Dream Trip 2009

Great Travel Moment

When hiking in the West Maui Mountains in Hawai'i, I came upon this less-than-stable swinging bridge over a rocky, dry riverbed. It wasn't that high above the ground, but it was tilted and seemed to stretch into infinity. As I stood atop the first aged plank, my wife's admonishment (she being several miles away relaxing on the beach, naturally) after my tumble down a hill on a mountain bike in St. Lucia a couple of years earlier (which resulted in a fractured wrist, a day-long sampling of the island's medical care, and going under anesthesia apologizing for any bad thing anyone might have done to that tiny nation) kept echoing in my ear: "If you get hurt again, you will be going home . . . alone." Needless to say, I held on tightly as I stepped across that bridge, and did not have to go home alone.