One of the highlights of my vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico was my first voyage into outer space. At least that's what it seemed like from way up there grasping the parasail ropes so tightly that my knuckles turned white. I thought it was pretty cool, even if a little nerve-wracking. The view was amazing. About half way through my ride, I noticed that my arse, probably due to its minimal proportions, started to slip out of the harness. To hit the water from that altitude meant sure death. Now, I didn’t and still don’t know whether it’s possible to slip through the harness or not, but my instinct was to try to pull myself up with my arms.
As fate would have it, it took about ten seconds for me to feel a cramp starting to develop in my arm. The same arm that I was told I would need to pull on one of the ropes that would direct me toward the beach for disembarkment. As I grew more and more worried, my arm cramped more and more. I tried to relax it, but as I did, I slipped further down through the harness. Now, I’m thinking “This can’t be happening”. The boat has now turned around and we are heading back to where we started. I am praying for the boat to hurry up. Instead, everything is happening in slow motion, like disasters always seem to go. I can see the wake behind the boat, but all perception is we are not moving.
In a last ditch effort to ignore the whole situation, especially my cramping arm, I start whistling. Whistling and enjoying the scenery. If I’m going to die, dammit, I’m going to enjoy my last moments on this earth (which was ironic since I wasn‘t even on this earth at the time). And I did enjoy it. For about three seconds. My arm was so sore I felt certain I wouldn’t be able to pull on the steering rope. It was all I could do just to hold my arse up in the harness. Finally, I could see my group ahead and below and spotted the guy who was going to signal me as to how hard and long to pull on the rope in order to touch down safely on the beach.
He gave the signal and I tried desperately with whatever little strength I had, to pull the rope. I could hardly pull it at all and I was starting to panic. The guy is frantically giving me the signal to keep pulling as my direction had hardly changed at all. I summoned up all my willpower and pulled a little harder. Amazingly, ever so slowly, the kite turned toward the beach. It was a perfect landing! As they helped me out of the gear, the three of our group that had yet to go up, were asking “How was it? Were you scared?”. I said “Piece of cake!. You’ve got to try it!”
Later, in the evening, when we all sat around at the villa imbibing and chatting about the days events, our host and his friends, who were all about my age or older (and obviously wiser), let us know how stupid they thought it was to parasail. I, as if I were Dar Robinson, the daredevil, pretended to be offended and asked them why. As it turns out, my adventure was not unique. They recounted an incident only a year or two earlier where one unfortunate "flyer" due to who knows what, ended up being repeatedly slammed against the façade of a tall hotel just off the beach. Ouch. I'm pretty sure I would have remained a land lubber to this day had they told us that story the day before.
Here's a kook para-sailing...
...and here's the hotel he might get up close and personal with...
