W
HAT I did on my 30th birthday and what I should have done are very different things. Much like when I told people, “I’m totally buzzed to be turning the big 3-0. How great to grow old and wise,” — when what I really meant, deep inside my aging heart, right down to my fast-fossilising sinew, was, “!@£$%^&”.
Time is an illusion. Resist the hour. Yes, yes, I too uttered such proclamations. But I was still 20-bound then, on top of the hill with nowhere to go but down. And so, for the big day, in sympathy for myself, I decided to throw myself off the hill (attached to a cable while ziplining, yes, but do not dismiss the danger of a little steel in a lightning storm).
The Cape, allegedly amid a dry spell, turned dark and damp, very damp, within minutes, as we started up the Huguenot Mountains in Elgin in an open-sided truck. The rain spat out from clouds shrouding the view of an empty Theewaterskloof Dam and filled our shoes and gloves with ice water. As we sledged to the first canopy — the point of no return — an air raid of lightning surrounded us and I uttered those famous last words …
“What happens if the lightning strikes the cable while we’re on it?”