The Risk Takers -- In Search Of The Next Thrill: Bravery And Biochemistry

SQUINTING AGAINST the bright afternoon sun, they have come to the air show for thrills, and thrills they will get. All they have to do is look into the air, where a blue-and-yellow biplane is slicing through the sky.

Mesmerized by the thundering engine just above their heads, they watch as the plane heads straight up, up, up until, sucked back by relentless gravity, it stops.

For a moment the plane hangs weightlessly in the air, and then begins to plunge straight back to earth. Spectators draw in their breaths. The plane sounds as if the engine has stopped, and they are drawn to the delicious terror. Seconds later, the plane flips violently, and the reassuring roar of the engine, in control again, muffles the crowd's excited chatter.

Over the loudspeaker, the announcer's voice booms out over the crowd at the Arlington Airport for the annual Experimental Aircraft Fly-In.

"I would hate to have the insurance for that guy!" he shouts in jubilation.

"I wonder if his insurance guy knows what he's doing!" cackles a second announcer.

"I'll bet he doesn't!"

Phil Parish's insurance guy knows he's performing precision maneuvers in an airplane. But does he understand that he's risking death? Not if he depends on Parish to describe it, because Parish would never say that's what he does up there.

Flying, he's as intense and focused as a brain surgeon about to operate. On the ground, Parish says he thinks flying a stunt plane just might be safer than driving to the airport, on the freeway next to some guy who had just had a fight with his wife.

Parish and his partner, Eric Beard, do not sound like a couple of wild and crazy guys. If you ask Parish, he'll talk about the "mental thing" involved in preparing a routine in which he and Beard fly what seems like inches away from each other, maneuvering so close to the ground that engine or structural failures would almost certainly mean sudden death.

"It's like banking," Parish says. "It's all risk management."

Parish, a commercial airline pilot, and Beard, a Boeing desk jockey, say they are similar in personality: responsible, methodical, professional.

But if we could take them apart, get inside their brains and cells and neurotransmitters, we likely would discover that they are not very much like accountants, no matter what they say. Most likely, they are what researchers call risk-takers, thrill-seekers or high-sensation-seekers. On the average, researchers say, these people are more easily bored, more focused and maybe a little smarter than the rest of us - although they don't necessarily live longer.

Most of us find regular life fairly thrilling. A near-miss on the freeway, the satisfaction of a widget well-done at work, a dicey conversation with the spouse about flirting at that last party, maybe a little sailing or a Green Lake run to get the blood moving, and we're fine.

But some people - you know who you are - just don't get enough charge out of "regular" life. In years gone by, risk-takers might have been explorers or adventurers. They might have come west with the Donner Party, or gone north in search of the North Pole. Risk-taking, says Temple University risk researcher Frank Farley, is the trait that advances human beings: "Every great person who changed the world in a million years was a risk-taker."

The Pacific Northwest, Farley says, is a magnet for risk-takers.

For one thing, the Northwest is and has always been "the frontier." Immigrants, Farley says, are by nature risk-takers, compared to those who stay where they are. From the beginning, people came to the frontier not for security, but for adventure and the chance to make it big.

If risk-taking is genetically influenced, as a number of researchers contend, those of us with a generation or two of family in the Northwest might count ourselves among the bold and brave.

And the immigrants are still coming, many from the Pacific Rim and California. There may be plenty of practical reasons to come here. But Farley suggests that the "feeling of a frontier" is a very important draw for risk-takers.

In the Northwest, there's the sense that the undiscovered still lurks. "Nobody talks about Sasquatch sightings in Maryland," says Farley.

Seattle lawyer and climber Jim Wickwire grew up in Ephrata, surrounded by Eastern Washington sagebrush. Standing on a high hill, he could just see the top of snow-covered Mount Stuart, the jagged peak that dominates the central Cascades. It thrilled him, so much so that a couple of decades later, he and another climber would become the first Americans to stand atop K-2, the world's second-highest mountain.

Another Seattle climber, Jim Whittaker, already had become the first American to look down at everything from Mount Everest.

Some of the epic exploits in American mountaineering - Seattle climber Pete Schoening jamming his ice ax behind a rock on K-2 in 1953 to successfully stop six fellow climbers from falling to their deaths, for example - belong to Northwesterners.

Those three are hardly flukes. More Americans who have climbed to the top of K-2 or Everest have come from Washington than from any other state.

The Northwest is disproportionately represented in other thrill sports, too. After California, Washington and Oregon, despite their much smaller populations, claim the next largest numbers of hang-glider and paraglider pilots.

Northwest history is replete with stories of those who took on great risks and survived. But there are also those who didn't: Mount Rainier guide Willi Unsoeld, killed in an avalanche there in 1979, and Seattle climbers Marty Hoey, killed in a fall on Everest in 1982, and Scott Fischer, who died this spring on Everest.

As the ill-fated Donner Party found out, risks are called risks because they're dangerous.

But taking them may be necessary for humans to thrive, some researchers believe.

Walled in by the warning signs and the omnipresent airbags of life, they say, we are on the prowl for new ways to get that adrenalin rush. The mastodon hunters of long ago, suggests one researcher, may well be the negligent drivers of today.

In some places, those with the need for thrills surf subway cars or elevators. In Oregon and Washington, we go outdoors - No. 1 and No. 2 among states for physically active residents, according to the Centers for Disease Control. We kayak, we climb; we ski and sail and race cars. We fly airplanes, ultralights, hang gliders and paragliders. Most of the time, things go well; sometimes, though, they don't.

IN HIS METICULOUS HANGAR at the Renton Airport, Dave Harris takes a break to talk about a typical day at work.

A small, intense, muscular man, he straps himself into a plane whose body is about as wide as his shoulders and as long as a typical accountant's desk. Then he flies it at 250 miles an hour 10 feet above the ground.

In the cockpit of his BD-5J, a large sign with black letters says "Experimental." Harris, a former commercial jet pilot, has built other BDs and rebuilt a lot of this one, and he knows every part of it intimately. When he's not flying at air shows, he's tearing it apart to make sure that when he's in the air there will be no surprises.

A few years ago at an air show in New Zealand, Harris got one of those surprises.

As he was landing, going 140 miles an hour 3 feet above the runway, a parked DC-10 with its tail aimed toward the runway fired up its engines. Harris' plane slammed to the ground.

Skidding down the runway on its belly, the plane began to smoke as shards of aluminum peeled away. Harris pushed hard onto the pedals and slammed the engine into full reverse thrust. When he finally came to a halt, 800 heart-stopping feet later, his flight suit coated with hot specks of aluminum and his shoes worn to a nub, Harris realized with a shock that he had literally stopped the plane with his Reeboks.

Sooooo, we ask Harris: Is what you do risky?

"I don't know if it's risky," he answers, just before the O forms on our lips. With a slightly disgusted look, he makes a small concession. "I guess it is. But if you dot your I's and cross your T's . . . I've built 11 airplanes over 31 years. I always have someone look over my work, and I thank them if they find something. In this business, a mistake will kill you."

OK, now that that's settled, maybe it's a good time to ask: Why do you do this?

Challenge, offers Harris.

"All I need is someone to walk up to me and say `You can't do that,' " he says.

Jim Wickwire, the climber, says challenges are what keep him going in his law practice, where many of the day-to-day details are rather mundane. "If somebody says `You can't solve this,' that gets me very excited and challenged," he says. In the mountains, he says, "I always try to find a new route, a way people haven't gone."

Kathryn Treit, 14 years old, a 4.0 student from Fox Island, says she hasn't learned anything in three years. In biology class, she peppers her teacher with questions. "It helps me be non-bored," she says. So does jumping off a 1,600-foot cliff at the top of Tiger Mountain with her paraglider, says Treit, who plans to take up rock climbing next.

Lawyer Lance Rosen, a novice rock climber at 50, says climbing gives him guts. "It gives me the confidence to try new things, to experience new people, new professional situations. After physical risks, they don't seem as important, or as dangerous."

Life, any kind of life, is a risky proposition, he argues. "I've had friends younger than me die who never took risks. Cancer, get hit by a car, AIDS, suicide."

These and other people who jump, kayak, sail, fly, ski or otherwise risk themselves into an adrenalin rush say their risks make them feel more intensely alive.

But why? Why do they feel this way when the rest of us just feel scared? Why do some of us say, "Hoo, boy, I'll never do THAT again!" while the exact thrill makes others say, "Hoo, boy, I can hardly wait to do THAT again!"

Some researchers believe that rush of adrenalin releases chemicals that can become addicting.

Researchers now say that risk-taking is linked to a gene - specifically, a gene that allows the brain to respond to a chemical messenger called dopamine. It's the first time scientists have linked a "normal" personality trait to a gene.

"We've long known that the biological factor is strong in this trait," says Marvin Zuckerman, a professor of psychology at the University of Delaware who has studied "sensation seekers" for 30 years.

Earlier experiments showed that animals without sufficient dopamine lost their curiosity, their aggressiveness, their zest for sex and exploration, he says.

The latest research suggests that humans who have the dopamine-receptor gene, about 15 percent of the population, are significantly more extravagant, excitable and impulsive.

But Zuckerman, like other scientists, cautions that genes are not destiny. Genetic makeup controls, at most, about 60 percent of the trait, he says, and the rest is up for grabs.

DID JANE BROMET'S FATHER, a former fighter pilot, teach her to be brave? Did she inherit his genes? Or did she just find her own way out into the world of adventure?

These days, at 75, her father windsurfs near his home in Bremerton. Bromet, 39, found she, too, had that adventurous thing in her blood.

It began early: water skiing, swimming, jumping off boats, some "pretty crazy" snow skiing. In high school, she became a ski racer. At 17, she traveled, mostly alone, through Morocco, Turkey, Algeria, the Soviet Union and Japan.

More recently, she's been learning to climb rocks and mountains. With Scott Fischer's fateful Everest expedition, she helped set up base camp.

Has she ever been really scared? Bromet looks thoughtful: Maybe risk is talking to a reporter about personal stuff.

"The most scared I've ever been is in interactions with other people, when I thought my life was at risk from another person," she says. Does she want to explain? Nope. That's enough of that kind of risk.

Which brings up the question of what risk (ITALICS WORD:) is: hang gliding and mountain climbing, or asking the boss for a raise and starting a new business?

If fear of risks were rational, we'd be afraid of things that have a good chance of really hurting us, instead of things that don't. We'd never, ever lapse on buckling our seatbelts. We'd never drive after we'd had a couple of drinks and never have unprotected sex. Men would start being nicer to women, since, according to one set of statistics, one of the riskiest things men can do is to be unmarried.

But often we wrongly assign the greatest risks to things that statistically aren't so risky, such as nuclear power plants or bungee jumping.

It also turns out that men and women find different risks scary. Psychologist Paul Slovic, an Oregon researcher, found women and minorities are more likely than men to perceive nuclear power plants and waste incinerators as risky, for example.

But, says Peter Sandman, a risk consultant from Massachusetts, "If you say `What is the risk that if the United States becomes weak it will be overrun by alien nations?' I'll bet you my mortgage that men think it's important to have a strong military and women are saying no."

Outdoor adventurer Gary Brill, who talks casually of nearly falling into a crevasse, says what makes him start to sweat is the thought of going to New York City - or getting remarried.

Women tend to buckle their seat belts and not drink and drive. They are fewer than 10 percent of those who throw themselves off cliffs in hang gliders. On Mount Rainier, where Rainier Mountaineering Inc. owner Jerry Lynch says women perform better than men on average, they make up only about 20 percent of those who climb with his group.

RESEARCHERS HAVE COME UP with a lot of possible reasons for the risk differences between men and women.

Not surprisingly, one is hormones. The male hormone testosterone, or "preposterone," as it's been called, turns out to be a possible instigator of death-defying behavior in men, especially in young men.

Another factor noticed by both researchers and real people is - surprise! - women reveal their feelings more than men do.

"The world is full of men who are terrified of everything from spiders to nuclear power plants but who would rather die than say so," says Sandman.

He's found that male employees often will take health risks rather than look stupid. "People say, `Look at all these men risking their lives.' But what they're not risking is their self-esteem."

Loren Foss, who taught men and women in the Northwest to climb for more than 25 years, says, "I've always been impressed by the willingness of women in adventure sports to express their anxiety and concerns at the time that it happens."

Some researchers produce data showing that when it comes to expressed fears, women are - as one article put it - fraidy cats.

"No, women aren't fraidy cats," says JoAnn Myer Valenti, a professor of communications at Brigham Young University who has studied risk-taking and gender.

"They're different kinds of risk-takers. They approach risk differently." For one thing, they feel a strong responsibility to others - family, community - and rarely operate as "lone rangers." They know they're smaller and less strong than men. And when their education level is the same as men's, Valenti says, differences shrink.

Not surprisingly, nurture plays a large part in the differences in risk-taking, experts believe.

Up to about age 9 or 10 there isn't a lot of difference in risk-taking between boys and girls, says Jadwiga Sebrechts, executive director of the Women's College Coalition.

But after that, something happens. Girls begin to underestimate their abilities and answer questions in class only when they're sure they have the right answer.

Teachers and parents can make a big difference, she notes, with simple changes. For example, a three-second delay by a teacher in taking an answer to a question will dramatically increase girls' participation.

Early experience that risk-taking pays off, she says, helps prepare girls for other types of risk-taking later on in life.

"Risk-taking is not just a question of being willing to scale a cliff," she says, "but of making a choice that will perhaps put you on the line in some way." In many ways, it's the key to success, she believes, and girls must learn to grab it.

Risk-taking, say those who study it, is related to creativity and innovation.

Risk takers are more likely to be original thinkers, to learn by using "peripheral cues," and to be excited by the first exposure to intense or novel sensations.

On tests, climbers, whitewater kayakers, scuba divers and hang-glider pilots had high sensation-seeking scores. The highest scores, Zuckerman notes, went to Mount Everest climbers.

Low-sensation seekers, Zuckerman notes, aren't necessarily scared of doing something new or risky. They just don't see the sense in the thrill, whether it's climbing a mountain, driving fast or having a varied sex life.

Lows tend to overestimate the risk, and to focus on it, Zuckerman says; real risk-takers focus on the rewards.

IT WASN'T THAT FREELANCE photographer Joel Rogers didn't know that kayaking through a narrow rock passageway off Vancouver Island was dangerous. Watching millions of gallons churn through the opening, "You could feel your gut tightening up," he says.

But at the time, Rogers, a strong skier, kayaker, climber and rower, was focusing on the high. "It's pretty exciting to play in rock gardens," he says. "You're in a fiberglass boat, playing against the forces of nature."

The score wound up Nature 1, Rogers O.

Kayaking with friends on that perfect summer day about 10 years ago, he threw caution to the wind. Just how far he threw it wasn't apparent until he was alone in the bone-numbing water, his kayak sinking and his body bleeding, bruised and showing the ominous signs of hypothermia.

What made him do it? Was he showing off? Just "feeling his oats?" Impressing his girlfriend?

All of the above, Rogers says, plus a subtle competition between him and the other man on the trip, a kayaking buddy with whom he'd had other adventures. Then, he took a comment by the other woman on the trip as a dare. Staring at the boiling funnel where huge ocean waves pounded the rocks, she had gasped, "Hoo, boy, you're not going to do THAT, are you?"

Now, 10 years later, Rogers says the incident changed him.

"I can't say I had nightmares, but I had scary thoughts. I kind of said to myself, `Whoa, you pushed it too far that time, you really did,' " he says. "Today, I wouldn't go through it. It's a blind channel. The obvious question is: What's on the other side? The Pacific Ocean, you fool!"

They say there are old climbers and bold climbers, but no old, bold climbers. That's not true: There are old and bold climbers - and kayakers and pilots and skiers - but they are not as bold as before. They learned from their mistakes before those mistakes killed them.

The object, says H.B. Wise, a test pilot for experimental airplanes, is not to cheat death. "The object is to not let death play," he says.

"I'm a gambler by nature, but I'm not a stupid gambler," says Jamey Woodward, 44, owner of Snohomish Parachute Center. "There's a fine line between adventuresome and stupid. You gotta know when it's time to cut your losses and walk away.

"I live by this statement: Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment."

The trick, of course, is staying alive while bad judgment seasons you with experience.

After a number of serious accidents and watching four climbing partners die, Wickwire found himself visited by a strong premonition.

It was 1990, and he was climbing a peak near Everest. It was a good day and he felt strong, but he turned around on the way to the summit. "I had the sense that if I pushed it, I might die," he says. The feeling was so strong, he decided to give up climbing forever.

But risk-takers, it seems, must take risks. The pull to test ourselves, to push against nature is strong, especially here where the sky and sea and mountains silently dare us.

A year after his decision to stop climbing, after his father's death from cancer, Wickwire suddenly changed his mind. By 1993, he was back making his third try for the top of Everest.

For his part, Joel Rogers just kayaked a 26-mile stretch of coast by himself. Harris, the man who stopped his plane with his sneakers, recently successfully attempted a stall maneuver he says is "practically impossible" in the BD-5J.

Woodward, the skydiver, says he thinks others just don't understand.

"I've heard it said that skydivers have a death wish," he says. "Skydivers have a life wish. Every time you jump out, you're a dead person, unless you take the steps to affirm life, to open your parachute."

Carol M. Ostrom is a Seattle Times staff reporter. Steve Ringman is a Times staff photographer. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Are you a risk-taker?

A QUICK QUIZ USED BY long-time researcher Marvin Zuckerman can give you an idea of your risk-taking quotient. Have your significant other take it, too. Big discrepancies between partners can mean trouble, Zuckerman says. Directions: If you agree with a statement or decide that it describes you, answer true. If you disagree with a statement or feel that it is not descriptive of you, answer false. Answer every statement true or false even if you are not entirely sure.

1. I tend to begin a new job without much advance planning on how I will do it. 2. I usually think about what I am going to do before doing it. 3. I often do things on impulse. 4. I very seldom spend much time on the details of planning ahead. 5. I like to have new and exciting experiences and sensations even if they are a little frightening. 6. Before I begin a complicated job, I make careful plans. 7. I would like to take off on a trip with no preplanned or definite routes or timetable. 8. I like doing things just for the thrill of it. 9. I tend to change interests frequently. 10. I sometimes like to do things that are a little frightening. 11. I'll try anything once. 12. I would like the kind of life where one is on the move and traveling a lot, with lots of change and excitement. 13. I sometimes do "crazy" things just for fun. 14. I like to explore a strange city or section of town by myself, even if it means getting lost. 15. I prefer friends who are excitingly unpredictable. 16. I often get so carried away by new and exciting things and ideas that I never think of possible complications. 17. I am an impulsive person. 18. I like "wild" uninhibited parties.

Scoring: Score one for each item answered "true" except for No. 2 and No. 6. Score one for "false" answers to Nos. 2 and 6. MEN: 0-6 very low "risk quotient"; 7-8 low; 9-13 average; 14-16 high; 17-19 very high. WOMEN: 0-5 very low; 6-7 low; 8-12 average; 13-15 high; 16-19 very high.

Credit: Marvin Zuckerman, "Behavioral Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking" (Cambridge University Press, 1994).