Captain’s Log Day Fourteen – Canada

I have a fear of heights. So, it may seem out of character to request a high floor in the Marriott Fallsview Hotel and equally as bizarre for to go up in Canada’s Skylon tower. Yes, it is out of character. I like to stay below floor 9 when in a hotel, but I chose a high room for the view. Hey, IDK when I’ll get back to Niagara. I’m gonna do it right, even if it kills me.

I also decided to submit myself to this punishment “for the children“. I don’t want them to miss out on a great view or doing something spectacular just because I’m a big wuss.

“For the children” is what got me to the top of the Skylon tower which is just a 52 second glass elevator ride (solid, non-glass floor) to a world of sheer terror, also known as, an indoor and open air outdoor observation deck 775 feet above the falls. As an added bonus, you can see 8,000 square miles of Canada and the United States. Gulp.

I was fine in the elevator and only observed a slight knee buckle when stepping out of the elevator and into the indoor observation deck (which also had a gift shop + another one at the bottom, LOL). The slight buckle occurred when I made the mistake of looking down between the door of the elevator and the chute they brought us up through. Um…that was open air people.

So, I bravely burst through the doors of the indoor observatory and declare to the children how beautiful everything is. Then I bend slightly at the knees, beg them not to lean on the wiring and mentally tell myself that in X amount of time this will be a happy memory. The more time we spend up there (they’re loving it), the more I inch toward and begin doing a spidey cling to the walls. I inch around almost the full 360 degrees of the tower…and then the wind kicks up. I’m remembering what I was told…it sways up to 2 feet in the wind, if it didn’t it would crack. Soooo reassuring…in the way that hearing you look great after having a baby is reassuring. Um, not so much.

The straw that broke the wuss camels back was when the wind got so strong that it lifted DS#2 off his feet (very slightly, but still). Here our intrepid heroine was overwhelmed by the dark powers of heights and was seen clutching an iron garbage can with a death grip and sliding down almost to her knees to brace against the wind and imagined certain doom. In a moment of extreme cowardice I was seen mouthing things that my children would later claim were never said. My yells were carried away by the high wind, but let it be known to all that it went something like this, “I have really tried, but THIS is too much! I’m going in. You can stay, but I’m going in!”

Sadly, I was seen bracing myself against the wind and doing a deep snow-like walk almost 360 degrees back to the door I last used. Had the wind not been so strong … I would have heard my children who tried hard to save me …

“There’s a door right here Mom! On the other side of the garbage can!” The very garbage can I had been clutching.