Life on the Edge OF my comfort zone

Adventure #5: Driving the Baja 1000 Race Cars

My husband Blake and I just got back from a wonderful vacation down to Cabo San Lucas. While we were there, we participated in several activities; all of which could technically count as “adventures”, however, I am only including one: driving the Baja 1,000 race cars.  WHAT FUN!

These cars are no joke.  The experience itself was expensive, but they let us know right away why we were paying so much.  To replace one of these cars, you are looking at a whopping $130,000! That will put a dent in anyone’s pocket book. They spend about 45 minutes going over the basics with you, explaining what to expect, where the tricky parts on the track are, and what you can do to prevent a roll-over.  Then, they set you free.

You can see by the image above that they let me take the wheel for a few trips around the track.  Sitting next to me, with the biggest-grin-ever, is my husband, Blake.  In total, I did three laps around the exerting 5-mile track.  I learned to power through corners, dodge oncoming cacti, move with ease through the most technical portions of the track, and even jump the car! Needless to say, with a $130,000 price tag in my head, I didn’t go too crazy while I was driving.  The same can’t be said for Blake.

His first round, he almost ran us off the road, but after a little practice, he had it down pat.  This was one of my favorite adventures thus far. If you happen down to Mexico anytime soon, look up Wide Open Excursions.  The staff members are amazing, the driving is a blast, and it is a fantastic way to spend an afternoon in Cabo.

Adventure #4: Aerial Arts (Playing on Silks)

I recently joined my great friends Angela, Heidi, and Jenny in a lesson on aerial aerobics.  We took a drop-in class at Night Flight Aerial, a really cute little silks studio in SE Portland.  The class lasted for a couple of hours and was just $20.  

The first thing I want to say about this experience is: if you think this is just something that circus clowns do, think again!  The class was filled with incredibly strong, incredibly talented men and women.  Some soccer moms, some performers, some people who just want to get into better shape.  As soon as you get there, they get you started with a stretching session that lasts 30 minutes.  

After your muscles and joints feel all loosey goosey, you get started.  The first thing you learn how to do is to climb the silks.  While not easy, this part was extremely fun and we all were pretty quick to pick it up. After that, you learn a series of tricks.  From hanging upside down:

To making silly poses:

The entire experience was a blast!  If you have $20 dollars and you want to work muscles you haven’t touched since your early youth, sign up for a drop-in class.  You won’t regret it! 

Adventure #3

Floating.

I recently went to Phoenix to help run a booth at a trade show my company was participating in. On the plane ride home, one of my fantastic co-workers told me about something her boyfriend had recently done: floating. Turns out, there is a place off of SE 45th and Hawthorne where you can go and float on top of some salt water in a tank that looks a bit like a coffin. Don’t believe me about the coffin thing? This was my pod:

Per the Float On website:

“Getting rid of all sensory input allows the ‘constantly-make-sure-you’re-not-dying’ part of your brain to chill out for a second, allowing the creative relaxed part of your brain to come out and play. Without the constant pressure of analyzing the world around you, you’re body lowers its levels of cortisol, the main chemical component of stress. Your brain also releases elevated levels of dopamine and endorphins, the neurotransmitters of happiness.

Not having to fight gravity lets your muscles, joints, and bones take a well-deserved break. Your body suddenly has loads of extra resources (usually spent supporting your weight, regulating temperature, and trying not to get speeding tickets), and it gets to focus on things like healing and resting.

About 40 minutes into your float your brain stops producing its normal Alpha waves and starts churning out Theta waves. These are responsible for that ‘between-waking-and-sleeping’ state, and you make them naturally every night before you conk out. While it only lasts for a few sparse moments in your bed, you can achieve prolonged Theta state in the tank, a state of consciousness that is usually only seen in children and people who have spent years practicing meditation.”

Here is my take on it. You walk into the Float On shop and are slapped immediately in the face with what smells like a combination of salt water and body odor. You are taken into a room where a nice man explains the process to you and warns that you don’t get water in your eyes. You take a shower, and then pop into a coffin-shaped tank filled with a mixture of 93 degree water and roughly 800lbs of Epsom salts. So far so good.

Once you get in the tank, your brain plays a few games with you. You start to wonder if you will actually be able to relax, or whether this whole I’m-going-to-subject-my-body-to-800lbs-of-salt experience is really just a crock. You start to notice a spinning feeling which leaves you a bit disoriented. To counter that feeling, you just sit up and spread out your arms. As soon as I did that, I was fine. Of course, because I was warned not to get the saltwater in my eyes, I ended up getting it in my eyes. That hurts, don’t do it. I had to get out for a bit and rinse them out, but overall it didn’t really affect my experience.

After about 45-60 minutes (I’m guessing, I have no real idea), I did start to notice a few things happening. My brain started to chill out a bit, and I started thinking about things like floating in an ocean. I started to giggle a little bit at the realization that I was actually buoyant on top of water. My spine began to relax and I could feel myself stretching muscles that hadn’t been stretched in far too long. Then I started to reflect on a few things.

Like some other people I know who have tried floating, I didn’t walk away with any life-changing revelations. In fact, I left feeling pretty sticky and gross. Despite that though, I do feel more rested, and I definitely do feel happier than I did going in. It’s a hard experience to describe, but I would recommend trying it. Trust me, it’s no where near as scary as I was hoping it would be.

Rock Climbing - Adventure #2

The other day, I was feeling antsy and really wanted to get a good workout in.  While I would normally go to 24 Hour Fitness and jog for a while, the thought of a conventional workout was so unappealing to me at that moment.  I decided that I was going to go rock climbing.  I normally wouldn’t have even thought of going and doing something I’ve never done before by myself, but in the spirit of my break-out-of-the-comfort-zone theme, I went alone.

I know that I said I love to do crazy dangerous things, but for whatever reason, rock climbing has never actually been on my queue. I looked online at some of the gym options around me and decided to go in to the Circuit Bouldering Gym in NE Portland.  Let me just say, the people who work there are phenomenal.  Phenomenal. A girl name Laurie (I think) walked me through the entire gym, showed me how to do a few things, and overall just made my experience so much fun.  

After a couple of hours, my arms and hands were shot.  Laurie came back up to me and told me that if I was done climbing, she had something else she thought I would enjoy.  Enter, the slackline…aka my favorite new thing.  The slackline is just like a tightrope, but slack.  The key is core strength and balance.  Once you can get those two things working together, you can get across.  I spent about an hour playing on that and finally made it all the way across and back.  

If you are tired of the conventional workout, head over here and let them know you don’t know what you’re doing.  This really was a super fun experience and I will definitely be going back. 

Adventure #1

This probably shouldn’t even count as my first adventure, but I did something I normally would never have done, so I’m including it.  

On January 28th, I went to dinner with my good friend Logan, his amazing wife Heather, and my husband, Blake.  I initially planned the night to be a pretty standard evening.  Go to a cute new restaurant, have a couple of glasses of wine, and call it a night.  Well, when the restaurant we planned to go to didn’t take reservations, and the four of us were looking at at least a 90-minute wait, that plan got thrown out the window.  A nice gentlemen at the restaurant came up to Blake and I and asked if we had ever eaten Ethiopian food.  Nope.  He suggested we go to a place called Bete-Lukas on SE 50th and Division.  I am so glad he did.

The restaurant was a really cute, very different spot on the second floor of a building.  The food is served family style - a little weird when you’re eating dinner with someone for the first time ever - but delicious.  And the owner, adorable!  Because this was the first Ethiopian food experience for all of us, he made sure he was readily available, should we have any questions about what we were about to ingest.  He is such a sweet man, and I really recommend stopping in for some dinner; it was really good.

The night ended up going really well and in the end, Heather asked if we wanted to join her and Logan, and a couple of their friends to go dancing at Holocene.  

This is where I normally will stop and say, “oh…that’s alright.  I can’t dance and I don’t want to be a burden.”  And right on cue, that’s exactly what my response was.  Except this time, I got talked into it.  The four of us went to Holocene and listened to a band play that I had never even heard of.  

While it was a strange environment for me, and definitely reminded me of a scene out of Portlandia, I noticed about 15 minutes in that the people we were with were really interesting and had a lot of great energy.  I let my guard down and ended up really enjoying myself.  I can’t say that the indie music scene is really my thing, but I’m glad I went. It was the first new experience of 2012! 

An introduction

Now, some people probably think that I’m a freakish person for feeling this way.  I’m not, I just love the rush of adrenaline running through my veins.  It’s something that I experienced at a very young age and it has been a part of my life ever since.  While thrill-seeking adventures are something that I love, something that I don’t do enough of is spend time with new, fresh people.  I am a bit shy (crazy, I know) and very private.  But this year, as soon as the clock struck 12:01AM on January 1, my 2012 resolution began.  

This year, I’m going to live on the edge of my comfort zone.  I’m going to go do things that I previously shied away from because it involved the ever-terrifying act of talking to new people.  I’m going to try things that I might have previously made fun of because it sounded too ridiculous for my coolness to try.  For 2012, anything goes.  If you are so kind as to follow along on my journey, I hope that you will get in touch with me and throw out some ideas along the way.  

I plan to document all of my experiences here, but you can also get short, much more abridged versions on Twitter.  @ahemmingson.