This 24-hr piece of your life is called      
Make the most of it!
   
 

 


 

Bungee Jumping  A leap of faith

This probably shouldn't be classified as a SPORT since it doesn't require any more skill than a roller coaster does. All you have to do is SCREAM.

AND ... hope the bungee cord doesn't break, or stretch all the way to the bottom!

I bungeed from a bridge near Mount St. Helens in Washington. Actually, it wasn't much fun ... the freefalls were short, and each jump jerked me around a lot.  You can get a headache doing that.


  

   

TV tower at WSM in Nashville, TN

1,369 feet

 

Because towers like this are built to be flexible in the wind, it feels strange to be at the top of one.  Instead of swaying from side-to-side, the higher portions will move vertically "up-and-down" as lower portions move "out-and-in" with the breeze.  The feeling is like being on an elevator that suddenly DROPS a few feet then goes back up again.

 

Who ya gonna call?

Not far from Nashville near the small town of Chapel Hill, the ghost of an old trainman can be seen each night on the railroad tracks.    

Many years ago,  before he was a ghost,  he was decapitated by a passing locomotive after falling and being knocked unconscious.  His head was never found, and each night his ghostly body walks up and down the tracks looking for it.  What is seen today is the light from the lantern he carries. 

A few years ago a friend of mine, Andras Schoffer, and I rode motorcycles down to Chapel Hill and camped where it all happened.  Sure enough at about 3 a.m., the ghost’s lantern appeared a few hundred feet down the tracks.  In a rush of bravado we chased after it, but apparently the poor ghost was scared away because the light soon disappeared. 

It wasn’t until much later I began asking the obvious questions …

How could a headless body SEE to find its head when its eyes are IN the head?   And why would it need a lantern for light?   I suppose the head could have yelled out "Here I am" when the body walked by, but without ears how could the body have heard what the head was saying?    

  It's all very mysterious.



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