Gurney - Eating Dirt: Adventures and Yarns from New Zealands Action Man

Its true! The nanoseconds before traumatic and deadly collisions run like slow motion.

The instant I felt the kite lift my buggy off the golden Sahara sand, I knew I was in grave trouble. It took just one fleeting glance at the house-sized rock in my path, 20 metres away, to know that I was quite likely to die. My brain just knew. Call it instinct or incredibly quick calculation; its the same cold, harsh conclusion. My brains neural circuitry called upon the wealth of information collected from four decades eating dirt: tripping over as a baby, falling out of trees and crashing my go-karts as a kid, having the wind knocked out of me in school bullrush and later in rugby, flying over the bike handlebars as an adult, and crashing my car in more recent years. Mechanoreceptors in my tissues compared infinitesimal nuances of acceleration, direction of pull, and momentum with previous memories of similar impact, and the attendant ensuing pain. Then my brain spits out its verdict of likely death all in a nanosecond!

In addition to the calculations my neural network was making as I hurtled through the air towards that hard rock, my brain had time to do a complex analytical stocktake of the position of my full-face helmet and body armour with respect to the extrapolated point of impact on the rock, then fire my autonomic nervous system into action to command various muscles to position and relax to minimise the damage. All based on previous similar experiences.

I was on my biggest adventure yet: two Kiwis and two Aussies on a 30-day epic attempt to create a world-record crossing of the Sahara desert in dune buggies, powered only by the wind filling our high-performance kites. It was our last handful of kilometres before sunset on a very long and arduous Day 10. We were nearly halfway across the mighty Sahara. Officials at the United Nations had sternly warned us of the high threat of landmines through the Western Sahara in addition to the terrorist danger we were ordered to buggy either on the roads, or at the coast below the high tide mark. This day, wed headed to the coast with kites on double-length lines for extra power and were making good progress at 50 to 70 kph until large rocks blocked our path. Slowly picking my way through the rocks with the kite tugging powerfully and impatiently above in the dusk sky, I got distracted for a split second. The kite spun irretrievably into the full power zone. It was too late for me to unhook from the buggy, and I was smashed at full power head first into the rocks, sandwiched between the 70 kilogram loaded buggy and a very hard place.

Today, I am still amazed that I didnt die. I broke many bones in my head and shoulder, and tore rotator cuff tendons in my shoulder. All despite a full-face helmet and tough body armour. Blood was trickling from my nose and ear as I lay there unconscious. Evacuation to a hospital in the remote Sahara is an adventure in itself.

Generally, Ive made relatively few traumatic mistakes in my nearly 30-year career as an adventure athlete I pride myself on training to be highly skilled and competent at managing risk. Occasionally, Ive managed the risk badly, pushed the limit too far, and consequently Ive eaten dirt. Ive had too many visits to hospital for my liking, really. Another of my hospital visits was extremely serious, and there too I was fortunate to escape with my life. Id caught leptospirosis in a Borneo jungle and ended up in a coma, where my survival slid from out of my own control and into the hands of medical staff and their life support machines.

Some would argue that Ive about used up my nine lives, but I see it differently. Im still alive and fully intending to live to a sprightly old age of around 150 because Ive learned from every time Ive eaten dirt. Ive been continually learning since I was fresh out of my mothers tummy. Learning since I first put a handful of bad-tasting dirt in my mouth at a few months old. Learning since I burned myself on the hot fireplace as a one-year-old.

I hurt myself falling out of trees as a kid, too. But the learning I got from those injuries about judging risk, heights and asking the what-if question means I can now climb much higher and more dangerous things like cliffs with intelligence and survive. Nowadays I still hurt myself, but the stakes are higher. I like to think that Im learning and evolving naturally as we are designed to do as human beings.

But something is happening in my world that is interrupting this learning process. Its a sly, subtle almost unconscious change, but obvious to those conscious of it. It is most visible in the schools I regularly visit, but it is also glaringly obvious in the sports events I enter and in our workplaces.

It comes by many names, including cotton-wooling, nanny state, sterility and political correctness or PC. Its stopping us from eating dirt and learning. Its slowly but surely breeding naivety, and I venture to suggest that its even breeding stupidity. Its encouraging a blame mentality and lack of liability. Were losing that sense of self-responsibility and the sense of satisfaction that comes from using intelligence and personal skills to remain safe, strong and confident. Were building a world of naive dummies, lowering the intelligence of our society; were de-evolving. We need a different attitude. We need to allow ourselves to eat dirt and thereby develop immunity.

One or two of the mistakes I made were stupid, like my car collision with a full-speed train. I could easily have died, and if I had died, the human race couldve shrugged it off and breathed a collective sigh of relief, reflecting that its probably a good thing that my mistake-prone genes were eliminated from the human gene pool. However, I didnt die, and generally speaking, Im a resilient bugger. Im the type that learns from his mistakes continually evolving and improving if you like. And thats the point that matters: if my genes arent culled out, then Id hope that I can pass on the learning and wisdom to improve the gene pool. And this is the point that I aim to make in this book through telling my yarns and stories of adventure, quests to conquer mountains, deserts and world records. This is a story book, sharing what Ive learned from crashing and from too many hospital visits.