DC ExtraTime: Summer Break - Cliff Diving with TJ (of Winter Break)

BY DC CUEVA                      

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

Amidst this madness of Premiere Week and the launch of the month-long countdown to Are You The One? Season 7 along with the first half of this year, it would be easy to forget that there are other shows to look in at besides just The Challenge, Jersey & Floribama Shore, and Ex On The Beach. And the journey that involved one of those other series began last fall and has been on more of a roller coaster ride than your usual MTV reality series.

If you remember watching Fear Factor last year, the season finale of Season 1 saw Bananas, Laurel, Leroy and Aneesa face off against four relative unknowns from a show that didn't air on MTV for another six months: Marc, Carissa, Alessandra and J-Brew of what would become Winter Break: Hunter Mountain. The genius behind Jersey/Floribama Shore, Sally-Ann Salsano, brought a show and formula synonymous with the beach to the snow and the Catskill Mountains, where there was a lot of drama taking place with them, TJ, Taylar, Jillian and Sheen.
   TJ (Angus, not TJ Lavin) found himself in plenty of drama during their stay in the winter cabin in Hunter Mountain, starting when he opened up about his experience serving as a serviceman in the Army, him having a girlfriend back home, and drama with Alessandra and Jillian that even spilled over into the Twitter-sphere. And as he waits out this long summer to go back into snowboarding following what we saw on that short but sweet season north of the Big Apple, TJ is keeping himself busy with a rite of summer of going diving into a lake... only this one is more adventurous.

Old-time sports fans who remember watching ABC's Wide World of Sports in the pre-ESPN age saw the sport of cliff-diving: a sport that's not for the faint of heart being brought from the springboards and platforms to the cliffs of Acapulco, Mexico, and at higher elevations than in the most dangerous of all the summer Olympic sports. A group of divers based in that Mexican paradise dive from 30-40 meters above the sea down into La Quebrada, and high diving is now featured in the Red Bull action sports series and at the FINA World Aquatics Championships sharing the same worldwide stage as diving, swimming and water polo in between Games.
   Whether it's warmer or colder, TJ frequently travels with friends who share that passion for activities that get the adrenaline pumping... and in this case, it's going all the way down 35-110 feet into the waters below for the thrill of it - the most dangerous activity anywhere which often claims lives when not done properly. Last week, a YouTube video was posted at NoahMouth that saw TJ join more than 80 other cliff divers from home and abroad to his Vermont backyard, down to Tennessee and everywhere in between to take on the task of diving off of some of the most beautiful waterfalls and quarries anywhere, from North to South.
   The last scene before the credits features TJ throwing the bird at the camera, and the video caption adds, "This has truly been one of the craziest trips yet for sure!!"  As they always say, please do not try this at the nearest waterfall.

For the handful who watched that show including this fan, due to matters beyond everyone's control Winter Break: Hunter Mountain had a short run on MTV and MTV2 and it led to only my second time binge-watching most of a season of a TV series. We've archived all those posts from that Binge-Fest of five episodes that aired on Final Four Saturday in late March, and we'll share that here later during this cycle (Don't go in on us... it is, after all, winter in the Southern Hemisphere and at last check snow was falling at Thredbo Mountain six hours south of Sydney).

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