Sometimes this happens. I try not to let it happen too often, but sometimes it does. You want to do a vacation that doesn’t sound to you, when you haven’t had one too many, like it’s really a vacation.

See, I like vacations to be relaxing, an escape. I like them to be comfortable, not life-threatening. Sometimes my idea of relaxing may not be yours, or most people’s. Still, if it’s relaxing to me – and sometimes chugging up a 5,000-foot peak, or spending days backpacking in grizzly country, can really be – then it is. Some people might consider that risking a heart attack. Or worse yet, becoming part of the outdoor food chain. Maybe I, and maybe you, think there are just worse ways to go. Like, say, landing splat at the foot of a cliff, your shinbones the last things going through your mind. Or sinking to the bottom of a freezing pool because your brain can’t tell your limbs to move anymore. Then somebody offers you the idea of a trip combining the possibility of both of those intriguing exits. And dying of thirst to boot. And you say yes. And you spend some time – quite a bit of it, and quite a few beers – thereafter wondering why the hell you did that.

This is what happened to me, sometime last year, when my friend Jon Wright proposed that I come along on one of his Utah trips, say, next year’s.

Um, sure! I said. All the trip involved was at least a couple of descents of remote canyons, descending which would be absolutely foolish for normal people. Unless they came equipped with ropes. And, um, used them. Which, as normal people know, is REALLY foolish. Then of course you have to be ready to swim pools that can’t really be used to cool off a six-pack because they are TOO COLD. Can you imagine that? Me neither. And I said yes? I might have been drinking, but I remembered doing it the next day.

So, anyway, here comes the day, and I’m packing things I didn’t think I’d ever pack for a trip again, if, um, ever, and contemplating stuff that involved leaving solid ground, without wings, and maybe worse going swimming, outside, in the fall. On the SAME DAY.

Did I mention we were going to fly to get there?

Look, Ma! No hands! Sheesh, can’t a guy just go for a walk?