Interlaken, Switzerland

My posts are completely out of order at this point. Here are the places I’ve visited in order, Reykjavik, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Athens, Barcelona, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich and Interlaken.

I don’t remember always being a worrier. A stress case, sure. But the worrying came sometime after my parents got divorced, and my Mom was diagnosed with an incurable type of cancer. The hyper worrying came sometime after losing both my parents within six weeks of each other.

I became overly cautious. If they can’t save your Dad after he has a heart attack in the emergency room, what chance do the rest of us have? In my mind, why take the extra and unnecessary risks that sometimes pop up in the form of adventure.

Which is a horrible way to live. Always looking over your shoulder waiting for life to throw you another loophole. Terminally waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Interlaken, Switzerland wasn’t about pretty lakes or mountains or even chocolate and cheese. Interlaken was about reclaiming my sense of adventure. About proving something to myself. Interlaken was about running down and jumping off a slippery, wet mountain with an Australian named Bernie while praying to God a piece of fabric held together by metal spikes kept us from smashing to pieces in the Swiss Alps. Interlaken was about hang gliding.

When Bernie and his lovely wife Malinda pick me up, I am confident about hang gliding. Which slowly starts to waver the higher we get. And when I discover I have to run. Down the hill. The snow covered hill. In tandem with Bernie. And I can not fall.

Bernie and Malinda assure me that I won’t fall. That no one has ever fallen down. I don’t think this is a good time to relay the story about how I once broke my leg while walking home from class as a freshman. Sober even.

They lay carpet down the hill, and Bernie and I practice running in tandem. And then we run for real. And I do not fall.

And then we are flying over the mountain.

It was amazing. Freezing, but amazing. The trees are perfectly sprinkled with snow. You can see the town of Interlaken and both of the lakes. Twenty-five minutes of adventure I wouldn’t have enjoyed had I been looking over my shoulder waiting for life to throw me a loophole.

In life, we tend to sort ourselves into columns of things that we are and we aren’t. I’m not an athlete, a singer, a dancer or an adventurer. Sometimes it’s fun to shake up those columns.