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| 9/30/2008 6:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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Courtesy photo
Sheri Lewis, sales specialist with Incredible Adventures, goes on a tiger shark dive with the company in the Bahamas. |
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Company specializes
in 'Incredible Adventures'
Kristen Plank
Journal Staff Writer
Taking a trip into space isn't on everyone's priority list, but hanging out with sharks or completing a covert ops training session might peak more of an interest.
When Dolores-area resident Harold Watkins wanted to fly to the edge of the atmosphere and later skydive over Everest, he went through adventure company Incredible Adventures.
The company started back in 1998, when previous owner Kent Ertugrul visited Moscow in search of computer programmers for his new voice mail company. He was offered a flight in a Russian MiG-29, took it, and began Incredible Adventures shortly after his return home.
"It wasn't like he sat down and said, 'I would like to start an adventure company,'" recalls current owner Jane Reifert.
Incredible Adventures' Web site calls the MiG mission "love at first flight," which isn't hard to imagine when customers face the world from the outer edge of the atmosphere, looking down at the curvature of the Earth. The normal perspective has swapped, with night skies above and daylight below.
From that first mission, Reifert said Incredible Adventures' customer base grew as people heard of the "unusual programs" the company offered.
But be prepared to pay the price, and not only in terms of the risk involved in many of these adventures. Monetary prices range from several hundred to several million.
Interested in an Ultralight Trike flight? Only $225 required. How about a Russian Ops mission in the Rockies? Expect a $2,275 price tag. Or perhaps you'd like to go skydiving over Mount Everest. There is no experience required for a tandem jump, but it will cost you approximately $36,500.
If that's not enough, there's always a $25 million orbital space flight to consider. Intense qualifications and testing must be met, but being one of the first tourists into space with the Russian Space Agency allows for major bragging rights.
With only three full-time employees in the United States and a few in Russia, Incredible Adventures caters mostly to stunt-seeking individuals from all over the world, including their own employees.
Sheri Lewis, sales specialist for Incredible Adventures, has completed numerous adventure missions, from handling a machine gun in a covert operations mission to experiencing weightlessness on a zero gravity flight.
The company has also provided numerous stunt doubles for major motion pictures.
"We have a lot of different people that come to us for filming different things," she said, adding one of the dive masters the company employs is a "dead ringer" for "Pirates of the Caribbean" actor Johnny Depp, and was used as a double in the first movie.
Other movies that have used their services include "Top Gun," "Kerosene Cowboys," "Jarhead" and "Iron Man." The company doesn't plan on stopping there.
"It's a world of adventure," Reifert explained. "You never know how long things will be possible, and we'll keep expanding to make us more solid as a company."
Expanding? More like breaking the barriers of adventure with every new quest. Either way, the company offers anything that falls under your daredevil or thrill-seeking umbrella.
On the Net: Incredible Adventures, www.incredible-adventures.com.
Reach Kristen Plank at kristenp@cortezjournal.com.
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