"TEN MORE FEET" by Brittany Pate

Our author Brittany Pate reminisces a traveling experience and shares it with us today. Enjoy reading!

TEN MORE FEET

Let me start this post by saying that I really don’t like heights.

I wouldn’t necessarily call it a phobia so much as I would plain ol’ good sense. When looking down from a high place, I start to get dizzy and my stomach does this little flip. Signs that my body is telling me, “This is bad! Get away, we do not like this!”

With that said, let me tell you about the time my husband and I decided to go to San Diego, CA. Several years ago, when trying to decide on a vacation spot, we knew we wanted something a little different from our usual haunts. We debated on a cruise for a while, since he’d never seen the ocean at that point, until I suggested we visit a good friend of mine in San Diego.

To this day, that’s still one of my favorite vacations and having a friend who knew the city really helped.

She knew which beaches to go to, the best restaurants to eat at, all the sightseeing spots. Of course, she suggested we visit the San Diego Zoo.

To say we were impressed is an understatement. We hadn’t done much traveling before this adventure, so we were awestruck. We walked for what felt like miles, saw beautiful animals in the best habitats and picked up plenty of souvenirs. When we reached the end of the park, my friend suggested that we ride a gondola back to where we started.

How amazing! We were footsore and hot, so a nice, leisurely ride on a gondola sounded both relaxing and enjoyable.

I. Was. So. Wrong.

I didn’t realize she meant the Skyfari gondolas. It wasn’t until we were already deep in line that I looked up and suddenly understood that the small, rickety boxes of terror clattering along at dizzying heights above us were the gondolas in question. Trying to keep my cool, I gently nudged my husband and asked if maybe we could just walk back.

No luck. He couldn’t wait to get a bird’s eye-view of the park. As the line became shorter and shorter, I began to panic and finally admitted a distaste for heights to my friend. “Oh, it’s fine!” she assured me. “You’ll love it once we get up there.” (Spoiler alert: I didn’t.) Outvoted, I had no choice but remain in the line and wait for a nightmare ride to come pick me up. My loving, supportive, wonderful husband decided to snap a picture of me in the midst of crisis.

We boarded the Box-O’-Doom and I decided I simply wouldn’t look down. No big deal, right? If I just kept my gaze centered on the inside of the box, I wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that we were, at time, up to 185 off the ground. In a box. That shook every time it went across a cable connector. No such luck. My brain knew and I knew. After much ribbing from my husband and my friend, I finally decided that now would be a good time to face my fear. They were having a good time, so I also wanted to have a good time. I mustered up my courage and peered over the edge.

WE WERE RIGHT ABOVE THE FREAKING TIGER ENCLOSURE.

Cue the panic attack. I immediately turned into a human ball in my seat, clutching my sides, squeezing my eyes shut and went to my happy place. Today was not the day I was going to conquer my fear. Today was the day I was going to sit and pray that all of this would be over soon. It wasn’t. Those gondolas don’t move very fast in order to give visitors a great view of the park. My friend decided to counter my husband’s irritated remarks by trying to comfort me. “I can see the end,” she said. “It’s only about ten more feet.”

Thank God! Just ten more feet and I could start pretending like I wasn’t a giant wimp. Just ten more feet. I kept repeating the words over and over again in my mind, even though that ten feet seemed to stretch out forever. It wasn’t until the third or fourth time of her repeating, “Just ten more feet!” that I realized the ten feet were a lie. I used a few choice words for both of them in a video my husband was filming that will never see the light of day.

Yes, I did escape the gondola alive, with all relationships still mostly intact. But from that day forward, “Ten more feet!” has become a running gag among the three of us. Eventually, I’ll extract my revenge.

If you’re ever planning a trip to San Diego, I could recommend a thousand and one things to do. But if you’re afraid of heights, stay off the gondola!