New Adventures

Since I've started my 30 Before 30 list on my 28th birthday, I've been trying to push myself to do new things. Things that I normally wouldn't do because I thought I wouldn't enjoy them or I was too scared to do them. This weekend I pushed myself in a few new adventures and I'm happy to say I survived!

Our Outdoor Rec program offered a canyoning trip this weekend and immediately when I saw the flyer for it, I knew I wanted to sign up.  Canyoning was not on my 30 Before 30 list, but it should have been because the elements of canyoning are things I've never done and wasn't sure I ever wanted to.  Basically canyoning is making your way through a canyon by rappelling, jumping off rocks into water and swimming through deeper parts of the canyon. 

We ended up canyoning north of Verona, up near where the Dolomites are. Luckily, a girl I knew from Crossfit was on this trip, so I had a friend on the trip and wasn't all alone. I asked Sean if he wanted to go with, but his exact words were, "that looks dangerous to me, no thanks".

The first big test for me was rappelling down a 20 meter cliff. I've never rappelled in my life, but I wouldn't let myself think too much about how scared I was. It was....intense and the water at the bottom was ice cold, but I survived and I enjoyed swimming between the rocks and a waterfall to get to the next part of our journey.

During the rest of our two hour trip down this canyon, I jumped off several small cliffs into the ice-cold water. I'd say the highest I jumped off was around 15-20 feet. There was a higher cliff, but I could just not bring myself to jump off it. As it was I had butterflies in my stomach as I jumped off the smaller cliff. We rappelled down cliffs twice and we were supposed to slide down a natural slide that was quite narrow, but I didn't end up doing that. The reason being because we were supposed to jump down into the pool above it and then manuever ourself so we were going down feet first and then cover our face with our arms. The girl in front of me was a small girl and before she could manuever herself, the rapids picked her up and took her down the slide head-first. She ended up with some awful bruises on her face and big gash on her forehead. After seeing that, I was NOT going down that slide. Luckily besides the gash and bruises she was fine, but it was still so scary to see.  That was the most exciting and scary part of the trip!

Yesterday, Sean and I decided to try a restaurant that we'd never tried before and we also knew that they served horse. Neither Sean nor I had tried horse yet and I was a bit hesitant to try it, but I decided it was something I wanted to do before we left here. So...I ended up getting a horse filet with balsamic vinegar sauce and it was delicious! Seriously, if I didn't know it was horse, I would have thought it was a cut of beef. It didn't taste different to me at all. A friend of mine also told me that sometimes they put shavings of it on pizza. I'm not so sure about that. Sean and I also shared mushroom risotto. Risotto might be one of my very favorite Italian dishes. When you find people who can make risotto and make it right..well then you've stumbled upon a bit of heaven.

I should have a cd of pictures coming from the canyoning trip. Once I get it, I'll have to share some of the pictures with you.