grade 5 art project

If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris, you may be seconds away from death.
-Top 100 facts about Chuck Norris

I'm starting to get a little worried about THE MANTA. Kurt recently sent out an email about THE MANTA to the LWI crew and Lise alerted me to the fact that another company's version of the same product has been recalled. I found a news story about a boy who fell from THE MANTA and ruptured his aorta and collapsed both his lungs. yikes. Despite this, I'm stil excited about riding it this weekend, which leads me to wonder. What's wrong with me?

I contemplate this question every time I am launching myself off the Texas Creek cliffs into Christina Lake. This is a tradition that Kurt and I started around the time we graduated from highschool. The cliff is 60 feet high (we measured with a ski rope), and juts out over the water, providing a perfect jumping platform into extremely deep water. The climb to get to the cliff, however, is tenuous, and the possiblity for a slip and the subsequent roll and fall is very real. At any rate, it's dangerous, people have died and injured themselves. So what's the deal? Why do I do this every year? To overcome the fear of the first jump, I convinced myself that I was really being courageous, that by jumping, I was "alive". I'm not sure if I still really believe that, but nonetheless, I jumped it last weekend and I'll do it again this weekend. Maybe it's simple, I enjoy "the rush". I like the feeling coming up out of the water, victorious, having conquered my fears once more. Maybe it's the ego. I like proving my local knowledge and balls of steel. (I don't literallly have "balls of steel" nor would I want to, but I have learnt how to protect them on entry into the water in order to prevent "slappage").

Sure, it's stupid. Despite this concession, I would argue that there is something elemental, something authentic, something naturally wonderful, about going up or down mountains. I don't know what that means per se, but I like the way it sounds.

Maybe I should've call this entry "Getting up and down things, I like it".

I don't have a photo of me jumping the cliff (one strike against the ego hypothesis...yes), but here is one of Kurt, Vince and I contemplating the task.