How I Spent Katie's Birthday

I feel like in her last blog post Katie really built up my experience on her birthday.  I hope none of you thought that I wrestled a bobcat or went skydiving, cause it was a little bit less exciting than that.  My office completed a ropes course for our annual staff retreat, which was a cool way to spend the morning, and better than sitting at a desk.

We did all of the standard activities of a ropes course where you have to work as a team to get through, over, or across various obstacles and it was a good time.  The main event, however, is what's called the leap of faith tower.  (If anybody ever took Adventure Games at W&M I'm pretty sure you did this.  Also, Dave has probably done this just for fun.)  Basically, what you do is climb a 35 foot telephone pole that has rungs on either side of it.  When you get to the top, you have to slowly get yourself on top the pole and stand up.  Mind you that since it is a telephone pole, not even one of my feet can fit all the way on top of this thing. 

Now once you've got yourself situated and standing on top of this pole, which does wobble slightly, you are supposed to leap off of it and try to grab a trapeze that is hanging at eye-level about six feet away.  Now you are harnessed in as you can see in the pictures, but that doesn't change the fact that you are diving off of a telephone pole at 35 feet.  One good thing for me was that I am taller than most, so I was a bit closer to the trapeze than most others.  With nothing left to do but jump, I went Superman style:

    
And was able to hold on for dear life:

It was a fun experience and I am glad that I did it, but it sure was a little scary.  After the day was over I went home and finished making Katie's birthday cake.  After completing the leap of faith, it was a piece of...no, no, that's too easy.