he'd been lucky and packed it all in. Sold his bike and gear within a few weeks and never went back.
chadgeidel 9y ago
Rode a sportbike all through college. I was - of course - a hooligan and rode with a bunch of other hooligans. After few of the folks in our group died (I didn't see the accidents, just heard about them) I stopped riding with them and slowed down. I recently got married and just gave up riding completely. I think I'm a pretty safe rider, but the odds are just against me.
aaroninsf 9y ago
It was the right choice for a long and full life for sure. My brother hung up, after being the < 1 in 10,000 to survive a banal accident on a freeway. Rounded a curve, was looking at the upcoming exit to see if it was a candidate lunch spot; looked back forward and traffic was at a standstill a couple hundred feet in front of him. He was going 70. Laid down his bike, impact threw him over the median into oncoming traffic. When they put him in the helicopter he had zero blood pressure, a collapsed lung, and a snapped tibia sticking out. He wasn't wearing the armor my wife and I bought him as a Christmas present a few months earlier; it was too hot. Heart surgeon got to his aorta when there was one layer of cells left. If it had also split, he would have bled out in < 90 seconds. No one who worked on him had ever even heard of someone surviving injuries of his type. Happy ending in this case. Rod in his leg but he runs 5ks. Happily married. Works in this industry. But it's made me the annoying guy who stops colleagues and friends who ride (once) like some crusty Ancient Mariner to say, I'm that annoying guy who's going to urge you to not ride, because ... Glad you made it!

amelius 9y ago

I've heard that skydiving triggers this experience at some point. The first time it's frightening. The second to fourth time it gives you an adrenaline rush. The fifth time suddenly you think "holy shit, what am I doing?" At least, that's what a friend told me.

jly 9y ago
Skydiving is actually a very safe and low-risk 'adrenaline' activity, from what I've heard. There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mercy of randomness like with winsuits, climbing, or whitewater rapids. The deaths that do occur are almost always from experienced jumpers that not following recommended safety processes, often in the pursuit of pushing things to the edge. The point is that unlike some other extreme sports, most skydiving deaths are preventable by conservative jumping.
- dahart 9y ago
  > Skydiving is actually a very safe and low-risk 'adrenaline' activity, from what I've heard I'm sorry, but you've heard wrong. Skydiving is super dangerous, relative to other sports. Less than wingsuit flying, but more death per participant than most other sports. There's an unfortunate infographic that's made the rounds that makes skydiving look relatively as dangerous as football, but they made a mistake with the numbers and left people with an incorrect and extremely misleading impression. A lot of people are now saying that skydiving is "as safe" or "safer" than football, and that is flat out false. I hope nobody is motivated to skydive thinking it's super safe, because it's not. > There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mercy of randomness like with winsuits For a single jumper, there's one redundancy - a spare chute - and they fail and/or tangle at about the rate of 1 in 800 jumps, from what I recall. For a BASE jumper, there's no redundancy, they don't normally have a spare. Almost everyone who jumps more than a few times does formation jumping or other group activities, if not get into BASE or wingsuit. Formation jumps put you at the mercy of other people, which are less controllable than mountains or trees. I stopped formation jumping after a couple of bad ones where I had close calls that were other people's mistakes. Most of the people I knew during my time skydiving are now dead, more than a dozen people.

paddy_m 9y ago

I ride dirtbikes and ski regularly. I wear all the protective gear and am satisfied with the risk/adrenaline profile. I am often looked at as an adventurous risk taker, but I think people often underestimate other risky activities which impart nowhere near as much adrenaline. Case in point, I was in Thailand last winter. Tourists who otherwise aren't adventurous ride scooters freely because everyone in Thailand does. They ride scooters wearing flip flops without a helmet. The worst was when I was at a bar with an otherwise boring couple, we wanted to go to another bar so they suggested that I get on the back of their scooter, all three of us. They weren't hammered but had been drinking and had little overall two wheel experience. Riding on a scooter in the first place isn't particularly fun, riding with two other people on a scooter is downright dangerous, why risk it. I hired a tuktuk.