Troublemakers

Recently we went to a show in Philly and due to a bad parking spot and poor maneuvering getting back to the car, our usual 1 hour drive home, turned into 2 hours. It sucked!
Last night Marc and I headed up to Hershey, Pa for a show. We've never gone to this venue before and it is a bit of a hike. The last thing we wanted was a repeat of the Philly incident. Unfortunately in trying to avoid one incident, we kinda provoked another one.
After the final song of the encore (I do not believe in leaving early) we took off. Marc led the way, I hung on as he weaved his way through the crowd. Then he noticed a short cut, but we'd have to climb a gate. I didn't hesitate and swung myself over. Unfortunately for me and the guy on the other side it was a little higher than I anticipated and I smashed into him. Luckily he took it well and I kept on my way going under the next one. As we are moving towards the intersection there is a big pile up on one side and far fewer people on the other, so we chose the path of least resistance. As we stand there waiting for the ok to cross, a rent-a-cop is pulling a huge power play with the other side. He's pointing and screaming about to burst a vein, "I'm only going to tell you this once". He was an ass. Anyway, then he starts in on us. He starts screaming at us that there's no way we're crossing there and we have to back track and go the other way around. With the clock ticking, I pipe up and say that's crap, there's a cross walk right here, I'm not going back across. Well a couple teens figured this sounded just great and took off across the street. I figured what the hell and followed. Marc meanwhile is standing there chanting 'asshole' to the guy. It catches on quickly with the crowd. Before I know it, the entire crowd of 100's of people bum rush the guy and the intersection. I look back and I can't see Marc as he did not follow me. But I do see a ton of full out running and chanting 'asshole' coming at me quickly. I keep going, Marc catches up and we high tail it to the car. We were out quickly without incident. Well besides the little riot we kinda started. Ooops.

Falling

I don't really have a fear of heights. Going up is perfectly fine. Coming down however, is another matter.
In movies they show some person hanging on for dear life, fear in their eyes, and their fingers slowly slipping off of whatever they are holding on to and then eventually they end up falling to their death. I always thought as I'm watching, these people are crazy. If I knew I was gonna die I could hold on. It wouldn't matter how bad it hurt, I'd just keep fighting until I was ok just because I'd have too. ha ha ha Yeah it doesn't work that way.
Last week I was at the climbing gym. I decided to go up a bouldering problem that had a particularly high finish. Once up there I froze and couldn't get myself down. Marc was below me telling me to jump, yet I couldn't. I tried to down climb, but the holds were too small and I was fatiguing from the panic. As I stayed up there the worse the panic got and the more my arms fatigued prematurely. Eventually I saw my hands slipping, and even though I knew it wasn't to my death, there was nothing I could do about it. I ended up falling and I was fine, just shaken.
Turns out the movies are right. Your will will only get you so far.