Standing in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge
The tears started before I even set foot on the bridge. It was 8 a.m. and our climb was scheduled to start at 8:30 a.m. I grazed through the gift shop and made back-to-back trips to the bathroom. I walked up one flight of stairs to the ‘holding area’, where I would await my tour guide and watch a quick movie on the climb. It was about 45 seconds into the movie I started to panic. The climbers were making their way up the curved steel structure double-time. Panic stricken, I looked around the room for my friend and when she caught my fear I simply said, “I can’t do this.”
The doors opened and we were ushered inside to another room where we were given breathalyzer tests and asked to sign the obligatory ‘if you die on this tour…’ form. We stood around in a circle and were handed our climbing jumpsuits – polyester slate-blue one-piece fashion disasters that somehow ensured I would be safe. We were asked to go around the circle and introduce ourselves. I learned the names of people from all over the world and when the circle stopped at me and all I could say was, “I’m Melanie, and I’m terrified.”
We harnessed up, lathered on some sunscreen (a sunburn was, quite frankly, the very least of my concerns), took a drink of water and walked into the room of no return. The door shut behind me and I realized there was no handle on the other side – there was no way to get back in. My heart raced, my breath shortened and my eyes closed. “It’s time to climb,” said Richard, our climb leader. “Mel, you go first.” The man was out of his mind, but I took the lead and stepped out onto the steel grate.
The vibrations from the cars speeding across the bridge shook the metal platform that separated me from the concrete ground below. Our harnesses shook as they slid across the one-inch thick cable that kept us attached to the nearly 3,800-foot bridge. We walked along the flat steel-grate surface, ducking under steel limbs and dodging odd-shaped angles that jutted out in our way. One step at a time. One level at a time. With each lift of my leg I was getting a little closer to the arch of the bridge and a little higher from the ground. With every step the city got a little smaller, my breath got a little heavier and my heart beat a little faster…Continue reading on Gadling.com.
So glad you faced your fear!!! I was so sad that when I was in Sydney I didn’t have the time to do this. I will do it 1 day though!
Beautiful. Thanks for the descriptive prose of an amazing event.