Considering Ingemar Eriksson gets a bit wobbly on a ladder, the fact he's spent more than half his life jumping out of planes is perhaps surprising. Tracey Roxburgh talks to the Queenstowner about his former career, and the life-changing event leading to his new one.
For well over half his life, Queenstown's Ingemar Eriksson's quite literally been a high flyer.
Now 50, Ingemar first moved to the Queenstown Lakes in 1999, when he was 24, becoming Skydive Wānaka's first international hire.
By that point, he already had about six years' skydiving experience, but his passion for it started long before that, as a child in Sweden.
Growing up in a small village, he recalls going on regular road trips with his family and being fascinated seeing skydivers on the horizon -- by the age of 8 he was building Lego men with parachutes and "throwing them off little bridges".
About a decade later he decided to learn how to do it himself -- ironic given he's "really scared of heights".
"That's where you get the ultimate thrill, I guess [but] I was definitely super-nervous.
"I remember the feeling driving to the dropzone ... I was sort of hoping the weather would be too bad to jump."
But he was quickly bitten by the adrenaline bug and feeling overwhelmed at the thought of choosing a career at that young age, he happened across one skydiving.
He'd studied electronics at college, learning how to fix stereos -- "they don't exist any more " -- and soldering, and toyed with building for a while.
"There was a whole dilemma, I had no idea [what I wanted to do] because there was nothing really that offered what I was interested in.
"Growing up and your parents tell you, 'you have to think really hard now about what you're going to do with the rest of your life', it stressed me out.
"When I found skydiving, that was like, 'this is the best thing that could happen to me'."
He obtained his jumpmaster qualification in Sweden and then spent two winters with a mate in the Arizona desert, in the United States, where he spent nights sleeping in a tent and days helping out at one of the world's biggest dropzones, frequented by world champs.
"They were pioneering," he says. "There was this guy, Olav Zipser, he was the godfather of freeflying -- we got to see that live, how that discipline evolved.
"We were maybe the first ones in Sweden who could do that sort of flying ... it's one of the biggest disciplines now."
He wanted to become a world champion himself, "but I didn't have the finances for it, so the next best thing was to do it as a job".
He did three seasons with Skydive Wānaka, then came a five-year stint in the North Island where he met his now-wife, Yuko, who's originally from Japan.
She was packing parachutes at a competing dropzone, but also went on to become a jumpmaster, recording 3000 skydives, retiring when she became a mum -- the couple now have two boys, William, 11, and Leo, 8.
While up north, Ingemar accidentally got into triathlons.
It started, he laughs, in '08 when he had dinner with some mates in Taupo who were competing in a half marathon the next day.
He entered, with no training.
"I hit the wall really bad ... but I did enjoy it a lot, and I wasn't too far behind them when I finished."
His mates were three months out from a full Ironman, so Ingemar thought he'd give that a crack too.
His running was "actually quite good" and his biking was "average", but he'd never before been a freestyle swimmer.
"And I was so stupid. I thought the pool was 50 metres, but it was 25.
"So when I reported my training times to my friends, they looked at me, like, 'what the hell? You're amazing'.
"And then we went through the race and they were like, 'what the hell was that?"'
Unfortunately, he had to pull out after breaking his collarbone when he fell off the bike, but finished it in '09, and went on to complete a total of six half Ironmans.
Still skydiving, Ingemar returned to Wānaka for another three-year stint, had a brief Japan sojourn, and was then approached about 2012 by Queenstown's NZONE to work here.
In all, he recorded 27,100 skydives, but was forced to retire in late '23.
Initially suffering vertigo, last February medical scans revealed he had an unruptured aneurysm in his brain.
"The aneurysm was 'irregular', which means it had a bubble on the bubble, so the rupture risk was higher."
Finally, last September he underwent a 'coiling' procedure, where a catheter's used to access the aneurysm and fill it with coils to embolise it.
Unable to skydive, the keen ice hockey player initially got a job staining the exterior of Hilton Queenstown "while trying to figure out a way forward".
Inspired by a line in a podcast -- "decline is a choice" -- he seemingly manifested his new career.
"I wrote that [line] on the whiteboard on our family planner.
"And then I wrote what I wanted to do, like mortgages or property or insurance."
He's since gained a qualification in financial advice and is now working for Haven, helping clients with risk protection, such as life and health insurance, income protection and KiwiSaver.
"I really enjoy it. I have my own story with health -- I know that it can go wrong, and how important it is to have things in place."
As to what he loves about Queenstown, Ingemar says it has everything his family wants.
"Ever since I came to NZ for the first time, you always heard that America is the land of opportunities.
"But when I was young and came here, I felt like this is the land of opportunities."