A couple of weeks ago, Vida and I were lucky enough to get this story assignment, visiting the San Francisco Circus Center and trying out their flying trapeze lesson. That's one of the nice things about being a Synapse editor; aside from getting paid, you get to do lots of cool things with little or no-cost.
Who would've thought that there's a circus school near UCSF, let alone two of them? Housed in a former high school gymnasium, the Circus Center is, in the words of Michael Kesselman, the general manager of Circus Center, a "world-class facility" and one of the elite circus centers in the world with instructors from all over the world (Quebec, Mongolia, China) who have toured with different troupes worldwide.
I have a clinically undiagnosed acrophobia, not anaphylactic-bad, but still bad enough to give me the goose bumps and the knee trembles, the queasiness and the stomach knots every time my feet are not touching the ground. But I said, what the heck, what have I got to lose, right? And besides, I'm wearing a harness, and if I fall, there's a safety net and a cushion to catch me.
Before we got up, we were given an on-the-ground training on what to do when we're up there. We were taught the basic commands that we needed to listen to and do each command sequentially. Simple enough; it didn't seem so bad when we were on the ground, and I thought this would be pretty easy!
When I was climbing up the ladder, I can feel my hands clamming up, my heart beating faster and faster. The platform sure felt a lot higher from up there than it is from the ground. Not only was it higher than I thought, it was smaller than I thought.
There's a certain method to the madness that is trapeze-flying. First, you hang on to the railing, and then you thrust your hips out as you reach out for the swing. Then with your other hand, you grab the bar, and when you're ready, your hand that's holding the platform will join the other hand in the bar. Then you bend your knees and jump off! There were definitely a few times when my nervousness would get the better of me and I would go back a step or two, which is apparently NOT what you're supposed to do.
But the people that work here were so encouraging and gave you confidence. I swear, they all have soothing voices that melt your irrational fears away, urging you to adopt a "jump off the high dive, stare down the barrel of a gun, pee into the wind" mentality. It also helped that all of the instructors were pretty good looking. Jennings, with his piercing eyes, Scott, with his silver-fox looks, and Jan Damm from Maine… Hot Damn… seriously.
The first trick that we learned was the "knee hang". On command, you lift your legs up and place it on the bar, then on the next command, you drop your hands. Then on the next command, you bring your hands up, followed by dropping your legs down. It was a bit harder doing it up there than it was down on the ground. But eventually, I got the hang of it, and was able to manage to do serviceable knee hangs.
The second trick that we learned was the "back flip". We didn't learn it at the ground first, but Jan Damm explained what we needed to do; on command we swung forward, backwards, forwards, and then touch our knees. I failed miserably the first time I tried it; I rushed my movements and I didn't flip at all. The next time that I did it was a lot better, if I may say. I looked at the grainy TiVo-like recording of my trick, and I was thoroughly impressed of my performance; it looked pretty legit!
For the next few days, as forewarned by Jan Damm and Scott, I was pretty sore. My bingo arms were hurting the next day; I worked out muscles that I never knew I had. But it's all good. I had so much fun doing it that I am inclined to spend $42.50 for an hour and a half drop-in lessons on Saturdays from time to time, but not enough to leave my day job, as Scott did (he graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Genetics and had work at a lab).
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