Flying into the Stratosphere

February 4, 2011

There is something wrong with me. And as far as I can tell, it must be on a genetic level.  Somewhere encoded in the DNA of most of the world’s population, there is an instruction that tells your brain, “Hey, don’t jump off stuff.” I don’t have that genetic material. So my reaction to finding out they actually let you jump off the Stratosphere hotel in Las Vegas was, “How come it took me so long to go to Vegas?”

After plunking down my credit card and signing my life away (seems like I do that a lot), I am told to put on a jumpsuit that is so bright it could be seen from the moon, let alone the top of the hotel.  Next up is hopping on a scale while someone takes a permanent marker and writes my weight on my wrist. (Probably a good move they tell you about the weight on your wrist thing after paying the nonrefundable deposit, or no girl would ever jump.)

As with most of these adventures, I am in that relaxed, yet pensive, state where my brain knows what’s coming should be scary, but my adrenaline gland hasn’t figured it out yet. But not the other jumper dude riding up in the elevator with me – nope, he looks like he is about to puke at any moment. Once we get to the top, they let him jump first while some German tourists start chatting me up.  About the only things I pick up from their broken English are “Vat is vrong vit you?” and “That guy pee pants.”

[A little background about how the Stratopshere operation works, because it is not actually a bungee jump from 117 stories.  There is one long cable inside the glass “jump cube” that is connected on your back to a harness.  This main cable unwinds as you fall, and it is connected to two supporting cables on either side which allow you to free fall for about 80 stories. It then grabs hold and gently sets you on a bullseye at ground level. The reason for the weight on your wrist is they need to know exactly what tension to put on the cables so they don’t slam you into the ground (not so good) or leave you dangling five stories up (not so bad).]

Besides myself, I saw two other people attempt the jump.  First was the dude who rode the elevator up with me.  I will give him credit that he did not hesitate when it was time to jump, but he did not look happy about it.  And according to the little lady, who was watching from the landing zone, he did not look any happier after the jump.

The second guy was when we went back up to the top to look around after I jumped.  Getting off the elevator, we noticed a crowd gathered around the jump cube.  Inside, a guy was standing on the outdoor platform clearly freaking out – with both feet firmly frozen in place. The jumpmaster was standing out there with him trying to convince him to jump.  I didn’t think there was any way this guy would actually jump, having witnessed on many occasions that point where your brain is freaked out so bad you just can’t convince your feet to move even a millimeter. 

But I will give this guy credit. After about 10 minutes of crying and panicking, he finally let the jumpmaster turn him around backwards on the platform…and the jumpmaster immediately proceeded to push him off! (I would have loved to hear the conversation between the two of them before the push, but I guarantee that guy looks back and is glad he jumped.)

Which is all just background to prove my point even more that there is something missing from my DNA.  After hopping on a second scale at the top to confirm my weight, and after having the harness contraption checked over by employees #3 and #4, it was finally time to hook up and plunge to my death. Once they have you all checked out, they open the glass door that leads to a little concrete platform where they connect the cable and give you the final instructions. As the door opened and I put one foot up on the platform, my adrenaline gland finally decided to read the memo about what was happening.  Thankfully, my bladder must have been on vacation and decided to keep sleeping.

After the cable is hooked up, the jumpmaster instructs me to step to the edge, he will count to three, and then I am free to jump.  Of course my response is to look him in the eye and ask, “Do you have to count, can’t I just jump?”  He just laughs and says he is required to count.  As I step to the edge, I hear: one…tw… and I am gone.

Most people fear that moment as you go from solid ground to nothing beneath your feet, but for me that moment is pure bliss.  In that split second, you have completely given up control of what is going to happen next and you are just a passenger along for the ride.  If we can fly when we get to heaven, you’re going to have a hard time getting me to stop jumping off stuff.

Yep, there is something wrong with me.

The Ninja

Spring/Summer, 2001

There is nothing I love more than unintentional comedy that lends itself to a deadpan response, and The Ninja provided me with an example during the summer of 2001 that will probably never be topped.  Before I get to the story, a little background on The Ninja.

I first met The Ninja in high school through a series of events that need not be mentioned (mainly because I don’t have his permission), and we ended up running track together in college.  Two rules to know about college track:  1) It lends itself to a lot of downtime before practice while everyone warms up and stretches together, inevitably leading to the most asinine conservations imaginable.  As an example, we had a debate that lasted the entire few years I was on the team consisting of whether or not a car driving down the highway would be able to drive onto the ramp of a tractor trailer and park the car on the trailer while the two were racing down the highway.  2) Modesty does not exist.  Enough said.)

The Ninja and I became friends during college, where I spent a lot of time at his apartment.  After I graduated a semester early, I lived in the apartment for 8 months before moving on to law school.  At the apartment, the same two rules as above applied.  For example, it was not uncommon for The Ninja to be standing naked in the living room while we debated whether such American cinematic masterpieces as “American Ninja 2” or “Rad” were awesome, super awesome, or stroke-inducing awesome.

The other thing to know about The Ninja was that despite the fact he is a lunatic, he is a very thoughtful person who has a deep-seated faith that I envy.  He’s the type of guy who prays for everything to be healed, included a snotty nose.  In contrast to me, who just hands him a tissue and says, “Blow and be healed, my child.”

During the time I was living in the apartment, The Ninja was deciding whether or not to get married.  In fact, The Ninja and Mrs. Ninja decided to take some time apart at the recommendation of their pastor and figure out if marriage was the path for their lives.  It was near the end of this time apart that we pick up the scene:

From The Ninja’s perspective:  It was late at night and he had made up his mind that he was going to pop the question to Mrs. Ninja at the end of the time apart.  Standing in the bathroom taking care of business before hitting the hay, he was pondering how hard it must be for Mrs. Ninja to not know that he had made up his mind.  While thinking about the upcoming announcement, he softly said to himself, “Poor Mrs. Ninja.”

From my perspective:  I walk down the hallway to my bedroom, look into the open door of the bathroom and see The Ninja with his head down holding The Ninja Package, while muttering the words “Poor Mrs. Ninja” with a sad look on his face. 

My response? 

“Don’t worry dude, I'm sure it's not that small.”

Slinging Ink

August, 2010

Starting some time in high school, I’d always wanted a tattoo.  I believe tattoo artists are just that, artists.  The creations they can lay down on skin is mind-blowing.  I didn’t want something too big or fancy, just something cool. 

When I was in college, there were a lot of Canadians that crossed the border to play sports at UMich (because Canada didn’t offer college sports scholarships – I know, dumb, right?), and almost all of the Canadian runners on the cross country/track team had a sweet tattoo of a maize and blue block “M” inside of a red Canadian maple leaf.  To this day, I am disappointed that I wasn’t born in Canada, so I could have gotten the sweetest tattoo ever.

On a related note, at some point early on during my freshman year in college, I realized that not only did the cross-country runners say “Very Nice!” a lot, but the two words were stitched on a lot of their warm-up gear.  So I went up to the cross-country coach (who was in his mid-50s at the time) and asked him why everyone said “Very Nice!” all of the time.  In response, he turned around, dropped his pants, and there was a “Very Nice!” tattoo staring back at me.

That was exactly what I wanted:  Something that would either stand the test of time for having a special meaning, or would become a legendary rallying cry for future generations of runners.   What I didn’t want was to get a random Japanese character on my shoulder, or a tribal arm band, just for the sake of getting a tattoo (no offense to anyone reading this who has one of those.  I’m sure it’s awesome!)

By the time I reached 30 and still hadn’t figured out what to get, I just assumed my window was closing pretty fast and it wasn’t my destiny to have a tattoo.  But the universe has a way sometimes...on January 13, 2010, my first-born daughter decided Heaven was way better than this place and thought she would go do some advance scouting for us.  We found out she wasn’t going to make it September and it was only a matter of weeks before I first had the thought that I would get a tattoo in her memory.  After she passed away, I decided I wanted a cross with wings coming out of it on my shoulder. 

But who should do it?  When you’re 31 and work in a professional field, this isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly.  If the artist screws up or does a crappy job, you can’t exactly blame it on too much alcohol while in college.

We were planning a trip to California in August, and I figured why not just go to Kat Van D’s shop in LA that is featured on the TLC show LA Ink.  I would be assured a good artist from a cool shop, and that would give me plenty of time to make sure it was something I really wanted.  But like any good show, television reality and reality are not the same thing.  High Voltage Tattoo (the real name of the shop) does not have their telephone number available anywhere, their tattoo artists do not reply to e-mails, and they have horrible customer service reviews.  Not exactly the vibe I wanted for my first (and only?) tattoo.

After poking around on-line, Body Electric in Hollywood had glowing reviews, their Website was pretty cool, and most importantly, they have a phone number where someone picks up the phone and actually answers all of your questions in a friendly manner! (Shocking, I know.)

The day finally arrived and as we were making the couple of hour drive from my sister-in-law’s house in Irvine to Hollywood, I wasn’t nervous about the pain.  I figured I knew some real wussy people who had tattoos in more painful spots than the shoulder, so how bad could it be? (In hindsight, all of those people must have been drunk out of their mind.)  My biggest fear was two-fold:  1) the design wouldn’t come out right, and 2) there would be an earthquake while the needle was in my arm.

We arrived at the shop right after it opened on a Monday, so it wasn’t hopping, but the vibe was outstanding.  The place was spotless and the people there were very friendly and encouraging to this tattoo virgin.  In fact, the place was so chill and inviting that while we were waiting for the artist to finish up my tattoo design, the little lady actually uttered the words “Maybe I’ll get one.”  A minute later she heard the high-vibration needle for the first time.  Just as quickly as the thought had entered her head, it was gone.

To me, the most nerve-racking thing in life is the first time a judge asks you a question in front of your client that you don’t know the answer to.  But the first time a needle full of ink gets plunged into your body is a close second.  Thankfully, our artist was a quiet, unassuming dude who went about his work professionally and efficiently.

It took about three hours to finish the artwork and five hours at the shop in total.  After the first few minutes, I just got into a zone while he worked, and the pain was present but very tolerable.  It’s a sharp pain while the needle runs along your skin, but they only do a few seconds at a time.  The worst part is sitting still for that long, and it gets a little tedious knowing you are so close to the end but can’t move yet.  For about 24 hours afterwards, it felt about the same as a rug burn, and then there was zero pain after that (My favorite part about the whole experience was that for about a month afterwards, every time I would get a chill or shiver down my spine, the frayed nerve endings at the tattoo location would light up like a Christmas tree and give me a jolt.  I know, I’m weird.)

But here’s the thing people without a tattoo don’t realize – a new tattoo is nothing more than a giant, open flesh wound.  You can see what the finished product looks like right after he finished, but then it turns into a scabby, flaky, itchy mess for two weeks while it heals.  During which time the tattoo is barely unrecognizable and you wonder what you have done to your body.

Once my skin healed, I loved how the design came out and I don’t regret it for a second (although to be honest, it’s not exactly small).  Everyone always asks me if I’m going to get another one?  My standard reply right after I got it was, “I hope not, because it took quite a tragedy for me to get this one.”  But now that I’ve had it for six months, well…

You look familiar, do I know you?

Various

Keeping in line with my running hypothesis that I am the one directly responsible for the randomness that is my life, I have stumbled upon my fair share of “celebrities” in odd places.  I put celebrities in quotes, because the idea for this blog got me thinking that it is a fairly personal topic when it comes to who we get excited about meeting.  A quick story as an illustration:

I was a hurdler of some minor reknown in high school, and continued on at U-M.  During that time period, Allen Johnson was the top hurdler on the planet, winning multiple gold medals at the World Championships and Olympics.  While in law school, I was an assistant track coach for the university, and would travel with the team to out-of-town meets on the weekends.  It was early Saturday morning at the hotel before one of the meets (I think it was Clemson, SC, but it might have been Chapel Hill, NC), and someone started knocking on my hotel room door.  Hauling my tired, lazy butt out of bed (because coaches get to drink on Friday nights while the athletes are sleeping), I opened the door ready to berate one of our athletes for waking me up.  Instead, standing there was Allen Johnson, my favorite athlete.  He quickly apologized for knocking on the wrong door (ends up his coach was in the next room), and I believe my exact response was: “Tee hee.  That’s ok.  Tee hee.”

The idea of celebrity simply relates to what we are individually interested in, and I rarely tell the Allen Johnson story because I understand that most people could care less.  My point is that to me, that was a big flippin’ deal, to a very small slice of the track community that would have been a big deal, a slightly larger group of people yet may have realized who he was, and to 99.9999% of the population, they would have just been annoyed that some strange dude woke them up.

Which gets to my second point about celebrity:  People always tell me they are amazed with my ability to remember useless facts and information; but personally, I believe everyone can be trained to remember the same stuff, it’s just not a priority to most people.  I do acknowledge that I am a visual learner with an above average recall for faces and voices – and I watch a lot of movies and TV.  Which is definitely a contributing factor in the “random” sightings I have had.  Another story as an illustration:

The movie 8 Mile starring Eminem came out in November, 2002, and by the next summer, I owned the DVD and had watched the movie a few times.  I was living at home during the summer of 2003 while interning at a law firm, and my Dad and I decided to go sit in the woods in Northern Michigan for a weekend.  After hiking for a few miles later at night to get to our campsite, we finally arrived to the location as it was getting dark, only to find a giant black dude and a little Asian lady sitting there.  It’s stereotyping, but I’m guessing it’s not a common occurrence to find a black man and Asian woman sitting deep in the woods in Northern Michigan.  We struck up a conversation with them and he was complaining about how hard it was hauling all of the stuff into the woods.  (Of course it was hard, you’re not supposed to carry a 2-ton cooler, king size mattress, full wardrobe and kitchen sink 5 miles deep into the woods!)  But as he’s talking, I’m thinking to myself:  “Man, this guy looks familiar.”  Finally working up the courage to just blurt out “Dude, how do I know you?”, it ends up that he was the club bouncer in 8 Mile and had a few lines in the movie arguing with Eminem.

My point is that while it’s an amusing story finding a black guy and an Asian lady deep in the woods with 18,000 times too much stuff, it adds a little kicker at the end because of my uncanny ability to remember names and voices.  Lesson For The Day:  Watch more TV and movies, because you never know who you might run into deep in the woods late at night.

Ok, one final celebrity sighting story for the road:

I mentioned in my very first post that I worked as a summer camp counselor at the University of Michigan.  Each week during the summer, the U-M coaches for different sports would hold camps for the little rug-rats.  It’s a pretty cool thing, as the younger kids get to come spend a week at world-class facilities and meet the coaches and players who are still around.  My job (along with about 30 other counselors) was to stay in a dorm room on a hall with them at night and make sure they didn’t burn the place down.  [There will definitely be a post or two in the future dedicated solely to that summer.]  It was one Sunday afternoon as the kids were checking into the dorms that I went to the lobby to get my mail out of the box.  I was looking down and flipping through the mail as I got on the elevator after a guy and his kids.  Next thing I remember, I was thinking: “Why is Harry from the movie Dumb and Dumber asking me what floor I want?”  I looked up, and staring back at me was none other than movie star Jeff Daniels, bringing his tikes to hockey camp.  Thankfully, I had enough sense to reply “7, please,”  rather than, “Kick his ass, Sea Bass!” or “You can’t triple stamp a double stamp!” or “Would you like an atomic pepper, Mr. Mentalino?”  (Obviously, I’m a fan of that particular cinematic masterpiece.)