At least once in our lives, we all feel tempted to try a death-defying hobby like skydiving, bungee jumping, or hang-gliding.
But a heart stopping video from a first time (yes, first time) hang-glider may scare you into keeping your feet on the ground.
Chris Gursky shared footage of his first ever hang-gliding ride, from a recent holiday in Switzerland.
The tourist took to the sky with an experienced pilot guiding the aircraft. But after takeoff, he quickly realized something was very wrong. Or, as Gursky later said, there was an "unexpected twist."
"My body weight shifted straight down and I found myself hanging on for my life," he told MailOnline.
"I remember looking down and thinking, this is it. I was losing grip with my right hand, that was holding onto a strap on the pilot's right shoulder. He was trying to make a bee line to the landing field as he knew what the situation could bring."
Gursky said he was 4,000 feet in the air when he noticed the pilot had forgotten to clip him to the aircraft.
The terrified passenger had no choice but to cling for his life from a metal bar and the pilot's harness, as the glider slowly steered toward the ground.
The pair spent a hair-raising two minutes in the air, and at times the pilot seemed to struggle to bring the glider down.
"As we were going down for a hot landing I was slowly losing my grip with my right hand as I was swinging in the wind with the glider," Gursky remembered.
"The pilot grabbed my hand, but like in the movies it was a slow motion slipping of the grip until my right hand slipped off and I grabbed another strap on his left side for a bit but this slipped off also."
While Gursky was lucky to walk away from the disaster, he wasn't unscathed. He tore his bicep after letting go of the glider near the ground, and doctors had to fasten his wrist back together with a plate and screws.
"It beats the alternative," Gursky joked about his injuries. And he says he doesn't even hold a grudge against the pilot who forgot to strap him in.
While he called the mistake "a critical error," Gursky gave kudos to the pilot for doing "all he could to get me down to the ground as quickly as possible while grabbing onto my harness and flying with one hand."
As Gursky said, the experience may have scarred him for life, but there's no denying he has the vacation memory of a lifetime.
"The landing was a rough one, but I lived to tell the story," he said.
And despite what you might think, Gursky is actually eager to get back in the sky sometime soon.
"I will go hang gliding again as I did not enjoy my first flight," he explained.
[H/T: LadBible, MailOnline]
