Marty’s photo of the day #4422: On my posts yesterday, some of us had a lively conversation about the Titan submersible and risk taking. Whether sinking down to the Titanic or climbing up to the top of Mount Everest, it’s just human nature for some people to take risks. And risk-taking doesn’t have to be a physical feat. It could be someone taking a chance by leaving his/her straight job to become self-employed in hopes of doing something awesome.
As someone who has taken both kinds of risks, my most famous one happened when my wife, Deb, and I canoed past 1,500 hippos on the Zambezi River. Sure we knew we were taking a risk, but we did it anyway. And if it weren’t for one territorial hippo, we would have made it unscathed.
This photo shows Deb and me after a hippo bit through the middle of our canoe and lifted us six feet into the air. Yes, we were laughing. In fact, tears were streaming down my cheeks from laughing so hard. And why wouldn’t we be laughing? We were thrilled not to be seriously injured and had just become two of the few to ever survive such an attack.
Later, once our hit of hippo-induced adrenalin wore off, we were as nervous as hell, because we still had two more days of facing the hippos.