Megalife: The Autobiography of Nick Menza by J. Marshall Craig

Author:J. Marshall Craig
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2018-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

Random Acts of Danger

I went skydiving. Once. That’ll never happen again.

I like doing stupid shit on my mountain bike, and I like dogsleds and snowmobiles in Alaska and whatever. But stepping out of a perfectly good airplane with what looks like an oversized hoodie is not my idea of a good time.

Mustaine was into it in the early ’90s when he was trying to swap one dangerous rush for another. We had a song on the Countdown album called “High Speed Dirt” that gets its title from the buzzword for what a skydiver experiences when his chute doesn’t deploy. Sort of like Icarus in reverse: he didn’t fly too close to the sun; he flew too close to the ground!

Junior and I went along with the program and did a tandem jump, screaming all the way down. Marty refused. He said he’d do it if the album went platinum, a pledge he had to fulfill when the record went double platinum. When he did finally jump, he excitedly said he loved the experience but would never do it again. I hated the experience and will never do it again. Well, hating is not exactly true. When I was floating after the chute came out, it was awesome—really peaceful and quiet. You can hear what’s going on below on the ground, which surprised me, but I’m not doing it ever again. Once was enough.

I’m not about to go surfing again, either, which sucks because I used to love surfing at Zuma beach in Malibu. I thought I was pretty good, too, and I took the dirty lickings with the epic rides and enjoyed everything about it. Then one day I ate it on a big wave, and things went wrong in an instant. The wave dragged me under, and I instinctively swam for the surface. No panic; I knew what I was doing. So I thought. With one of my strokes, my outreached hand touched sand: I had swum in the wrong direction, hitting the ocean floor. I wasn’t that deep, but I was out of air and panicked. It really fucked me up. That was it for surfing.

Before I truly learned that lesson, however, I got into some cliff diving in Hawaii—a hobby that went wrong quickly when I dove into a coral reef and was immediately getting pounded by waves. I was unable to swim out of it. Before I got all cut up or in serious trouble, I was able to grab onto the back of a big tortoise that swam me away from the rocks.

That was it for cliff diving.

I love snorkeling, and I’ll keep doing that. But, of course, I thought I’d dial it up and get my scuba certification, also on a trip to Hawaii. I took all the classes and got out there and really got into it, but the instructor said I wasn’t compliant with all the rules and kept giving me shit. I am too easily distracted by what I see and

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