EARLY ESCAPADES

A while back, when I was at university and on holidays, I was on Waiheke Island with my friend Tim. We had been told of a cliff that was worth diving off. Our instructions were rather rudimentary: 'around to the right from Little Oneroa'. So we swam, although we're not great swimmers, for an hour. Shattered, we finally found a place that we thought might be it. We could see the cliff was slightly worn where people had beaten a light track, and there was a bare patch around the rock 17 metres above the water. We figured that must be the take-off point for jumping. There was a crevice about five metres wide cut out of the cliff with a blowhole about two metres across at the bottom. The waves would crash into the crevice making a loud whoosh and shooting water up into the air. With the ebb and flow of the waves, the depth of the water to jump into varied from two to four metres. So there I stood, about to jump over rocks into a small hole 17 metres below, and I had to time my jump with the incoming waves. I had no idea if this had ever been done before. It turned out I wasn't the first to do it, but it sure as hell made me really scared. And it felt beautiful.

Jumping off that cliff was my first foray into freestyle adventures that eventually led to paddling down the Waikato River on a Lilo. I realised on that jump into the blowhole that I needed high-energy thrills to satisfy my own needs and to make me happy. I wanted to be happy and I was having a hard time figuring out what happy meant for me.

These adventures usually happened with a trusted companion. At the time, I was studying at the University of Waikato. I quickly worked out what I didn't like — I didn't like university. I didn't like the structured learning environment, so it was a pretty easy decision for me to stop going to class. Luckily, though, I was smart enough to pass all my papers with minimal effort. The best thing I got from university was my friendship with Mr Mark Boyce.

Mark and I had quite a few things in common. We enjoyed talking crap about pretty much everything and anything, doing pub quizzes and going out and doing random things. My time at university was made inherently better because of our friendship. One of the outcomes of my friendship with Mark was my first lesson. Subsequently, I have learnt other lessons for life and I am going to share them with you as Jimi's Lessons. Take them as you will, but they have helped shape my life into something pretty awesome. So here's the first thing I learnt from my mate, Mark.

JIMI'S LESSON #1: You're only as good as the stories you can tell.

I went to the University of Waikato. That's right — in Hamilton, in the Waikato. You probably have a pretty accurate picture in your head — lots of Swanndris, a lot of rugby and a lot of drinking.

This is what dawned on Mark and me early on — we could get sucked up in this version of normality or we could go our own way and do some interesting things together. So, Lesson #1 is not saying that you have to tell a bunch of bullshit stories but basically that you need to get out and do more interesting things. The result of doing interesting stuff is that you have more interesting stories to tell.

And there are benefits. More people like hanging out with you at parties and, most importantly for any young man, girls think you are more interesting. They will like you more. This simple motto led Mark and me on some epic adventures, including being chased by a car full of women through the night in my trusty 1963 Ford Consul Capri 335 from Hamilton to Morrinsville and back to the Tron, where we switched to Mark's car, did a U-turn and headed south. We managed to lose the women, who'd said they wanted to rape us ... and Mark woke up the next morning in Bulls! Mark was a bit confused but we continued on to Wellington and spent a day down there before heading home.

This was what I loved about Mark — none of this fazed him in the slightest. All we wanted to do was go on adventures. We once went on a road trip where we flipped a coin at every destination to see which direction we should go. We ended up at a beach in Northland. We climbed a fence at midnight and had an unauthorised swim in some hot pools before lugging a six-man tent up to the top of Mount Maunganui to camp on the summit. These random adventures continue to this day. Thank you, Mr Boyce.

When I meet new people, I never ask, 'What do you do?' I think it's a lazy question. Most people don't actually like what they do a hell of a lot so why make them talk about it? What Mark and I did helped me come up with a better answer to that lazy question. I have real jobs, but I'd prefer not to talk about them. When someone asks me what I do, I simply answer, 'I do epic shit!' An interesting conversation always follows.

MADNESS WITH MARK

My mind works very fast. I think about a lot of things. A lot. All the time. It's annoying. And one of the big things that this makes me do is get bored. There are a couple of great quotes about this subject:

'Only boring people get bored.' — Ruth Burke, author of The Bausell Home Learning Guide

'Life is never boring, but some people choose to be bored ... Boredom is a choice.' — Wayne Dyer, Your Erroneous Zones

Don't believe Ruth. No one would describe me as boring, but I get bored all the time. Getting bored is actually good. It's a catalyst. If I never got bored I would never be forced to think up awesome things. This means I agree with Wayne — absolutely. Hell, most of my great ideas come when I'm feeling bored and decide I won't be bored anymore. For me it's tough to get over boredom alone, so I choose to surround myself with people who can help inspire me, and my number-one-first-pick go-to man for this is Mr Mark Boyce.

Mark and I are avid fans of nineties alternative music; growing up during its peak we spent our youth suckling at its teat. On one of our frequent days of rambling discussion we were having a fervent and heated debate about the best music videos of all time, with a bias towards the genre I just mentioned. I brought up a music video from an obscure band I like that had a small hit simply because of the coolness of their music video. The band was called Dinosaur Jr and the song was called 'Feel the Pain'. It's a grungy rock song with a chorus 'pop' enough to get some decent rotation on the music channels. If you haven't already seen it I implore you to go and watch it. Now. You can find it on YouTube. It's awesome and you'll have a better understanding of what I'm about to discuss — the New Zealand Urban Golf Championships.

For those of you who can't follow instructions and didn't check out 'Feel the Pain', the video is four minutes of two men driving around New York City in a golf cart playing golf off rooftops, in city parks and downtown streets. Spike Jonze directed it so that the video is awesome is a given, but I digress ...

It was an idea that we could appropriate for some fun. So we set about planning our own round of urban golf. We purchased old golf clubs that we didn't mind smashing on concrete, and we collected some outstanding golf attire so we looked the part. The key was to find some golf practice balls — we didn't want to kill anyone or break anything in downtown Auckland. Luckily we found balls that looked just like golf balls, but felt and acted like squash balls. Perfect!

Now, there was no point organising the entire championship, getting everyone along and having it shut down in five minutes, so some testing was in order. Mr Boyce, our American friend Ryan and I got all dressed up and made our way downtown to the Auckland waterfront. We had designed a hole teeing off in Quay Street and ending at the Auckland Public Library about a kilometre away. We rated it a par 27. It went through one of the busiest intersections in New Zealand and we hit a bus and a few other things along the way. I knew I was having fun when I played a shot from the gutter outside a Chinese restaurant and all the people sitting inside the window gave me a round of applause. All was going well until Mark hooked a shot that hit the wall or window — which one is still up for debate — of the Corner Bar. To this day, Mark protests it wasn't his fault.

The manager was none too happy. He came out to reprimand us and was joined by a woman who hadn't taken too kindly to our adventure. An argument ensued. We pointed out that the ball couldn't do any damage. They said we were idiots. No consensus was going to be reached so we simply played on through. I played a glorious shot up High Street and was about 50 metres ahead of the other two when the police showed up and detained my two companions. Not one to leave mates in the lurch, I returned to join what became the first meeting to lobby for urban golf in downtown Auckland. It was quite comical. The officers were literally playing good cop, bad cop. One was really angry while the other thought the whole thing was quite amusing. Good Cop wanted to let us go with a warning. Bad Cop wanted to charge us with 'carrying an offensive weapon in public'. Apparently a golf club is an offensive weapon when it's not on a golf course. It seems you do learn something new every day.

A compromise was reached after about 20 minutes of heated debate. They would take our balls so that we couldn't play anymore and we would take our clubs home that minute and never play urban golf again. Fair enough, thank you, New Zealand Police. Now, they were right, it probably wasn't the smartest idea. We might have done some damage, we might have caused an accident, but we were young and silly and didn't do either. We had learnt our lesson — don't play urban golf during the hours of daylight anywhere near members of the constabulary, and those two cops in particular. Planning was on for the New Zealand Urban Golf Championships. And I had learnt another valuable lesson.

JIMI'S LESSON #2: Ask for forgiveness, not permission.

This lesson has held me in good stead ever since. I'm not saying you should go out and cause trouble, but the simple fact is that people will tell you 'no' throughout your life, simply out of fear, for their jobs, for their reputation or whatever. The key is not to ask for their permission, just go do it (as long as it's legal and doesn't harm anything or anyone), and if you get in trouble, just say, 'I'm sorry, I didn't realise that you couldn't do that, I'll never do it again!' Even though you probably will ...

The first New Zealand Urban Golf Championships was held on a rainy Tuesday evening in the beautiful industrial estate of Albany, far away from the downtown police station where our friends were probably dealing with drunk teenagers. It was a one-hole par-37 course completed by a bunch of enthusiastic fellows up for a little adventure. The winner was the talented golfer Mr Mark Boyce and there were no major dramas. The biggest success for me, though, was the simple realisation that sticks with me whenever I am doing something awesome — right now this bunch of people is actually having more fun than 99 per cent of the people on the planet. Fact. And tomorrow morning, when these guys go to work at their regular jobs, they will have an amazing story to tell.

I owe Mark for a lot of good times, but one particular day I owed him a little more than usual. As I said earlier, I like jumping off high things into water. It's that sort of unstructured scary activity that makes me feel alive. Mark and I spent a lot of time on Waiheke Island and on this occasion we were at the jumping spot that Tim and I had discovered a year or so earlier. This time I was on a mission to do a backflip off the 17-metre high spot above the blowhole. There was a ledge below it that may have been 14 metres high and I decided I'd try from there first. I stood looking down. To do a backflip you start facing the cliff, so I turned around and looked over my shoulder to the small landing spot below. I was really scared. My body was shaking slightly and I was starting to perspire. It felt like I was looking over my shoulder for about five minutes. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me feel alive, though. I loved it. I was almost ready. Mark was down on the rocks below with his camera. After much contemplation and a lot of talking to myself I threw my head and arms backwards off the cliff and into midair. I love that feeling. I can feel it right now, remembering. It is beautiful.

As I was floating in the perfect silence and stunning surroundings I quickly realised I had thrown myself into a spin that was too fast. I over-rotated and my head and torso hit the water with maximum force. It's like hitting concrete. I blacked out. I came to and what I saw was surreal; I have never encountered anything else like it. It looked like a movie. The water was crystal clear and only about three metres deep. I was on the bottom looking up. It was peaceful. I knew I needed to get to the surface but I couldn't move so I just lay still and slowly floated to the top.

As soon as my head broke the water I started gasping for air and calling to Mark. 'Help me, help me, help me!' It was all I could say and I couldn't stop saying it. I was winded as well as concussed. All of this felt like it had taken forever when Mark jumped in to rescue me. I still couldn't move and he pulled me to the rocks and helped me up. Add another concussion to my list. Why had I even tried that? I'm a dick.

The adventures continued and one day Mark and I were brainstorming things to do when we decided that we should float down a river. Why? Because floating down rivers is fun. Mark grew up in the Karangahake Valley, near Thames, and suggested that the river in the valley might be suitable for our purpose. So we went to the Warehouse and purchased some Lilos and small rafts and off we went.

It was a lovely day. We had taken two cars, one to park at the bottom and the other to take us to the top. We had picked a distance that we figured would be about right but, really, we had no idea. It wasn't like either of us had done this before. No matter, we started floating. Neither of us really had any paddling experience, plus we hadn't figured out if there were any dangers on this part of the river. Nonetheless, there we were already floating down the river and it was another adventure!

We had been going for about four hours: it was getting cold and we didn't really know where we were. Was the car up ahead? Or had we passed it? The river wasn't anywhere near the road at that stage. We had to make a decision, so we hopped out and tried to find the road. When we finally did, Mark thought the car was further on and we continued down the road on foot.

Despite these misadventures, we managed to have a quality float down the river and saw the potential of the idea. So, the only thing that was left was to take the next logical step that rears its head in most of our adventures that are fun. We knew it would be a lot more fun if all of our friends came with us. And so the Jimi Ninja River Adventure was born.

The rules were pretty simple: you must dress up like an idiot and bring $10 to cover the cost of the food that I would cook for everyone. Guaranteed fun for all.

Here is where I can rant, in print, about my generation and people younger than me. For the record, I'm 32. We are useless at turning up to things. It's the curse of modern technology. We can now cancel last minute by text or phone call. We can 'join' an event on Facebook and it doesn't really matter if we turn up or not. Why am I having a cry about this? Because the Jimi Ninja's first river adventure had 35 people 'confirmed' to attend. So, I'd spent $350 on food for the grand day out. The morning of the adventure I got up all excited: it was time to play, everything was sorted, but it was raining. Over the next hour I had 20 cancellations. The 15 of us that took part arrived at the starting point in blistering sunshine. It was glorious.