Jonathan Sawyer is almost 40, balding, single, never married. He had a long-term girlfriend once, but she left him for someone more exciting. He was a non-athletic kid growing up, and could never make the school teams, but he has always followed sports avidly. Now he runs a tiny, one-man insurance business. The business isn't doing so well. He feels like his life is going nowhere. At the beginning, he had planned to sell insurance for just a year or two while he got some other exciting business ideas together, but those ideas never panned out and ten years have already passed. All day long he sits at his desk trying to convince his insurance customers that they should play it safe, be conservative. But lately he has been feeling that if he himself doesn't take a big chance soon, doesn't shake things up and make a change in the near future, he will be stuck in this cramped, depressing office for the rest of his life. More than anything in the world, Jonathan Sawyer wants to be somebody. He wants to reinvent himself. He wants to do something original.

For a long time he didn't know what that thing should be. The idea that he would ever start a new sport was the farthest thing from his mind. Hasn't everything worthwhile already been tried anyway? But about a year ago, one afternoon when he was least expecting it, inspiration struck him and aisling was born.