I remember watching a television show about these speedboats that rip through the harbor in Auckland, New Zealand. They travel at ridiculously dangerous speed and come right up to the edge of a dock or a bridge and do a hairpin turn just in the nick of time and all of the passages scream with fear and relief.
"What a ridiculous way to spend an afternoon. It's so dangerous. What idiot would do that", I blurted out to my mother who was watching the show with me.
"It's thrilling. It's absolutely thrilling", she tells me, "Daddy didn't like it too much but I loved it. You go so fast. It was great."
My parents had just returned from a trip to Australia and New Zealand. My mother had just beaten cancer and they went on this trip to celebrate her new good health. And here she was, putting herself in harms way for a cheap thrill. I didn't get it.
But 20 years later, I am now in Auckland and I see the damn speed boat, in the harbor, and I am drawn to it. I am finding that I am drawn to everything here that may have had my mother's footprint on it. Two years after her trip, the cancer got her. This was the last time she was well and this was one of her last moments of exhilaration. So I decide to take the ride.
I HATED IT. The second we left the dock I knew I made a big, big mistake. I hate amusement park rides. I have a serious motion sickness problem. I have a fear of drowning. I hate cold water. While others screamed and cheered and begged fro more hairpin turns, I gripped the bar in front of me, closed my eyes and prayed that we ran out of gas right now.
