caving tunnels

the other day something occurred which made me realize that the human spirit fights its most glorious battles without even realizing its in one. alosh and i never realized at the time that our actions were so full of the spirit of never giving up, the same spirit that helps people climb everest or win the tour de france, when we were actually going about our heroic feats. it happened when he came to bangy and we decided to go to this water theme park. now i wont go into the details of the rides there. suffice it to say that they were numerous and quite adequately adrenaline-jerking. however our greatness was revealed to us ;) in a tunnel ride. the ride basically consists of an inflated 8-shaped dinghy thingy on which they seat 2 people and push them down a tunnel which twists and turns and opens into a shallow pool where u climb out of the dinghy laughing at ur bravado.

now we were sort of put off with the look of apprehension on the faces of the couple going ahead of us. and when they came out of the other end giggling alosh and i got on with the smirk of the fearless. we were determined to ride the bally thing to its extreme. let it know its been in a fight and all. and so we lunged into the tunnel with the fore-mentioned smirk. and we attacked each curve with great zeal leaning with the raft to get maximum acceleration (sixth grade physics). the problem with the plan was that there is only so much acceleration u can get out of a stupid no-motor-driven-by-gravity dinghy with the result that when we leaned more it threw up its hands in the air in defeat or rather, its ass and spilled us head first into the miserable little tunnel. it was a very philosophical turn of events as i had a lot of time to cogitate upon the meaning of life and all while wriggling the other half of the way down the tunnel. made me think that we are indeed a strange species if our idea of fun was climbing four flights of stairs only to be pushed into a dark winding tunnel in a dinghy which has holes not cushions to rest ur bottoms and emerge into a pool of chlorinated water at a temperature several degrees below comfort level. i mean if we were emerging into a flowery paradise it may have made some sense to other animals.

anywayz... back to the human spirit and all. we went back to the ride and decided to do the thing together again to prove to the world that we wont be beaten and also because the others refused to ride with us and this time around we had a clear mission. we shall emerge successful, smiling and not be toppled no matter what. and thus was started the great saga of leaning against the curve and quelling the raft with a look when it lurched too much and in general, plodding relentlessly towards the pool. and thus we emerged from the tunnel with the targeted smile. we even flung up our arms in victory as the dinghy splashed into the pool and looked at the ppl standing around with the smile turning to a smirk. however some of them werent quite able to appreciate the full extent of the smirk as it was reached only just before my head went under the water, the dinghy having toppled spilling us into the pool.