I promise this post is worth the month-long wait

Life is not measured by the number of breathes we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

When I look back and try to count these breathe-taking moments in my life – I think I can do so on one hand. Starring into the Ngorongoro Crater, skiing the bowls in Park City Utah – ziplining through the rain forest near Arenal volcano in Costa Rica – would all qualify – I’d take a bit more thought to expand that list. But, after I return from Thailand, I would hope I may need to use both hands, and both feet to count the moments that have taken my breath away. The point is that these moments – the moments when you feel truly alive – don’t come around very often. And before today, it’s been years before I can think of anything that has even come close to such a moment.

But I had one of those moments this morning at approximately 9 am– Sunday August 5 2007 – just outside Fredrick berg Virginia.

While the moment didn’t occur unexpectantly – in fact – there have been roughly a month of anticipation and even one false alarm – it was everything I would have hoped for. Nerve-wrecking, adrenaline-pumping, quality fun.

It was a moment that lead to 5 friends sitting outside in mid-July of the eve thereof, grilling and gorging ourselves with steak, chicken, grilled vegetables, pasta salads, beer, and pies – eating like its our last supper contemplating our fate - putting together an acetic playlist featuring Tom Petty, Kayne West, The Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Third Eye Blind, Kris Kross, and Jefferson Airplane in order to listen to on the drive down to pump us up. And while the windy conditions in the sky required us to postpone the first attempt, thus dampening some of the original enthusiasm – the ultimate fulfillment of our activity certainly made the extra two week wait well worth it.

There is a reason for my ambiguity about exactly what this moment was. If they say a picture is worth a thousand words, well, I wonder exactly how much the video is worth (in this case, an extra $90). So, instead of using just words to describe this breath-stealing moment (or more precisely 20 minutes), let’s just go straight to the video footage...