Day 63: Circus Freak

"Oh, [s]he floats through the air
With the greatest of ease,
This daring young [wo]man
On the flying trapeze!"

 On Day 63, I attended a circus class at the Circus Arts Institute. As in the case of my helicopter flight, I found this deal on Living Social and it was just kooky enough and cheap enough to lure me in.

I had originally anticipated that my friend Marlena would come with me, as we had the "OMG Let's DO it!" conversation on Facebook, but for various reasons, she didn't get the deal. Looks like I had to go this one alone. That fact became especially sad when I arrived in the scary, graffitied downtown Atlanta neighborhood, by my onesies, and got even worse when I walked in and all 30 attendees were with a buddy. I was tired on Day 63 anyway, and if it hadn't have been rush hour, I seriously might have gone home.

However, I drove almost a freaking hour to get to this place through gobs of city traffic, so I put my big girl panties on and stepped up to the challenge.

After a brief warm-up that mostly consisted of wiggling and stretching out our wrists, we got to play on the equipment.

I had the opportunity to swing on the flying trapeze, climb the Spanish Web, tightrope walk, balance on a balance board and juggle. Because we spent only a 15 minutes or so on each apparatus, I ended up having a lot of fun and not getting bored with anything. After lots of smiling and trying new things together, everyone was loosened up and I ended up chatting with some of the other ladies--making me feel less like a loner.

Playing on circus equipment was definitely fun and not too difficult. I especially liked the trapeze because as a novice you can do a lot on it. The teacher gave us a series of 8ish movements to try, so when I got up there, I felt like I was actually good at it.

I surprised myself on the Spanish Web in that I could actually climb the thing like a rope. My upper body strength has significantly improved since elementary school.

This is what a Spanish Web looks like, but I didn't do all of this crazy stuff, I just climbed it 7 feet in the air

 The tight rope was pretty fun, but definitely hurt my feet a little. It wasn't too intimidating because it was only a foot off the floor. I guess they can't risk life and limb at the circus school.

I was surprisingly good at the balance board, despite the fact that I can't skateboard at all and have never jumped up on one of those things before. I guess regular yoga classes keep my balance pretty solid.

At the end of class, the instructors did a couple routines on the trapeze and on the silks that proved how inadequate we intro class kids were, but served as a teaser of the wonderful things we could learn if we joined the circus. While it was a dashingly fun experience for one day, the place is simply too far from my apartment for me to go there on any regular basis.

Overall, I had a really good time, was surprised by what my body could do and got out of my rut of going solo. While I could definitely improve my upper body strength by going more often, I kind of just missed going to yoga class.

At the end of the day, yoga is the workout I prefer (although boxing is a close second!)