I'm not quite finished with this entry, but I'm actually on the airplane flying to the Grand Canyon right now, so I think I'll just publish it and clean it up later (after I edit all the amazing photos and video).

In less than 2 days I'll be hiking into the Grand Canyon. I'm still not sure about the climbing out part. I've been pretty confident that all will go well, but the shock that friends express when I tell them I'm walking, not riding a mule, is disconcerting. Have you used the stairmaster? No. I hate the stairmaster. The treadmill? I walk to work. How have you been training? I walk. Vigorously with weight on my back up and down the hills in Prospect Park. Walking to and from work, church, wherever. Well, it's a grueling hike out of the canyon. I know. You have to pay for the airlift yourself if you can't get out. I've heard.

Rattlesnakes and scorpions aside. Heat prostration, dehydration and slipping on ice be damned. Hiking 10 miles uphill is daunting. Maybe so daunting I don't even realize how daunted I am.

A few weeks ago, I was out of the office at lunch. I returned and was immediately confronted with, "where were you?" "We needed you!" A fire alarm had gone off without any pre-announcement. That meant that there probably was a fire in the building. Well, everyone stood where they were, looking at each other wondering what they should do. Some ran down the stairs. We had just had a successful drill where everyone efficiently walked to the hallway and waited for further instructions while the Floor Fire Marshall (I'm the Deputy) called down to the Fire Command Station. This time around, it took several moments for everyone to call upon their training and actually do what we were trained to do. Perhaps there was this panic that set in when people realized that this might be the real thing (it wasn't) and that their safety was at stake.

Or like when I was getting off of the A Train after work. Train stops, doors open, I get out. Can't get out. Push. Stuck. Push. Stuck. Look around. Stuck. Push. Pull. Stuck. That was me. The door had closed just as I (the first person to leave) was going through the exit. I couldn't understand what was happening. The doors held me like a mouse in a trap. And I was quietly panicking. Outwardly I looked like a guy struggling with doors. My brain, however, was in full fight or flight mode.

One of my favorite authors, Kate Braestrup, in her new book "Marriage and Other Acts of Charity" describes a conversation she has with a man who is afraid of flying in an airplane. He has a fear that the plane will explode. They chat about it and she finally suggests that he try to do a few mid-air somersaults while he's free-falling (obviously, there's more to this). I'd like to think that I would do that. I've pictured myself clutching to the seat to hold myself steady as the airplane I was on was falling to earth so that I could sit and experience what was actually happening. I don't think I'd have the presence of mind, though.

A couple weeks before I was to begin what was to be a total of ten take-offs and landings in two months, a friend shared an article with me that described how you can live if your airplane explodes mid-air. "Wreckage Surfing" or something like that. Riding a part of the airplane to Earth. And landing just so. It's been done, apparently. It sounds like it would be amazing and so scary. I don't ever want to do it, though.

All I want to do right now is to hike with my friend Mark into the Grand Canyon and happily and confidently climb out.