Ask HN: What's your favourite hobby and how did it start?

Why would you spend $400 on a piece of furniture when you could make it yourself for $800?

I too have been bitten by this bug.

I did an ifly 2 minutes flight (indoor skydiving), and my co-worker asked me if we should try to go do a real skydiving. I had 0 friends and knowledge about it. We went to website, looked that you can pay 300 to go solo, and 200 for tandem. Without even thinking, we payed for solo 300, just assuming it is a better experience.

We were sitting in a class terrifying while listening for 6 hours what might kill us. We both jumped the next day after the class (weathered out the day of the class). My friend did not continue. I am getting close to 1400 jumps.

There are several things I like about this sport. Adrenaline. While you skydive, you definitely don’t think about how to fix THAT bug, your focus is on Dropzone. People. 99% of people I have met during skydiving are the best people you can have around you. Various professions, various hobbies, ages, statuses. But in the plane and on skydive we are all the same. Bag of meat falling out of the sky. Some do it better than others.

Skydiving opens the world. There are so many activities around the places, where it is hard to get access to, but people in skydiving looking for various options to jump in those areas. I had one of the best experiences traveling around Iceland in a cargo plane with always open door, so we can jump in various national parks and awesome places where you need to hike for hours. One week trip was 4000 EUR per person, including food, lodging, skydiving and transportation. I definitely want to do similar to Africa and Egypt at some point.

Cooking is something that grew on me, I was a horrible cook when I moved out of my parents house. I just started with simple recipes, learned basic techniques, and expanded from there.

I joined the local climbing association way back in college and loved it. Before climbing, other sports didn't really interest me much. I guess it scratches my puzzle solving itch. I loved being outdoors and travelling to places, but these days I mostly just go bouldering at the local gym.

It's great exercise, really joyous, and in my experience the people who go to jams are excellent. A friend told me about it and I just decided to go, knowing that I could opt out of any movement or dance that didn't feel ok. Now I go to the contact improv jams in my city every week and even went to some international jams while traveling recently. There's usually contact improv events near most major cities.