Thrillseeker!

Rock climbing has never been attractive to me. I have no desire to pretend to be Tom Cruise in Mish Impossible II. I don't do heights well and I do falls even worse.

Actually the fall isn't that bad. It's the sudden stop that usually screws up the ride.

But way back in my younger days I decided to take the challenge on in reverse. Not one of my brightest ideas, but we'll come back to that.

I was 17 and had a weekend Liberty in San Diego. I could probably made it into TJ, but since I was 17 with no fake ID I had zero posse. On the other hand I heard about a nude beach! You kidding me? Actual nude hippie chicks on a California beach?

Try and stop me.

I caught the whatever buss and transferred to suchandsuch line then hiked another 1/2 mile to the top of a cliff by the UCSD campus. I stood there and watched people run off the cliff in their hang gliders and float in midair.

Then I looked down for the nude beach some 200 feet below. I could see people scattered about, but no nude volleyball tournaments or anything like that going on. But hey, I came this far and I ain't turning back.

I found a trail leading down the cliff to the beach. But the further I went the more narrow the trail got until it became a point of no return situation. The trail had ended and I had to scale my way down the last 50 feet or so.

Once I was down there my bubble was quickly burst when it turned out most of those people I saw running  about were in their 60's. My attempt at body surfing was abruptly halted when I found out the Pacific Ocean is colder than a witches heart in November.

Fail/fail.

Remember I had something to tell you? After not finding any hot young free love hippie chicks at the nude beach, I had to scale my way back up the face of that cliff. Fail/fail/fail. It became an actual life or death survival struggle trying to climb back up that cliff with certain hypothermia.

Don't ask me how the old hippies got down there. I wasn't about to go near them.

Once I made it back to the ship I swore to myself never to do something as stupid as that ever again.

I think it lasted about 2 years.