Adventure Man would be proud

Olympic Quickie: Tough one to swallow for Team USA hockey. What a game though. I had a gut feeling from the US’s first goal onwards that they were going to tie the game, whether with 15 minutes or 24 seconds left on the clock. Too bad they couldn’t push one more goal across the line. Congrats to Canada. Keep your head up USA. Be proud!

My friend Eric Day goes by many names….mainly because I am the only one who calls him all types of nicknames. Most recently christened Brown Chicken on his six month Appalachian Trail hike, his flare for the outdoors has earned him the nickname “Adventure Man.” While I don’t try to rival his outdoor prowess, I do try to emulate him and am proud when I can tack on my own Adventure Man-esque adventure activity on my belt.

Two weekends ago was such the case.

I went rappelling with my friend Jessica and a group of seven other Colombian tourists about an hour outside of Bogota. Mere co-passengers in the transportation van by morning, the nine of us ended up forged a friendship through a common death-defying experience by late afternoon.

The original plan was to go whitewater rafting and rappel down one cliff. But due to a mild drought and lack of rain over the past several weeks, the river levels were too low so we couldn’t go rafting. Instead we rappelled down three different drops. The first one was a bridge, about 30 meters high.

The second drop was a waterfall cliff about 20 meters high with water rushing down our faces as we made the descent into a cave underneath the waterfall. Once everyone had rappelled down we took turns jumping the about 15 feet from the cave into the lake.

But the third drop was the mother of them all – a 75 meters high waterfall running down a mountain.

Thinking through the physics of rappelling you tell yourself that you really have nothing to worry about as long as the rope is steady and tied to a solid, stationary weight like a rock, tree, pole, etc. But it’s a whole different ball game when you are lunging down a 220 foot mountain seeing the “sturdy” rope of yours scrape against the rocks wondering how many times over this same rope has been scraping against these same rocks and what if something gives way? It was a rush. Admittedly I was nervous for the first drop since it was, well, my first time and the 5 minute instructional talk given by our guide on how to rappel didn’t exactly leave me feeling like a pro. But the first drop went smooth and I was not only not nervous, but excited, for the second drop. Then come the third, the second I took a peek down the endless abyss that I was about to head down, man oh man, the butterflies definitely kicked in.

But alas, I am alive to blog away about it. Equally as cool as the rappelling itself were the hikes through the ravines to get from one drop point to the next. And of course, what goes down must come up so we ended the day long adventure with a hefty 45 minute hike up through the mountains. Hell of a time I tell ya. Adventure Man would be proud of me.