Hi, Tuesday, February 18, 2003, 12:04:59 PM, you wrote:
> Every day I see things on TV I never, ever want to do. One of them is > definitely wrangling reptiles. (Another is mountain climbing. I have a > strange fascination with watching it and reading about it, but the whole > time I'm quietly thinking to myself, "I'm sure glad that's not me.") one of my friends used to be a professional photographer of outdoor equipment and is very gung-ho about mountains and things - he climbs frozen waterfalls and stuff like that. He invited me rock-climbing once, and I foolishly accepted. By all accounts it was a trivially easy rockface, but I just could not make myself go up it. I think I was about 2 metres from the ground when I decided I'd had enough. It was just too scary. After I'd struggled down again I was most pissed off to learn that, had I really, really wanted to get to the top of this thing, I just had to walk round the corner, where there was a gentle, grassy slope suitable for those of a nervous disposition. There were some very hard-looking army types at the same place, free-climbing. That means climbing without the (admittedly dubious, in my experience) benefit of ropes and metal things for sticking in the rock. I couldn't even look, it was so frightening. Am I SAS material? I think not. On the other hand, I have been chased through the streets of Bordeaux by knife-wielding mafiosi, the streets of Rome by a fat axe-wielding pizza chef, shot at for an alleged parking offence, stoned by a naked madman in Ethiopia, and was once asked to assassinate a chief of police (I declined). But those are other stories, for other days <g>. --- Bob
