Rather than spend the weekend dancing atop a table at some club in post-Rugby Sevens haze, I celebrated my birthday a bit differently this year. That’s right: I enrolled in a flying trapeze class. In QUEENS (AND in the rain).

Thorough due diligence was conducted in advance, and thanks to hashtags on Instagram, I viewed enough videos to conclude that I would probably not die – despite the mounds of waivers requiring my signature prior to enrolment. Flying trapeze did not look super easy, but it did not seem impossible either. Swing, flip, catch. Heights don’t scare me! I puffed internally. That soon changed after I climbed up the ladder with my chalky palms, arriving at the top of the platform to peer down at the netting below me. Confidence melted into apprehension.

Ok, so I was kinda wrong.

First of all, that bar is heavy. Wayyy heavier than you’d expect. You are instructed to pull in from above, preparing yourself in an awkward stance while holding still. Even though it’s only a few seconds, you can start to feel the burn in your armpit and a general discomfort. Then they call “hep”, which is trapeze lingo for “go”, and you hop off the platform. That part is the scariest – not the part where you release your arms, or hang upside down, or even having pull your body weight up to hook onto the bar. Just…hanging. You and gravity, mano e mano.

We practiced a few rounds of knee hangs and backflips before trying the catch. The entire sequence took a grand total of 15 seconds, but when you’re up there it definitely feels like much longer! The rush of completing a catch is like none other and by that I mean I couldn’t feel my legs afterward because they were like jelly.

Signs of change? Nah. I still went to a bar for birthday drinks the night before. I could use this story as an allegory for how my foray into aerial arts marks a spiritual turn…but it’s not. It was fun, I shall continue to take chances, and I will definitely be back for another go when the outdoor trapeze site opens!