#30 - Take a Trapeze Class.....

It never occurred to me until my brother pointed it out last Saturday, but the fact that riding a unicycle and taking a trapeze class both appeared on my 50 Things to Do list might indicate an unhealthy obsession with the circus. He didn't exactly call it "unhealthy." He merely asked if I had also considered taking up lion-taming.

I have been fascinated with trapeze artists as long as I can remember. It couldn't have been from the circus; I don't remember EVER going to the circus, at least as a child. Maybe I saw them on television, I don't know. I wanted to be ANYWHERE that was up THERE, above the crowd, above the treetops, above everything. I climbed trees, I sat on top of the house, I jumped out of airplanes.

When I originally put this item on my list, I said I wanted to take a class at Canopy Studio, a place in Athens where they teach lessons. But they (at least to my knowledge) are more focused on aerial dance and other forms of flying, and when I read that a new company had opened that focuses on outdoor trapeze, I knew that's where I wanted to go. I didn't want to sign up for an 8-week workshop, I just wanted a single lesson. Or two.

I paid for the Warrior Princess' daughter to go with me, because that way I had an excuse. It was her birthday present, so she couldn't say no. I told her I hope when she's 50 that she will have to find 14-year-olds to do things with.

Getting ready. In the background are Kaz and Shane, co-owners of the facility. 

This girl was a natural.

This girl was NOT a natural.

The trapeze was great fun, but I was not physically prepared for it. It didn't require the upper-body strength I anticipated, but they really, really wanted me to swing my feet up, between my hands, and over that bar.

Yeah, that did NOT happen.

I was able, on the second try, to swing my legs OUT and AROUND and put them over the bar, but it was still not graceful. Or pretty. Or easy.

It wasn't at all scary standing on the edge of the board waiting to jump off. I guess the safety net made it not as scary as I thought it would be. It DID, however, require a very unnatural starting position: standing with my toes over the edge of the board, reaching out but keeping my upper body straight, poking my stomach OUT over the board. All these years I've been trying to hold my stomach IN.

I had fun, I did fly, and I might go again. Because I felt like I didn't get it "right" the first time. My upper body and abs are sore, as I figured they would be. I have no idea how I got the bruise on the outside of my right thigh. When I went to bed last night, I kept playing and replaying the jumps (I think I made 4. Or maybe 5.) over and over again in my head, trying to figure out where it went wrong.

And it wasn't THAT wrong. I didn't break anything. I'm probably not going to have a career as a trapeze artist, but it isn't too late for the Warrior Princess' daughter. She was gorgeous. She (and most of the others **ahem**) actually got to do a "catch," transferring from the trapeze to being held by Shane. That in itself should have been an incentive for me to do a better job. Just seeing him in tights and that tight shirt should have done it. But I digress.

They have a free show on Nov. 6th, and I may go see that. I just love watching anyone fly.

I have some video, and as soon as I edit it properly and get it uploaded, I'll share it with you. After a long, long, LOOOOOOOOONG day on Grand Jury duty, I'm not up to it tonight.

In a time crunch here...

....'cause it's going on midnight, and if I don't get my blog posted in the next 21 minutes, I won't have posted every single day since I started. And my all-or-nothing personality just can't handle that. It's every day, baby.

And the fact that I spent all day at Epcot with my sweet girl does not excuse me from my blogging responsibilities! It was a last-minute, impulsive decision that we made this morning. Her doctor said she couldn't drive or swim post-op, but he said NOTHING about riding down to Orlando and walking around in the 95 degree heat and melting all over Epcot. I waited and waited for it, but he didn't mention it. So we figured it must be all right.

I'm all for being impulsive and flying by the seat of our pants, but this could really have been planned better. Like if we had thought about spending the night with my friends Wilson and Nurse Boop, who live a mere 10 minutes from the greatest place on earth. (We did, however, get to share a meal and a couple of pitchers of beer with them, so it wasn't a total loss.) Or maybe waited until first frost to go mingle with about a billion other human beings from many different countries.

Why is it that I'm surprised to hear young'uns speaking with a British accent? It always makes me smile. It's like I thought they talked "normal" like we do here in the South (HA HA HA HA HA) up until adulthood, and THEN they developed their British accents.

Here's one of my two favorite t-shirts from today. I'm gonna make a point to take pictures of great t-shirts everywhere I go from now on.
If you can't read it, it says "Beer makes you feel the way you should feel without beer." I think that is a profound statement. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And it's attributed to someone who is probably very famous, but I can't make out the name at the bottom. And I'm in a time crunch. I was going to take a better picture, but I had already mortified Sweet Girl by taking a picture of the guy's shirt while we were in line for the Nemo ride, all while I was PRETENDING to take a picture of Sweet Girl herself.

My other favorite t-shirt was on a very large lady (and I can say that because I almost qualify for that description myself), and it said "I suggest you take the stairs." It was almost, almost totally ironic, except that she was going up the stairs. BETWEEN two escalators. So she gets points for having the nerve to wear the shirt in the first place, and for actually using the stairs. Couldn't take a picture of this one because I'd already used all my mortification points for today.

Gonna turn into a pumpkin in seven minutes. The last time I was up until midnight was either while I was writing my dissertation or after a Billy Joel concert or during college football bowl games. None of which followed a 12-hour day on my feet at Epcot. So I'm done.