A Waterslide Moment

A Waterslide Moment

Current mood:happy

(My first blog, originally posted in January of 2007. The sentiment is still true today)

This is a link to the past for ~Alicia's Defining Moments GBE.  Read more of the 26 blogs posted for this topic here.

Three years ago, Susan and I went to Cancun for our winter vacation.  It was an all-inclusive deal where you could sit on the hotel beach chairs all day, swim up to the poolside bar for a cocktail and gorge yourself on the buffets morning, noon, night, and well into the wee hours if you wanted to.  We climbed the pyramids of Chichen Itza, visited the aviaries and snorkled the entire man-made river at Xcaret.  The zip-line picture in my profile was taken on Isla de Mujeres during this trip.  It's still probably the best vacation I've taken to date, but of all the things that stand out, the one thing I remember MOST is the thing that I DIDN'T do.  

For those of you who've been to Cancun or other Mexican vacation paradises, you're probably familiar with Senor Frogs.  It's good, classic Mexican food with a spring break decor, drinks by the yard and live bands and dancing seems to start about four in the afternoon.  This particular restaurant had a great feature - a waterslide that started on the second floor, ran over the main stage on the first floor and dropped out into the lagoon outside the restaurant. 

I wasn't wearing anything I really cared about getting wet, I could leave all my stuff with my wife and it was 80 degrees out at 8:30 at night so getting soaking wet would have been really comfortable. But even with the atmosphere, the decor and yes, two or three drinks, I watched about a half dozen people slide down into a huge splash and applause and JUST SAT THERE.

Mind you, I'm not an attention whore, though I love it when it's in a good way. I'm getting to be more of an experience collector, even back then. The fact that this incident still bugs me to this day makes me want to remember what it felt like AFTER we packed up, left Senor Frogs and took the two mile walk back to the hotel. All I could talk about was "I SHOULD have...".

So having done this and as I live my life now, I occasionally come across these "Waterslide Moments" - times when I look at something that looks like fun, but the cautious adult in me is overestimating the risk and underestimating the reward. I ask myself, "what's the worst that could really happen?" And more importantly, "is this something I'll have fun remembering next week, next year or when I'm too old to do it ever again?"  The decision to just do it takes less time and I don't miss as many opportunities anymore. 

Getting back to Cancun again isn't even on my radar. But next Christmas the plan is a trip to Buenos Aires to do some tango and a cruise to Antarctica to have pictures taken with a iceberg-load of penguins. We hope to book the trip soon and I'm looking forward to blogging from the ship. Planning to get there has been on my life to-do list for years now. On the way, I'm expecting a few times when I'll actually take the plunge at a Waterslide Moment.

Live. It beats the hell out of the alternative!