Surfing The Channel

Posts Tagged ‘Washington’

A few years ago, in Paris, I realized I had acquired a fear of heights when I considered entering the glass elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which would have sent me soaring one thousand feet above the ground.  My heart accelerated in anticipation and, for the life of me, I couldn’t make myself step inside the elevator car.  When I reviewed my memories of height-related experiences, I could come up only with myself as an eight-year-old climbing alone a one hundred and ten foot lookout tower in Washington state.  My parents were waiting above, accessible through a trap door that took up a quarter of the lookout tower’s observation room, having gone ahead when I expressed my reluctance to climb the wooden structure.  I hadn’t had any such negative reactions anywhere else, such as flying in a plane or riding up to the top of the Seattle Space Needle.

In fact, then as now, I really enjoy Seattle and the Seattle Center, which is about a 74 acre site that the Century 21 Exposition used.  I would love to travel to Washington today and check into a hotel on the pier and revisit those excellent childhood memories.  It would be a chance to see again the International Fountain, which you can see at any time of the year, with twenty spouts, shooting out jets of water in different patterns to the beat of world music, which changes every month.  More recently, in 2004, the World Naked Bike Ride or the Body Pride Ride uses the fountain as a stopping point.  That was definitely something that wasn’t happening when I was a kid.  While I couldn’t find clothing-optional bicyclists, I could ride the Seattle Monorail here, which was my first experience with monorails.  There’s also the Fun Forest Amusement park, in which I recall clearly a fun house ride that put you on a cart on a track that led in and out of “scary” sights.  I’m sure if I were to see it again, I’d consider the ride exceptionally tame.  In the sixties, though, it was just fun.  And, in fact, I was so in love with the space program that anything with the name space in it, had me hooked.  I’m positive that riding to the top of the Seattle Space Needle, a full 605 feet tall, didn’t trigger any fear of heights.

Perhaps I’ll never know why I couldn’t go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, although when I went to Las Vegas last, I was somehow able to force myself into the glass elevator on that Tower’s replica.  Granted, it was only half the height of the original, perhaps five hundred feet, and I was anxious all the way up, despite the view.  Overall, though, I believe I prefer the view available at the top of the Space Needle, Seattle and Puget Sound stretching out before me.  I could probably even see my hotel from there!