Saturday, July 3, 2010

Antigua and such

It seems fairly rediculous that it's fourth of July weekend, and we've been home from vacation for over two months now and I'm still blogging about it. Sometimes life gets in the way.

Jason completed his first summer semester of grad school, straight A's of course. He's also attempting to quit smoking. I dangled motorcycle classes if he can go six months and a motorcycle if he can get through grad school. That's been a very tempting carrot for him to chase. He's also trying his best to get me to regret that decision. You never realize what kind of mood alterer nicotine really is until it's removed from the body. We have to relearn how to live together with tempers, and short fuses, and lot's of stress.

But I did promise swim up bars, zip lines and bees.



One of the "fun" things we did in Antigua was go about thirty minutes inland into the rainforest and zip line over the rainforest canopy. I tend to shy away from all things adventerous/dangerous/adrenaline infused, but I try to make exceptions for my adrenaline junky hubby. I was terrified during the whole safety briefing and harnassing. Soaring three hundred feet above the ground and through the tree tops....sweaty palms, racing heart, get me the hell out of here. Jason was in Jason heaven, just itching to get out on those lines. I have to admit it ended up being a lot of fun. After the first line, I felt safe and secure in the harness and started pushing myself off to even get more speed. Jason and I were having a blast!

Then we got to the last line. And no one was moving. At the other end of the line there was a huge nest of bees. Angry, aggressive, stinging type bees. Umm we were stuck on a platform in a tree fifty feet off the ground with no way to get down. Which meant we had to go back up the line we had just zipped down. Back UP. The workers pushed us out on the line as far as they could and then we literally had to hand over hand climb back up the line. Husbands went first and the workers pushed the wives next so that husbands could wrap legs around wives (we're weak and girly...or something) and hand over hand back up the line we went.

After that point I was sore and tired and beyond sweaty and just ready to go back to my poolside bar. But wait there's more. A rope adventure course! Down a thousand stairs we climbed so we could balance ourselves on various rope courses and work up even more of a sweat trying not to fall. Which meant of course that I fell. We had safety lines, so I didn't fall thirty feet to my peril. But my legs were all scraped up and sticking through the slates of the wooden bridge I was trying to traverse. I knocked Jason off the course completely in my attempt to steady myself, and the two workers are shouting different instructions to me "Grab your safety lines! Grab your safety lines!" I just sat there hanging almost upside down wondering how the heck do I drag myself vertical at this point. Needless to say I was not a happy camper and not so politely informed Jason that I earned a whole lot of brownie points for this little excursion. I actually did manage to pull myself up and finished the course with no more incidents, and then climbed back up those thousand stairs. And as soon as we got back to the resort nursed my wounds here,



The end.

Happy Fourth of July all, enjoy the beautiful weather.

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