Taking A Leap For Leap Year (Literally)


I blame it on Montreal. Roaming through  the streets of La Belle Ville means encountering all manner of circus arts, from stilt walkers in front of stores to aerialists on the streets. It's not the home of Cirque Du Soleil for nothing. I think such close encounters with high flying performers lodged a lot of curiosity in my mind. So when the notion of doing something unusual for Leap Year arrived what did I do? I signed up for flying trapeze class. I don't think this sort of learning environment would have seemed fun to me before Montreal.  I have not thought fully about all the details, I've just decided to do it.  After all, Chicago Trapeze School's  motto is "Forget fear. Worry about the addiction."  Right. So have your travels inspired you to do anything you wouldn't ordinarily do?

Comments

Catherine said…
what a great idea for a leap year - enjoy - I once took a leap of faith whist travelling - skydiving from 12000 ft in NZ to cure vertigo induced by the trauma of climbing Hellvellyn via Striding Edge in the Lake District UK - it worked!! Greetings from the Riviera...
March 1, 2012 at 1:57 PM
Fly Girl said…
Catherine, that's a really huge leap! I don't think I could be so brave with skydiving, trapeze flying is scary enough!
March 1, 2012 at 2:11 PM
A Cuban In London said…
I love the idea. I think the one thing I've picked up from the few countries I've been to is cooking. I've tried traditional Spanish food in the hsape of fabada and I have made traditional Malay food, too.

That was fun! Thanks.

Greetings from London.
March 2, 2012 at 11:18 AM
Fly Girl said…
Cuban, I'm not surprised that your travel inspiration involves food. Traditional Malay food does sound like a fun adventure.
March 2, 2012 at 11:33 AM
MinnieRunner said…
Wow! A flying trapeze class? I wouldn't have the courage to enroll at it. Salute to you!

Enjoy!
March 6, 2012 at 11:30 AM
Fly Girl said…
Minnie, I wouldn't have had the courage either-before I went to Montreal!
March 6, 2012 at 7:16 PM
Jean-Luc Picard said…
Way to scary for me! My stomach would detatch itself from me.
March 9, 2012 at 11:52 AM
Fly Girl said…
Jean-Luc, it's scary for me too but I'm pushing past it!
March 9, 2012 at 1:54 PM
Niecydodd said…
I have so much respect for you to be able to just "leap right in" and try new things. Way to be!
March 17, 2012 at 6:12 PM
Fly Girl said…
Neicy, thanks so much! I'll write a post when I take the class. Thanks for dropping by.
March 17, 2012 at 7:24 PM
Ireland Wanderer said…
I'm really scared of heights, but my friends convinced me to try bungee jumping when we were visiting France. It took 30 minutes of cajoling, but I jumped, and it was amazing! Traveling does make you do crazy things...
March 25, 2012 at 9:30 AM
Fly Girl said…
Ireland, it's true, traveling really does inspire us to jump out of our comfort zones! Thanks for visiting.
March 25, 2012 at 2:05 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Puerto Rico's Taino Culture

Image
The original inhabitants of the Caribbean region of North America were the Arawak, Taino and Carib  native peoples.  The Tainos are a subgroup of the Arawaks and are recognized as the founders of the island of Boriken or Puerto Rico.  These were the people who offered a peaceful welcome to Columbus in 1493.  They didn't know the cruelty and violence that would follow his so-called "discovery" of the land that they had cultivated for centuries. Despite official government pronouncements that the Taino have been killed off by the massacres and slavery that followed in Columbus' wake, they live on.  As demonstrated in the photo above by  members of  the Puerto Rico Folklorico Dance & Culture Cultural Cente r, Taino traditions, food and names remain strong. Throughout Puerto Rico, town names like Mayaquez, Utuado and Caquas echo the Taino language as do the musical instrument maracas and hamaca or hammock. Legends of Taino warriors, like Hatuey, who organized the ba
Read more

Traveling Through A Liberian Childhood

Image
I like to explore the world with books as much as I like to actually travel. A well-written narrative can transport you to places that you'd never experience with just superficial details like photos and descriptions. I've been interviewing writers about the criteria they use to select books for Summer reading and it made me think about my own general reading criteria. As a journalist, I'm really drawn to biographies, autobiographies and memoirs more than fiction. There's something about using the facts to entice readers into your world that gets me. It's no coincidence that some of my favorite writers--Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Zora Neale Hurston, Hemingway, started out as journalists. So when I glimpsed The House at Sugar Beach , at my local bookstore and saw it was a memoir written by a journalist, it was pretty much a done deal that I would buy it. Now it wasn't only that the author Helene Cooper was a journalist, it was that she was a Liberian journalist chro
Read more

Switzerland's Fete Des Vignerons

Image
                                               Once every generation, the centuries-old viticultural festival, Fete des Vignerons, unfolds in Vevey, Switzerland. Watching this spectacle of music, dancing, wine and fanciful costumes, felt like I had been transported to something out of a Dr. Seuss story. With a law that prohibits the fest from taking place more than five times in a century, I felt incredibly lucky to witness this celebration of Swiss wine traditions dating back to the 17th century.  Some of the fetes 5,500 performers in costumes strolled the narrow streets of Vevey after a show that featured fairies, bees, royal courts, playing cards and 17th-century wine growers. The performance was in French but the drama transcended language barriers. It's a difficult experience to describe but if I had to sum it up, I would explain it as the magic of Cirque Du Soleil combined with the pageantry of the Olympics, topped with the history of folk celebrations.  Take a peek at my v
Read more