I am afraid of heights.
I remember back to the day that I walked the switchbacks at Bryce Canyon white knuckling so hard that I almost broke someone's hand. The thought of that glass skyway across the Grand Canyon is my idea of torture. It is not the fear of falling, but the fact that maybe perhaps that I can't stop my self from jumping.
But with the thought of the possibility of relocating looming, I did something that I never thought I would do. I rode the Ferris wheel on Santa Monica Pier.
It was always daunting to me. It is large, so large that you can see it from Malibu at night, me being afraid of heights, it being old and rickety and run by carnies w/ really small hands. (or actually kids who look like they are in high school. I am not sure what is worse.) I couldn't bring myself to do it. And it is not like I hadn't been asked or begged to go on it before, for some reason Ferris wheels are romantic. I see them as a spinning wheel of death. (me being dramatic, but there is a certain passage in "Devil in the White City" that might make you change your mind about Ferris Wheels)
So when my friend visiting friends suggested we go on and I looked up at it and thought, this may be the last time you get this opportunity so I said "f-it, I am riding that Ferris wheel."
And I did. And I was so distracted by the view, the breeze that I didn't think about how high we were, how old it was, how warped the boards were on the boardwalk that was holding us up. We didn't get stuck at the top waiting for other riders to get on, so that was a plus.
And I didn't jump.
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