Yesterday I didn't jump out of a plane

I was supposed to go skydiving yesterday morning with some friends, but the event was canceled due to high winds. Perhaps it is too windy in the city of Eloy, where the skydiving was supposed to take place, but here in the Valley it was a calm, sunny Saturday morning just like any other morning this time of year. I won't complain much about the cancellation because I wasn't too keen on the idea of jumping out of an airplane.

It's not that I worry about the results; I figure skydiving is safe enough. Indeed, many people happily sky dive but would never ride a bicycle in rush hour traffic. Who's the bigger fool?

I know how I feel sometimes when I stare down a long ways below, and I don't like that feeling. In fact, my principal fear with the prospect of skydiving was that someone would have to push me out of the plane to get me to do it. Sometime between my teens and my late twenties I have developed a fear of heights. In my teens I would have been excited about skydiving. Now I am on my way to being that guy -- you know, Prudent Old Guy.

I'm also on my way to being that guy standing next to him -- Stingy Old Guy -- because I wasn't too keen on spending two hundred dollars for a few minutes of free fall and a brush with death. Why not rocket down South Mountain and its winding turns and steep drop-offs with nothing but cacti and rocks to break my fall and my bones? That costs nothing and gives me a good workout to boot.

But indeed I am a tad disappointed about not skydiving if for no other reason than that it would have proved that I'm still Says Yes Guy.