How safe is it to want to fall down a snow-covered mountain with two sticks on your hands and feet to help you go faster?

One of the dangers of becoming wealthy is succumbing to hobbies that have been glorified in film and print, but are actually considerably life-threatening: incessant traveling, scuba, skiing, yachting, flying, rock climbing, racing - even equestrian activities.

When money is no longer your primary concern, one needs to find ways to fill the time up. So many turn to these and other sports or hobbies, thinking they will be perfectly fine. Eventually the odds catch up with many and they have serious accidents or are killed.

The excess of food, drugs and partying lifestyle take their toll early on many rich kids (even faster than they do on the poor kids) and so some "graduate" the party scene in their mid to late twenties for these hobbies and believe they are spending their time more wisely and safely. For some this is true as many do not survive the partying cycle. For most, they simply replace one type of escape mechanism with another and throw themselves into it with abandon, thinking that money or fame should be able to buy proficiency - and safety.

All too many find out the hard way that this is not the case.

Very seldom do you see reading, writing or researching as a glorified activity for the rich with time on their hands any more - though this used to be common over a hundred years ago. A man like Alexander Graham Bell who kept his pulse on all the latest technologies being worked on in the US and in Europe, is a typical example. Glorified activities now must involve expenditures of considerable sums and be something the average working person can't afford to do.

Such is a pity, as it even further degrades 'culture' when the rich are so diverted from intellectual activities - because the poor and middle classes tend to seek to emulate the rich.