then dive at startled vacationers floating below me.
Rather than take a quiet walk along the beach, or do some yoga-paddleboarding my adventure with Jetpack America in Newport Beach, California, involved taking the controls of a 200-horsepower, water-fueled exo-skeleton tethered by a thick 30-foot hose to a floating power unit. Reaching speeds up to 30 mph on this 25-minute $259 flight, I dipped and dived over, under, and even jogged on top of the water. An instructor on a nearby boat with a remote kill switch kept me from making a fatal wrong turn into shore.
To me, this is real adventure travel, not what passes for “adventure travel” these days—getting wrapped like a sack of potatoes into a harness for the “extreme” activity of a bungie-jump, zip line, or rollercoaster.
Hold still and keep your hands at your side? Sorry, that’s not adventure. That’s a couch potato getting tossed around like a bondage victim.
With YouTube videos and reality shows like the "Amazing Race" showing how regular people can perform hard-core travel stunts, there’s been a rise in this kind of finger-on-the-trigger, hands-on-the-wheel kind of experience. In fact, the Adventure Travel Trade Association cites a 62% annual increase in “hard” vs. “soft” adventure travel over the past three years.
In that spirit, here are six more of my favorite thrill drives—not to be confused with “thrill rides”—where you can actually take the controls.
Dream Racing - Las Vegas
“Brake! Brake! Shift! Goooooooo!” Above the primal roar of a 512-horsepower engine, my co-pilot shouts instructions into the headset as I rip around turns at 130 mph on the Vegas Motor Speedway in a Ferrari F430GT. I’m strapped in with a six-point seatbelt, suited up in a fireproof jumpsuit (complete with head-sleeve and helmet), and my hands are firmly on the controls as I push my limits of reaction time and fear.
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