I Survived the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway!

Now those of you who know me well, might know that I’m not the most adventurous type. I didn’t set foot on a plane until I was 23, and up until about 6 months ago, I still took a stuffed animal to bed. Well, hold on to your hats, because you’re not going to believe this! This last weekend, I rode the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway! For those of you who aren’t familiar, it’s basically this car contraption that can hold about 80 people, and it hangs by cables and climbs way the heck up the mountain.

Background:

I was in Palm Springs for a friend’s bachelorette party, and one of the things the girls were talking about doing was taking a ride on the “rotating aerial tram.” Now just hearing those words made my legs wobble. It’s not that I’m so afraid of barfing on the tram as I was of just losing my shit and freaking out mid-way up the mountain. I was also pretty afraid of barfing on the tram since I get pretty gnarly motion sickness. Did I mention my fear of barfing in a glass cage full of strangers?

But I digress…the time came that we were all heading over to the Tramway for the epic 2 1/2 mile ride up the mountains of Palm Springs. I thought to myself, “bitch, be cool, you can do this.”  Then when we all had our tickets and were waiting to board, one of the girls asked me how I felt. I admitted that I was terrified. At first I thought this was a bo-bo thing to do as I didn’t want to be the lame-o that had to stay back or ruin it for everyone else. I then told the girls to just forget that I said that and pretend that it’s totally cool. Thank goodness they did just that.

Adventure:

As the tram took off, I thought, “hell, this isn’t so bad…and it will be nice to escape the 112 degree weather.” Then we passed the first tower. As the conductor said, “passing the tower causes the car to swing a bit.” Yeah, no shit. I started shaking pretty bad. Then I thought, “how many more towers can there be?” Turns out four…FOUR effing towers. I had a hard time taking pictures and pretending to smile due to my shaking. My friend took this nice picture for me as the ones I took came out blurry. You can see the cables and get an idea of how high this bad-boy went.

Accomplishment:

I’m so glad I went through with it, because once we were up there, it was so beautiful! The air was clean and cool–probably only in the mid 80s. I chased around a bee until I got a good picture of it, and we saw all sorts of nature. There was nature all up in that bitch.

Would I do it again? F-no…well, unless I was with a bunch of people who don’t know what a fraidy-cat I am…then yeah, I would probably do exactly what I did in this situation.