I like to try things once to say I have and that is the reason I decided to Bungee Jump. That and Daniel really wanted to do it and I know that I would never live it down if I chickened out. It turned out about as bad as I imagined it, .... actually worse. I imagined that once I "took the leap" that everything would be fine. I climbed to the top of the tower and I could hardly breathe, partially because it was like a million flights of stairs up, but mostly from the anxiety that was increasingly constricting my air way the higher up I saw how far down I would be falling. Once at the top I said a quick good bye as I watched Daniel dive off the tower with no problems. I was thinking maybe it was one of those things that seems harder than it is.
The guy at the top asked me how I wanted to go and at first it seemed like a good idea to go like Daniel did, just diving, but when I got my leg wrapped around the big padded pole that would fall with me I quickly realized that just wasn't going to happen. I asked if I could just go off normally. This is where I didn't know enough. I didn't know what was normal or what the options even were, so he told me to just let myself fall. Yeah, I don't know about anyone else, but my body has a problem with just letting me fall off of a 75 foot edge. I couldn't do it. I stood on the platform for what seemed like forever. I kept telling the guy up there with me to tell me exactly what would happen and when, when would the bungee cord catch me, when would I land, etc. After what felt like an hour and probably realistically was a couple full minutes of standing on the ledge (might not sound long, but it felt long!) I heard Daniel yelling words of encouragement. For the first time I noticed him down there watching me and to my horror there was a gathering of people taking bets on whether I would chicken out or not. Ok, not really, but there really was a group of passerby's that stopped on their way to another ride to see if I would be able to do it. At that point I knew I HAD to do it, so I sat there for a little while longer and finally just let myself go.
I did just what I was told, just let myself start falling. When my body was parallel to the ground I panicked. I did NOT want to end up falling on my head so I freaked. At some point I flipped over with my back towards the ground and ended up with the bungee cord catching me in a back flop. My whole body was jerked and a terrible sound of pain and humiliation escaped my mouth. It was finally over and I have sworn over and over that I will never do that again! Daniels thinking skydiving would be fun now.....
Sunday was time to head back to Moab. Daniel loves to take the scenic route and see new things. I like to see new things, but I don't like to drive. I drive to get the a destination so I wasn't thrilled when Daniel suggested we take a back route that would take 2 extra hours to get home ( on top of the 4 hours we already had to go to get to Moab and then 4.5 hours on top of that to get back home late that day) BUT, being his birthday I had no choice but to happily oblige. It turned out to be a pretty neat drive.
We came around a sharp corner on a curvy mountain road and saw these funny little things so we had to pull over.
They are "coke ovens" from the late 1880's where coal was heated in the oven to produce coke, a combustible material that burns practically smoke free. I still don't really understand why, but they were pretty cool. They were being rebuilt as you can see from the ones in the center.
.... and more...
... and more....
We went off course for an hour drive up to Marble Colorado. Here they mine giant slabs of marble that are used all over for marble statues. They just had these huge marble slabs sitting all over the place, but we didn't really have time to stop and check things out much.
And the waterfalls. The were all over lining the highway and they were gorgeous I was really surprised when we passed the first one that we just had to stop, but they became a pretty common sight and unfortunately we didn't have time to explore each one.
2 comments:
Ah, fun drive! And I'm so glad you wrote down your bungee jumping experience. It was too funny to forget :)
What a fun trip! And you are much braver than I would have been! I would have given Kyle a kiss and told him I'd see him when he was through.
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