Topic: Cleaning

I’ve never been sold on the city of Cleveland. Despite having family there and regularly visiting the Geauga Lake Amusement Park in the outskirts of nearby Aurora as a child, the near mention of Cleveland made my body heave a distinct sigh. You know, one of those "ugh, we have to go back to Cleveland?" kind of sighs. If you’ve spent any time in Ohio (or have any understanding of the words ‘King’s Island’ or ‘Cedar Point’), you probably understand my dismay.

Needless to say, I stayed the hell away from that godforsaken city until October 2014. 

I had visited the abandoned Six Flags New Orleans that summer and I was hooked. After consulting the Wikipedia page for America’s defunct and closed amusement parks, I set my sights on two targets: First up: Geauga Lake. The park I had roamed as a child had been sold to the Six Flags enterprise years prior as they sought world domination - or at least a stronghold on the thrill seekers of Midwest America. It was later abandoned because, as it turns out, the nearby city of Cleveland was in such dire straights that most couldn’t afford admission to the newly expanded park, let alone the season passes required to keep it in business. It was decided that, after exploring Geagua Lake, we would try our hand at locating Chippewa Lake Amusement Park, an amusement park from the early 1900s that was reportedly long abandoned and possibly demolished. It happened to be on our drive home. 

The morning after our late night drive to the outskirts of Cleveland, we made our way to Aurora and the promise of Geauga Lake. Affer camouflaging the car by parking in the lot of a nearby Target, we departed on foot in the alleged direction of our destination. Or so we thought. We had a general understanding of the location of the abandoned amusement park - and a very real awareness of the still active water park located on its grounds - however, there was little else to go on. Still, I figured it wouldn't be difficult to find. With the addition of a Sea World park in 1970 and $40 million in renovations in 2000, the rebranded 700 acre Six Flags World of Adventure had gained notoriety as the world's largest amusement park.

“Are we sure we're going the right way?” I asked, glaring down at my feet with the absolute certainty that I had worn the wrong shoes. Apparently, Candies lace-up boots circa the Kohls’ Christmas sale had been a bad move, a fact that I realized just as the ground moisture began to seep through the faux leather and into my socks. We were far enough into the woods that the earth was covered with a thick coating of moss and there wasn't much of a path to follow. It was rough terrain, to say the least. 

"I have no idea. I assume that if we go this way for long enough, we should walk right into the middle of it." 

That seemed reasonable. We continued on. It was a beautiful day for October. Just chilly enough for jeans and a sweater, but without the need for a heavy coat. The leaves in the trees were changing colors, painting a vivid landscape before us. At least this hike through the woods is pretty, I thought, snapping a picture. It wasn't long before we made it through the trees and to a paved road. That road led to the Six Flags parking lot, a monstrous slab of asphalt we knew better than to walk directly through. Sticking to the edges of the woods, we tried to remain out of sight, following the road until it led somewhere promising: the main gate and ticket window. It was incredible. Aside from the grass and weeds poking through the concrete and the smashed windows of the ticket booths, it looked exactly as I remembered it as a child. The tall pillars and a large archway that once welcomed visitors to the park were now surrounded by a rather tall fence with sharp metal bits protruding at the top. 

We quickly noticed that the ticket booth was not enclosed in the fence and spent a fair amount of time taking pictures of the broken windows and old wooden structure. As we peered through the main gate of the park, we were astounded to see... nothing. No rollercoasters. No shops. In fact, there were no structures of any kind. I had heard rumors that Six Flags had sold off every possible thing they could when the closed the park, but I hadn't anticipated that it would ALL be gone. After looking around for a few minutes, we noticed one remaining rollercoaster in the distance. The Big Dipper. Too old to transport to another park, it had survived the mass exodus, the only thing in the park that hadn't been sold. The wooden structure was simple, with one large hill (or big dip) and a narrow winding track. Nature had done its job, though, and the entire thing was surrounded by thick overgrowth. 

"Do you want to check it out?" Jake asked. 

"Sure, if we can find a way in." 

"Let's follow this fence and see if there are any holes." 

The large iron fence was at least six feet, if not taller with its metal spikes, and it was well maintained. It was clear that others had gotten in, and that someone had immediately sealed up the holes with new pieces of fence and solid chain. This was going to be tough. Finally, we made it to a clearing and a loose bit of fence. Sticking my camera lens through the bars, I snapped a few pictures of the legendary coaster. Then I went to work investigating the fence. I knelt down next to a section and tried shaking the bottom where it met the fence post. It gave a little, then stubbornly fell back into place. As I struggled to push the fence open wide enough to squeeze an arm through, I leaned back and hit the top of my head on a broken tree branch. Awesome, I thought, Just awesome. 

"You find anything?" Jake asked, and I stood to meet him. 

"No. The fence will move, but not enough to get through." I touched my hand to rub the spot where I had hit my head, surprised when I saw that my fingers were covered in blood. "That's not good." 

"What did you do?" 

"Stood up underneath a tree wrong, I guess." 

"Are you trying to go over this fence?" 

"That doesn't seem feasible or pleasant, and there's nothing in there except that coaster. Wanna call it?" 

"Sure. Let's go try to find the other one." 

With that, we headed back to the car and the Target parking lot. Every few minutes, I touched my hand to my head, and each time, I came back with bloody fingers. Leaving Jake in the car, I walked as quickly as possible into Target, making a beeline for the bathroom. I hadn't anticipated spending ten minutes cleaning blood out of my hair as a gaggle of old ladies watched. I applied wet paper towel after wet paper towel until the bleeding ceased, smiled awkwardly at the group of old women, jipped my hoodie up to my chin, and headed back to the car to join Jake for the next adventure. 

Topic: Cleaning or My First Patient Death

02/05/92 7:35 A.M.  Res absent respirations, no palpable pulse, unable to auscultate BP, pupils fixed and dilated.  Call placed to Dr. Perrino. New Order: May release body to funeral home.  Resident’s daughter notified—-B Collins, LPN
02/05/92 7:50 A.M. Dgtr at bedside.  Paul Young funeral home arrived to transport res-B Collins, LPN
       It was my first patient death.  My first death of any kind really.  The first time I had been around a dead person except for attending a layout but that wasn’t the same as this.  I had graduated from nursing school in December of 1991 and was working the night shift at an Alzheimer’s unit of a local nursing home.  Our 24 bed unit was staffed at night with one nurse (me) and two nursing assistants, except when someone called off and our census was down below 20.  Then they figured we could make it work.  The night Alice died it was just me and Pat.
     Pat was what I called a career nursing assistant.  She was in her early fifties.  Despite her affection for drinking Hennessy on a fairly regular basis she was in terrific shape—must have been all that heavy lifting.  I went in to check on Alice.  She was 87, had advanced dementia, and had stopped responding verbally a few days ago.  I think she was septic which basically means she had a massive infection and the plan according to her daughter and Dr. Perrino was just to let her go comfortably.  She had a catheter and she had stopped eating or drinking in the past few days too.  So why I gasped with shock when I found her dead that morning made little sense.  I had trained for this.  I had expected this, but I still freaked out a little anyway.  I was 27 years old at the time.
     I called for Pat, “Oh my God, Pat, get in here.  I think she’s dead!”  I knew Alice was a do not resuscitate but I kind of froze about what I was supposed to do next.  Pat prompted me to call the nursing supervisor who told me she’d be over as soon as she could, that she had gotten pulled to the cart herself and was passing meds.  “Do whatever Pat tells you” was her advice.  I never saw the supervisor that morning.
     “Yeah she’s dead alright.  Did you call the doctor?  Did you call her daughter?” Pat knew what to do. No, I hadn’t done any of that.  But first I figured I’d check everything one more time.  I put the stethoscope on her chest, checked her non-existent pulse.  Pat gently closed her eyelids as she told me how it creeped her out to have a dead lady staring at her.  Then she gently patted Alice’s hand and told her to rest easy, that she had earned it.
      “We better get her cleaned up,” Pat said with some urgency.  Cleaned up?  I hadn’t thought about that.  I mean she was dead.  It wasn’t like she was going anywhere.  Then Mary Ellen, the lady next to Alice started wailing as she was prone to do and Pat left to tend to her.  I was alone with Alice.
     Calling the doctor was the easy part.  Calling the daughter was a little harder.  Just tell her I schooled myself. Be direct and kind but don’t use euphemisms they had told us in school.  Saying someone had “passed away” could be miscontrued.  So when I called Alice’s daughter I simply explained that her mom had died that morning.  Her daughter thanked me for the call and said she was on her way.
     The hard part of all of this was the cleaning.  I actually felt a bit frightened, of what I don’t know.  This is somebody’s mom, I told myself.   What are you afraid of?  Alice’s daughter would be here any minute to say goodbye.  If I didn’t get ready, no one would.   So I got a wash basin and filled it with soapy warm water and gave her bed bath.  I removed her urinary catheter and about jumped through the ceiling when her lifeless body expelled some gas when I pulled out the catheter.  Then I apologized to Alice for gasping.   I dressed her in her prettiest floral duster and put Jergen’s lotion on her feet.  I cleaned all the junk that was caked on her lips from days of mouth breathing.  I put some Vaseline on her cracked lips.  She looked better than she had in weeks.  “You’re looking good, Miss Alice,” I murmured as her daughter walked in behind me.
   

Topic: Cleaning - UPDATED!

I hate cleaning. It’s tedious and boring. It’s dirty work. It makes my dry skin worse. It’s highly overrated as a form of therapy. I do try to stay clean myself, except maybe for my teeth. Let’s just say that I have so much tartar my fish sticks don’t need shit.

But the absolute worst cleaning jobs I've ever had to do were in medical school. In between my second and third years I did a student fellowship in Pathology. This involves functioning as a first year resident in the Pathology department - in other words I became a temporary intern a couple of years before I would finally go on to do a regular internship like everyone else entering a specialty. It seemed like a good deal to me because I would be paid during the year and it provided an opportunity to consolidate all the information that I had to absorb from my first two years of school. Plus, I had been a lab tech prior to entering med school, and I thought I wanted to become a Pathologist (they're the docs who run medical labs). Doing the student fellowship would allow me to get a leg up on the five year residency required if I did choose to go into Pathology, since it would count as my first year.

There were three student fellows, and we had all the duties of the regular interns entering their Pathology residencies. After some general orientation, I reported to the Pathology department on my first day, to find I had been assigned to the autopsy service. I was required to perform a total of 30 over the course of the year.

I guess I had some vague idea before taking the fellowship that autopsies would be involved but I never considered what they might actually be like. "Grisly" is the adjective that immediately comes to my mind when I remember doing them. My very first one was on a newborn who had lived for 20 minutes. He had come out of the womb blue and the delivery team became more and more frantic as all the usual techniques to get a newborn to start oxygenating properly weren't working. Then they tried intubating the baby but no one could get the tube inserted and the child succumbed. At autopsy we found that he had an extremely rare condition called laryngeal atresia, in which the windpipe doesn't form an a tube, instead it's blocked by a bar of cartilage. 

Sorry - I've sort of gotten off the topic of cleaning. In medical training, interns get all the shit jobs, and this turned out to literally be true in Pathology. I was assigned an upper-level resident to work with and they accompanied me for my first few autopsies. The worst job is called "running the bowel", and the intern "gets" to do this. It involves taking scissors and opening the entire 20 feet of small intestine and five feet of large intestine, looking for anomalies. The residue in the small intestine was all liquid and aside from the odor it didn't impede the process. The hardest part was picking through all the attached fat, looking for lymph nodes.

The large intestine, however, was a different story. There was always a massive amount of shit adhering to its walls and it was truly loathsome to clean all this out, though I did eventually kind of get used to it. But afterwards, no matter how long I showered I never could seem to feel really clean. For me the hardest thing was getting the smell of formaldehyde out of my nose.

But the autopsy service doesn't have to be all grim, if you're resourceful - for example, when a colleague is performing an autopsy a remotely controlled electronic fart machine strategically  fastened underneath the autopsy table can provide tons of fun!

Topic: Cleaning

Space, the Final Frontier...” That had been the logo that flashed across the holo outside the Starfleet Academy recruiting station. An appropriately diverse trio of young recruits gazed offscreen at the adventure that awaited them upon completion of their training. There was a Vulcan female, a Terran male, and of course an Andorian, seeing as it had been on her home world of Andoria that Shas Irralla had made the fateful decision to sign up and “boldly go where no one had gone before.” She was given to understand that the third recruit rotated from planet to planet, just in case one were inclined to forget which side of the tearbark the Federation spread its angafruit jam on. 

Her antennae twitched at the memory and the twinge of homesickness it inspired. Her mood wasn’t improved by the sweltering heat and humidity of San Francisco. The doctor insisted that most of her species adjusted to the weather,  but prescribed her an anticholinergic to prevent her from sweating through a days worth of clothes each morning and advised her to keep hydrated. He had been wearing a sweater at the time. 

She blew out a tired sigh and resumed mopping. 

Her father and two of her mothers had been against the move. Thalia and Threm were conservatives, convinced that the Federation was an elaborate scam of some inexplicable sort meant to benefit the Terrans and the inscrutable Vulcans. Jenna was just worried about her chances at grandchildren. 

“It will be hard enough finding a compatible Quartet here at home, let alone out there chasing after glory in the stars,” she had warned.

Only Sderra had understood that his only daughter had dreams too big for their frozen little moon, and had eventually convinced the others to give her their blessing, if begrudgingly. Which had led her finally to her destiny, wielding a primitive cleaning instrument against the carbonized gunk that coated the floor of the main steam vent beneath Starfleet Academy.

“Ain’t this slice of ancient history Shas... this here tunnel must be a least four centuries old if its a day.” 

Shas winced as she was brought back into awareness of her other most significant aggravation at the Academy, Cadet Fairlane Fairbanks, her roommate. A gangly Terran youth, still growing into his frame, Fairbanks was thin, blue eyed and had a shock of that blonde fur that they grew on their heads, currently smudged with gunk. He had the most irritatingly sunny disposition of any sentient she had ever encountered. And he was the reason they were here.

“Cadet Fairbanks, I did not think the subterranean architecture of San Francisco would be germane to my studies, so no... I have no idea how old this tunnel is... nor its purpose for that matter.”  The latter had bothered her since she and Fairbanks had been assigned this dubiously valuable task. This tunnel deep beneath the academy didn’t appear to go anywhere important, nor did it connect to any vital systems. This further cemented her opinion that this task was meant to be a humiliating punishment. One far out of proportion to the offense of breaking curfew it seemed. 

“Well I dunno about that, does have a certain atmosphere don’t it though?” He stiffened his back and performed a spot on impression of astroarcheology instructor Stivak’s rigid delivery, “And what purpose might the ancient Terrans have built this structure? Speculation based on logical analysis of the available evidence only please...”

Shas stifled a laugh so as not to encourage him, but her mood quickly turned to black humor.

“It’s obviously a place of ritual humiliation, where offenders are reduced to the role of scullery slaves. Obviously at the end of this interminable orifice there will be facilities for the disposal of their used up carcasses.” She gave her best look of exasperation and returned to her mopping with equal parts renewed vigor and disgust. 

Cadet Fairlane evidently took the hint and they continued their task in silence for some time. 

“You mad at me Shas? Cause I’m starting to think you’re mad at me.” 

Her antennae drooped despondently. 

“Why on Terra would I be mad with you,” she snapped, “ I’ve only been mopping this floor for the past 5 standard hours, developing blisters on my hands and a pain in my dorsal endoskeletal fin because you just had to see the Monty Bergman Trio” 

“The Monty Bergin Trio, and they are the best Mid 20th century West Coast style jazz trio in California. And you had a good time! We’d have made it back in time if that air taxi driver hadn’t hit that waste disposal carrier. You would think that by the 23rd century traffic accidents would be ancient history.”

Shas was about to snap back, Andorian invectives to describe the kind of feckless Terran bumpkin she had been saddled with arose to her lips. But she deflated. He was right, she had accompanied him willingly, perhaps in a vain attempt to keep him out of trouble. The irony being of course that if she just let him get into enough trouble Starfleet might be kind enough to disentangle him from her antennae. 

And the music had been pleasing, jazz sharing many stylistic similarities to the kind of doppa quartet that her mother Jenna played in back home. And the atmosphere, the crowd an eclectic mix of Terrans and aliens, synthahol and more noxious intoxicants had flowed freely. She had even learned to snap her fingers like the Terrans. It had been a good idea and a good time and for a brief period she had not been annoyed with Cadet Fairbanks.

“It’s not you I am upset with, Cadet Fairbanks... Fairlane, it’s myself. This is not exactly where I expected to be, heading into my second year.” 

“So what? This ain’t the first punishment detail we been on, prolly won’t be the last.’’ He had stopped mopping and was studying her quizzically, “you’re really worried about something ain’t yah?” 

She was taken aback by his suddenly keen perception. 

“Worried, worried is perhaps not the right word. Disappointed? Frustrated? Maybe all at once? I don’t know.” She waved her hand to indicate the disused old tunnel around them. “Does this look like the place a Starfleet Officer ends up? I simply can’t help but feel that we have taken a dreadfully wrong turn to have ended up here.”

“Well I guess I can see that... I been led to understand that you Andorians is a bit more high strung than most species, but,” he raised his hand as she made to respond to that stereotype and made his own gesture, behind her.

“Speaking of ending up, looks like we’re all done here.” 

Shas turned in surprise to find that they had indeed come to the end of the tunnel, just beyond the pool of light from the last fixture was a wall, a dead end. She sighed and made to join Cadet Fairbanks in the long trudge back to the entrance when something caught her eye. 

“Bring that hand light over, will you?” She approached the wall as Cadet Fairbanks brought over illumination. The wall was a dead end still. But scattered across its surface there were carved, painted or laser burned names. Hundreds of them. 

“Wow...” 

“Wow indeed... Look! It’s Dhas Irasa, he was one of ours, first officer on the Lexington!”

“Yeah! Holy crap, that’s Commodore April. And look here... wow.” 

She knelt down to join him as he brushed dust from two names, one above the other. 

“George Kirk, James Kirk...” the legendary caption of the Enterprise and his father had made this trek as well. She stepped back to take it all in. 

“Ain’t all of ‘em famous, but all of ‘em were here, same as us.” He looked at her with that mischievous grin that apparently disarmed the female of his species. “Guess being here ain’t that bad an indicator of your future in Starfleet.”

“I suppose not,” she smiled and gathered her mop and bucket. 

“Hang on Shas! We ain’t finished here yet!” He produced a pen laser and dialed it down for writing. He picked a clear spot next to someone she had not heard of, Gary Mitchell. He signed with a flourish and handed her the pen. She hesitated then found a space near Commander Irasa, the familiar Andorian script bringing a smile to her face. She signed and handed the pen back to Cadet Fairbanks carefully. 

“Buy yah a beer Shas?” 

“Why yes, I think that would be refreshing Cad... Fairlane. Refreshing indeed.” They gathered their tools and headed back down the tunnel into the future. 

Topic: Cleaning

Author: Chris Dunn

We had waited too long, diddled around in the family room going month to month on our lease until it was far too late. Passing around a bong in our basement between game sessions we would have the same discussion over and over.

“What do you want to do?”

“I dunno. I don’t want to stay here.”
“Me either. Where do you want to go?”
“I dunno. Do you have any leads?”
“No. You?”
“I was going to look around this weekend…”
“Well, we have to do something soon, or they going to kick us out.”

“We could just stay month to month, for a little while longer.”
“Yeah, until we find a place, we probably should. I’ll call them tomorrow and let them know.”

This went on for a couple of weeks into the month, and when I finally got off my procrastinating ass to call the office…

“What? Oh, that’s not an option. That unit is rented. You need to be out of there in ten days.”

Stunned, I plodded slowly downstairs, hoping never to reach the landing and bring the news to the basement crowd. The news was real and severe enough that it shocked right through whatever smoke haze was clinging to their brains at the time.

“Oh, crap! What?”

“Can they do that?”
“We don’t even have any prospects!”

“What are we going to do?!”

“We could just stay put, right? They can’t just throw our stuff out on the curb, can they?”

The phone rang. It was the office. They had had time to think and were willing to make us an offer. The people slated to move into our townhouse were adamant. They wanted the chimney unit. Who could blame them? It was sweet! But, there was another unit, just down the block which was available for immediate move in. We could simply transfer our stuff down the way, sign a new lease and even maintain our current security deposit. Whew! That solved, I settled down on the couch among the other lay-abouts reveling in our momentary reprieve. We didn’t need to scramble. We weren’t going to be evicted. We had time…

As the smoke did its work, a wave of melancholy hit us all. It was going to be sad to leave this place, so much fun, so many nights, all the parties, the mayhem and debauchery. It was the end of an era. Packing up all our things and moving them to a new place with a reversed orientation, it was going to be a major adjustment. And then, we would have to go through all the effort to christen the new place, to put our stamp on it, and make it our own. My mind sorted through all the personal touches we had made to our space and immediately fixated on Kit’s room.

“Oh, shit!” I turned toward the others.

“What now?”
“Kit’s room!”
Their eyes lit up in recognition.

“Oh, shit!”

In short order, I was back on the phone with the office. This time the basement crew sat gathered around me, watching with sadistic insterest as I negotiated our fate.

“Okay, we’re very excited about moving to the new unit, and we’re confident we can get packed and moved by the deadline. There’s just one minor snag. We’re not sure, when you see the place that you’re going to want to rent to us anymore…”
“Oh, why is that?”

“Well, you see… My roommate… He fancies himself a bit of an artist. And well, he’s painted his room.”

“Really? What color?”
“Oh, not any single color, more like, characters and landscapes, and yes the ceiling too. Not a lot, but some.”
“Can we see it?”

I can only imagine what they thought when we let them up to the second floor. Almost every trip we had, Kit would spend a few hours adding to the collage, using whatever medium he had on hand at the moment. Oil, acrylic, crayons, what mattered was that the energy of the night get immortalized in some fashion. There were busts, a river, a village. The work had texture in places, and other “artists” had joined his efforts from time to time. Oddly proportioned faces glared with eyes – mismatched at times in size, position and color – from every surface amid the turgid landscape or the occasional meaningful phrase. Phrases like, “All one tribe…” and “Be here now…”

The office personnel stared and stared, trying to hide bemused smiles.

“Now, we can fix this,” I assured them. “We know a professional painter. He’ll come in after we move and completely restore this room.” Tonya had assured me her father could fix it no matter how bad it was, and the landfolks seemed far more amused than the anger I had expected. They agreed. As long as the room was restored to basic white when we were gone, there was no problem.

I was a young fool then. I didn’t know about the wonders of Kilz primer. It costs a bit, but it can cover up just about anything. So in the coming week, we boxed up all our things, carrying many of them down the street on foot to the amused stares of our neighbors. Then we set to cleaning and called in Bob, Tonya’s dad. He got a good laugh over Kit’s work, but within a day he had plowed it all under, leaving a fresh, white canvas for the next prospective artist’s eager hand.

Settling in at the new, slightly smaller, unit. The Pit Crew poured over the pictures we had taken before the Kilz-ing had washed it all away. We recalled the raucous nights when each piece had been added, and took great pleasure in the notion that the new tenants would never know what insanity lurked beneath their simple, eggshell walls. They would sleep soundly in the midst of an unseen gallery, and we would look to this new fresh canvas where we would paint the next few frames of our lives.

Topic: Rain

Rain on a Cold Tin Roof

As an engineer, you're required to have a, "Girlfriend in Germany."  I actually did.  It was an odd summer.

I had been pursuing a lady for a couple years, including one really bad date early in the process.  She kept saying that she liked me, then would go date some other guy.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  I finally stopped trying.  Then, right before she graduated, she showed great interest in me and also announced that she was going to Germany the summer after her graduation.  Well, fine.

That was a wild summer overall.  I was working well more than full time; most of my time cards were in the 60-70 hour range per week.  Some of my best college friends were finishing their final semesters that summer.  I was either ignoring them for work, or to stay sober enough to 1AM so I could ring up a massive phone bill calling the, "girlfriend in Germany," before she went to work in the morning at her boarding house.

The living quarters were also pretty strange.  Our house had a second-floor entrance, and I actually lived in the entry way.  It was probably 10x15 with a small closet, but I didn't have a roommate, and the door also had a really neat tin-roofed walkway.

That summer, it rained like it was the sky's only job.  On many days when I got home from work, I'd put a desk chair out on the walkway and listen to the rain hammer the roof while I fought depression.  I seem to remember one day it was blowing sideways, and I soaked my tie so much that it stained the shirt I was wearing.  And I liked that tie, too.

To this day, the sound of a hard rain cheers me.  The girlfriend dumped me two days after she came back, the roommates forgave me after I bought all the kegs for their graduation party (but that's a different story), and rain makes me happy.

Rain

Rain

It’s a hot August day in eastern Kentucky.  My husband and I are staying in a cabin called “Hiker’s Retreat.” The owners of the cabin had advised us to print directions out ahead of time as phone service and GPS devices tend to be spotty down here.  The printed directions actually say, “After you reach the end of the gravel road turn left at the broken- down jeep.” 

This is about as rustic as we get.  The first morning of our weekend getaway I sit on the covered porch sipping Starbucks Veranda blend and getting the info about the natural bridge.  Natural Bridge State Park is about a ten-minute drive and features a naturally occurring arch about 75 feet high and 20 feet wide.  The best way to get to the top is to take the Sky lift we are told.  I am skeptical.  I haven’t been on a sky lift in about 20 years.   

I immediately flash to the reports about a woman being thrown from the Gatlinburg Mountain Coaster and those people dying from a carnival ride at the Ohio State Fair last summer.  But this sky lift is operated by the state park system.  It’s not privately owned.  Maybe they will have tighter quality control, tighter safety measures.  Surely the odds are better than driving a car I tell myself. 

I don’t tell Jan how I’m feeling a little scared about going up in a sky lift. It’s the best way to get to the top of the bridge.  When I was drinking my morning coffee on the porch a soft rain had fallen.  I bargained with myself, “Well if it doesn’t stop raining, we’ll just stay in and watch movies instead.”  But the sun came out and Jan’s weather app said clear skies till after 6pm.  It’s meant to be I tell myself. 

We have to wait in line at the sky lift gift shop to get our tickets.  There is a boy scout troop, some older couples, a young family with babes in arms, and a group of Asian college students all in line with us.  The shop is full of kitschy souvenirs—little bear statues, shot glasses that say “Natural Bridge”, mood rings, t-shirts, and a wide assortment of homemade fudge.  We resist purchasing anything but two adult tickets, $30.00 total plus tax. 

The sky lift scoops us up and we are headed up a mountain traveling upward at 65 degree or so angle.  There are multiple signs admonishing us to stay seated and to not shake the seats.  I don’t need any signs.  I’m gripping the ½ diameter metal bar that is between me and a free fall into a valley of rocks and trees so tightly that my knuckles are actually turning white.  I ask Jan if he is nervous and he says not at all.  I tell myself to let go of the bar and I turn my focus to taking a picture of the ride up the mountain.  I focus on how pretty it is and I relax.

When we reach the top about 10 minutes later a light rain starts falling.  We ignore it.  We walk the 600 ft or so further upward to get to the Natural Bridge.  But then the rain starts really falling hard.  We duck under a tree and for a minute we are shielded but then the intensity increases and the rain is falling, big fat drops, pelting us relentlessly.  I put both of cell phones in my small leather purse and remove my glasses.  The other hikers all seem to have rain ponchos or umbrellas.  We don’t even have hats. 

We can see the bridge from under the tree but we’re reluctant to walk out the sandstone structure.  It’s about 20 feet wide with no guardrails.   This is nuts.  Someone is going to slide off the side of this damn thing and fall to their death.  There’s no shelter up here save for the tiny overhang where the boys who operate the sky lift perch as they wait to help people go back down the mountain. 

We wait for the rain to stop or slow down. It is merciless.  Every inch of me is saturated.  The boys tell us the only way to get back down is via the same sky lift that brought us up.  They assure us that it is safe even in pouring down rain.  One young man senses my terror and tells me he’s rode it himself in the rain at least a dozen times.  He laughs as he starts to wipe down the seat of the sky lift chair ready to take us down and jokes how he doesn’t need to do that today. 

The ride down seems to be proceeding at a much faster than the ride up.  It feels like we are falling, but we’re not.  My eyes are tightly closed and I am humming Amazing Grace. Then I am praying silently, “God I don’t think I’m supposed to die this way.  But if I am going to die on this ride as least I want to die happy.”   I ask Jan if he is scared and he says no way, this is cool.  Maybe he is just being brave.  Maybe if he tells me he is not afraid he will convince himself.

So, I open my eyes and decide to start laughing at the absurdity of it all.  I try to savor this unique experience.  I tell Jan that we will remember this crazy ass rainy ride for the rest of our lives.  I decide to take a video.  I figure if we die because the sky lift malfunctions my family can use it for the lawsuit they will file with the state parks. And then if we don’t die, we will have this ride commemorated on the internet forever.  I hold Jan’s hand and tell him I love him-you know, just in case. 

But 10 minutes later we are back and safe at the sky lift gift shop landing deck.  Jan says, “That’s’ it I’m getting some fucking fudge, diet or no diet.”  I point out that he is eating to process his feelings.  Damn right, he says. 

So, he buys a ½ pound of fudge and we head back to the cabin.  We are so wet that we squeak when we move on the leather seats of the car.  We drive back to the cabin anxious to peel off our wet clothes.   I talk about how I am going to soak in the hot tub and make a stiff drink.   And as we turn past the broken-down jeep the sun comes out.