I just read a news article that really got to me - It was about skydiving. Now, first let me say that I would never voluntarily jump out of a plane. This 30 year old was taking his FIRST jump - by jumping while an experienced skydiver was strapped to his back. During the dive, the experienced 49 year old skydiver had a heart attack and died. The new jumper had to not only guide himself down, but with the dead man strapped to his back! After landing successfully, he administered CPR but was unsuccessful.
Besides not wanting to try skydiving, I would not want to pilot a plane. With my luck, I'd get the flock of geese......
Mary-I have a story for you- She was a blond cheerleader, he captain of the Auburn football team. They married and had a long happy marriage. When he died she placed the first mourning wreath I have ever seem on the front door of their business. Fast forward: This elderly woman went sky diving, got a tattoo (don't know where), remodeled her kitchen and didn't include a stove because she didn't plan to cook.
wow, that story of skydiving is your worst hell! me too, short of being told its jump or go down with the plane i would not jump either. i would be the one having a heart atttack anyway and prolly not remember to pull my cord on top of it. i always had that vision of my DH having some sort of blackout while we were flying and me left knowing the plane was going down with us in it...well, sobering thought, so i did get my pilot license so i could land it instead of the other option:)
i dont think anyone could coax me into a shark cage to swim with the 20ft great whites..there seems to be a growing tourist industry these days.! divvi
As I get older, I see lots of things I would no longer want to do. Most of them I NEVER wanted to do and that is a pretty big list. I did want to snow ski and white water rafting but would not dare try either of them now.
How about already having six children at home & then delivering octuplets? Sure you've heard by now she's a single mother. I think I would rather jump out of that plane with the dead guy.
At this point it looks like she chose to have all of the embryos planted this time around, and that all of her other children were in vitro as well. The doctors who are being interviewed are having fits about the ethics of planting that many embryos at one time. And some of them seem to have gone out of their way to tell someone, anyone, what they think.
There is no way to be positive at this point that it was in vitro. After all, 5 babies can happen naturally.
lmohr, they have white water rafting trips down the Grand Canyon that people of any age really can go on. Seven days and six nights on the river. The rafts are big, they carry something like 18 people, and two rafts travel together. They have tents that are very easy to set up (you are responsible for your own, but if you have problems, the other members of the group will probably be nice enough to help anyone who needs it.) Each day, they stop for a hike to some wonderful place ... you might not feel like taking all the hikes ... I balked at one where I had to jump over a crack between two boulders, with a drop of 100 feet off one side ... but even just going down the river without doing the daily hikes is marvelous. And the people who run the tours do all the cooking, and the food is great.
You really should look into it, if that's something you've wanted to do.
There is something very wrong with this whole scenario. She is unmarried in her 30's living w/her parents. I understand that at least her twins were in vitro, if not all the others. These are expensive procedures, who is paying for them? Certainly not an unmarried woman in her 30's--unless she has a lot of money on her own. There is no indication that she is on welfare. Six children are very expensive to raise--not to mention 14? On TV, the g'father seemed to indicate that there were no problems. I tend to be naive--but this doesn't pass the smell test. If you had a 30 y.o. unmarried daughter living w/you, would you support her choices to have child after child like this? The parents may well be complicitous. How can she do this on her own?
The report I got was the parents bought her a house a couple years ago and then they went bankrupt and lost their house so they moved in with the daughter and her 6 children. The father was quoted as saying he was going back to Iraq or some similar place and the mother in an interview the other day said " she had warned her daughter she was leaving when she brought the babies home. She also said her daughter had this fixation on having babies and wanted 12. She couldn't concieve naturally so I understood all of them were invitro. Nothing was said about who was paying but they did say the daughter had a degree in early childhood ed. or something like that and was taking more courses to get another and she described herself as a professional student living on grants and scholarships. I feel so sorry for the babies but I do hope she doesn't get a lot of fame and fortune out of this. They say she has some kind of a mental phobia. She is hoping to get diapers donated, I forget how many she will need a week and she is hoping Ophra will make her rich. Isn't that pityfull. And guess who is going to pay for all this, I don't know who paid for the previous expenses but I would say it is obviously not her parents.
Sunshyne, thanks but I think I will pass. I am sure there will be a warning somewhere not to do it if you have heart conditions, like on the carnival rides.
I've had a very mild heart condition (some plaque) since early 2001. Since then I've ridden and slept in a felluca on the Nile (and climbed up into a pyramid and down into tombs, and ridden a camel); I've gone white-water rafting at Olantaytambo in Peru and ridden all kinds of boats in the Amazon, and gone on a "canopy walk" way up in the rainforest; I've climbed around on the monuments at Angkor Wat. Before then, and after, I'd ridden an elephant, been on various archaeological digs, gone on safari in Africa and ridden a balloon over the Serengeti, and driven around or taken trains around much of Europe alone. And I am emphatically not an athletic type. I started travelling in earnest when I retired in 1998, at 62.
You can do more than you think you can. The question is whether or not you can survive this disease of your spouse.
I have not been as adventurous as briegull, but Sid and I were determined that we would go where we could and do what we could while we were healthy. I am thankful every day that we made that decision. We went to Hawaii three times - Waimaia (can't spell it) Canyon and the Fern Grotto were spectacular. Cruised all over the Carribean on the East Coast and all over Mexico on the West Coast. Snorkeled in Aruba and Molikini. The absolute highlight was swimming with the dolphins in Discovery Cove, Orlando. It was in 2003, and everything went to Hell in 2004, so I am happy, happy, happy we had that experience.
I have NO desire to white water raft ANYWHERE EVER. I used to think I would like to skydive once, but I'm changing my mind on that one. However, I would like to see Japan, and I have never been to Europe. Someday maybe.
And I do very little that relates to water, like snorkeling - I'm sorry I didn't get to Hawaii. I did, to Japan, independently, and it was fascinating but quite cold - both physically (it was March) and socially.
Briegull, your mention of climbing up into a pyramid and riding on a camel reminds me of my first business trip to Cairo back around 1975. With a little slack time on a weekend, nothing would do but that we take a cab out to see the pyramids and Sphynx. As you probably remember, the sloping passageway up into the pyramid was so low that you had to walk bent over, and the stench of centuries-old urine in the confined passageway reminded me of some nursing homes I've been in since that time. Once we were back out in the fresh air, my boss (who had been there before) suggested that I take a ride on a camel, which I declined. But he persisted, saying that he wanted at least to get a picture of me on a camel, so I reluctantly consented to getting up on the camel -- BUT JUST FOR A PICTURE! Wrong - as soon as I was mounted, the camel driver headed off with me around the pyramid. Once he got me around back he stopped the camel and pulled up the sleeve of his robe, displaying an assortment of bracelets that could be purchased for only 4 pounds Egyptian each. When I told him I wasn't interested in purchasing one of his bracelets, he reduced the price to 3 pounds and insisted that I ought to buy one. When I continued to decline, he finally came down to 2 pounds, and I concluded that the only way I was ever going to get him moving again was to agree to buy one for 2 pounds. After that purchase, he still made no move to start walking again, saying "You buy one more and my family, we say a prayer for you tonight." When I said, "OK, one more, but let's get moving", he still made no move to start again and grinningly bargained "One more for the camel?"
I had 5 children--one set of twins. Unfortunately, one of my twins was born breech and had a stroke when he was 9 days old. He has cerebral palsy--right side hemiplegia. I'll be VERY surprised if one or more of those babies don't have some sort of neurological problem. I personally think what she did was completely selfish and irresponsible. And, I am disgusted with the doctors that did the procedure(s).
I'm really curious as to where she got the money to do all of this. And, I certainly hope Oprah doesn't get suckered into making some kind of a huge donation to her. She did this on her own. It wasn't like some guy got her pregnant and then dumped her.
She's stupid and I'm wondering about her parents and the doctors.
I didn't go in the pyramid at Giza. I went into the "red pyramid" which is a way down the Nile from Cairo and our group of about 8 were the only ones in it. Miles of sand all around, no hawkers or tourists but us. And it didn't smell. Of course, there was nothing in it, either. I did pose on a camel at Giza (who doesn't!) but I really rode one up the hill from where the felluca pulled over at Aswan, up to San Simeon, a very early Christian monastery. Now, I'm a Texas-born horseback rider, and that damned thing's cinch was loose. I tried to get the guy to tighten it but of course they're very chauvinistic and he refused to understand what I was trying to say. So the camel would sway one way and the saddle would sway the other, I was terrified I was going to fall off. The monastery was really great, though, very calm and cool. The guy at the top of the hill was different, and when he put the saddle back on the camel, he tightened it. Of course it's scary going down a hill on a camel (or an elephant, or for that matter a horse) so it wasn't particularly pleasant. I don't much like camels, really!
Gourdchipper, you might be amused by the pictures I took on that trip. Look at http://www.briegull.com/egypt/ . I have forever been grateful that I went when I did.
I am game for every one of Briegull's adventures and anything else, but I cannot help but wonder what you guys do when nature demands a bathroom stop? The older I get (and I'm 70) the less mileage my bladder gets. On our trip to France, Italy and Switzerland, I was amazed at the lack of public facilities. I got quite used to "paying the bathroom attendant" for the privilege of going "potty" and using my own toilet tissue. My son travels around the world for an oil service company, and he takes pictures of "The Toilets I Have Seen Around The World". Funny pictures.
That's a good question. When we travel, I ALWAYS carry a roll in a zip-lock bag in by tote bag. Just seems like the thing to do. The problem I always have is that hole in the floor. How do you get up? I hate to put my hands on the floor and the water generally only runs for a trickle and I've not found any soap. Liquid soap is ALWAYS in my tote bag. Along with an extra pair of (well you know) and a spare Poise. I truly believe in being prepared. This is one of the things I don'g like about getting older.
Before the trip you save the last quarter or so of TP roll and squash it flat. And you carry little pkgs of kleenex; they're world-wide, and little purelle bottles. In Italy it's really funny: they remove the toilet seats. In the women's bathrooms. In nice places like the National Library, for instance. I asked a tour guide at Pompeii why this happens and she says because people would steal them. Yeah, sure. I'm trying to remember: Museums, yes. Restaurants, yes. Not gorgeous but eh! I've mostly travelled independently and ventured out from wherever I was staying. Toilets on trains are often not great, anywhere in the world.
In the rest of the world: You do NOT NOT NOT wear jumpsuits! You learn to balance yourself on your haunches like 75% of the world does anyhow. You find a bush by a stream. I spent an extremely memorable night after sailing the Nile in a felluca; we moored at a little island on the way upstream from Aswan and were told not to sleep near the sides of the boat as thieves swim out and reach over and steal things. But we went up on the bank to pee. Very dry sand. And then there was a rivulet which wasn't dry.. and it was VERY slippery. A light went off in my head: of COURSE they could pull the blocks of granite up to make the pyramids by wetting the path.
Once you get used to Turkish toilets (holes in the floor) they're actually very sanitary. There are spots for your feet. Admittedly, it is a bit weird to see a porcelain THING sitting in the middle of a dirt floor!
The funniest time was (and after this I'll stop) when I was at a lodge in the rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon. Catered to tourists, but it had almost no electricity (just the occasional auto-battery bare bulb light) and a clean 2-holer out back. No toilets in the rooms. My guide said be careful at night, there's a bat that lives in the latrine. I woke up in the night, went out along the boardwalk in pitch black (with my flashlight) to the latrine, where there was a kerosene lamp still burning, and came back, no problem. Next morning I joined another woman I'd met at dinner the night before. Did you go out? she asked. I said yes. She said when I got up A BAT FLEW OUT! and she hadn't been warned. I was just as glad I hadn't met the bat, I confess.
Briegull, I love hearing about your adventures! You should write a book about them. I would buy it!
We lived in Germany for three years back in the mid 60's, and we got used to always carrying toliet paper and Wet Ones with us. I wasn't going to do without! It was bad enough to have to pay to use the stalls! I'm glad they don't charge in America! However, when we traveled in England and Scotland two years ago, there were no pay stalls in those countries, so maybe all of Europe is getting away from that as well.
Now, when we travel, I have toliet paper, Cottonelle's, a Ziplock bag with extras in it and my cell phone (in case I need my daughter to rescue me!) <grin>
Back to things I would never do: I would never ride a motorcycle.