Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Designer Genes

What are the genes in the body that control the level of fear that someone has in a situation? Why am I not privileged to have these genes? It seems that everything I do scares others to a degree that I can't understand? Its just walking a slackline, or its just jumping out of an airplane... is it really that bad? Perhaps I'm missing some key infrastructure in my cognitive brain soup that should make me scared when I'm about to walk a highline or skydive. Or maybe its just a family thing. It probably is, and here's my proof.


This weekend I rigged the Golden Spire highline again, mainly for my sister Laura to try out a second time. Last time she had difficulty standing up, so I devised a plan to remedy that. Paul came along for the fun too, and was hiding lots of tricks in those short sleeves of his. It turned out that they both had it in them to try really hard, but they didn't really seem too stoked on it, just wanted to hang out. I was mistaken though, Paul stepped up to the line, and after hanging out on it for a few minutes, gave it a go. The thing about highlines is that the hardest part is standing up. Once you are standing, you're in an extremely familiar position so it flows naturally and comfortably.


Paul and Laura did great, and both walked it on virtually their first tries! Laura became the only woman (as far as I am aware of) to walk a highline in Colorado, or at least the youngest. I'm really proud to have two awesome slackliners in my family.

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