#throwbackthursday

I don’t remember the exact day, but I do remember we rode donkeys that morning. I vividly remember the way the saddle felt between my legs, the stretch of slightly too tight jeans over my thighs, and how hot the sun felt beating down on my head, despite the UF Alumni ball cap I had firmly in place. ‘I’m going to get burned’, I remember thinking. I’d not only applied copious amounts of sunscreen (every half hour or so, because that’s what a pale, freckled person has to do), but I’d baked myself in tanning beds the months leading up to the trip in hopes that I wouldn’t burn as badly as I normally do.

I still did, of course. It was a futile effort. It always is.

It was suggested, after riding donkeys down a cliff, that a small group rent ATVs and go traipsing about the island. I wasn’t exactly against the idea, but I wasn’t exactly for it, either. I was a cautious young woman, I always have been, and I didn’t like straying off the well-defined path for something more adventurous. My self-preservation levels have always been fairly high – that and the ever present though of my mother will kill me always gave me pause.

Renting an ATV from a man that didn’t speak any English wasn’t on my top list of Things To Do while abroad, and neither was accidentally launching myself off a cliff because I don’t know how to drive an ATV. We’d been advised against doing it, as most tourists are. ATVs especially, parasailing, anything not specifically sponsored by our trip was generally advised against because of liability reasons and insurance. I tended to default to those instructions, because as a whole, I value my personal safety.

The group was going to leave without me, so it was join them, or figure something else out on my own. I had no cell phone, as my useless Sidekick had stopped working the minute I’d touched down in the Rome airport, where I needed to catch my connecting flight. It was either go with them, or I was completely, utterly on my own.

So I went.

We had an odd number of people in the group because I joined, which wasn’t really a problem for them as much as it was for me. It meant that not only did I have to pay for the whole ATV myself, but I also had to drive the damn thing, which I didn’t know how to do.

A skinny Greek man handed me a helmet after I passed over a large chuck of my allotted Euros for the day, and helped me fasten it. He spoke a little more English than the other man (who could have possibly been his father), and while he clipped the helmet in place he explained how to work the vehicle. We’d have to drive it in traffic, he told me, to get to the road that circled the outer edges of the island. The prospect of having to drive an ATV in actual stop and go traffic terrified me, because as with most quad bikes/ATVs, it had a clutch, and required me to shift gears.

Let me preface the rest of the day by saying that I cannot drive a stick shift car. My father tried to teach me upon several occasions, and I managed to stall his car again and again, even while reversing. This is, from what I’ve been told, quite a feat.

That said, I was terrified. I begged someone else to drive, but everyone had already partnered up or preferred to be on their own, and were beginning to head out. I was on my own.

I recognize that now, eight years later, I could’ve easily killed myself. After returning home, I researched ATV riding in Santorini and was horrified to find out that more often than not, people either seriously injured themselves, or died. Luckily for me, that didn’t happen.

What did happen, of course, was that I stalled the damned thing in the middle of what seemed to be rush hour traffic.

Several times.

Amidst horns blaring and my tears, one of our group members jumped off and ran back to me and quickly restarted the infernal contraption, which was of great relief not only to me, but to everyone behind me that was screaming profanities at the delay. Some quick instruction from her, and determination (and humiliation) on my part mercifully resulted in no more stalling.

Besides, after my third stall, we were out of traffic anyway and on the open roads that led all around the island. The moment we left the traffic cluster of downtown Santorini, I felt freedom.

And relief. So much relief.

There was no communication between the group after that except pointing, as we were on separate bikes and between the road noise of the bikes and the wind, we had no hope of hearing one another. The roar of the ATV under me drowned out everything else, and the vibrations moved up through my spine and arms and legs, rendering my fingertips numb (like when you push a shopping cart over pavement kind of numb, that itchy, inexplicable sensation in your hands and arms) and rattled my teeth in my head. I was still nervous, and held onto the handlebars so tightly my knuckles were white.

This is the point where I should be able to wax poetic about the scenery, tell you about the Aegean sea that sparkled like diamonds, or talk about the countryside of Santorini. Maybe I could describe in great detail the picturesque white homes that dotted the landscape, or the blue domed churches and how lovely the sun shone down upon them. In truth, it would mostly be a lie because the things I happened to be concerned were not pretty little churches or the water that was a mile down the edge of the cliff we were driving along, beckoning me to my death.

No, I was far more concerned about keeping the tread of my giant tires out of the dirt. I was more concerned about said dirt getting into my face and eyes and mouth despite the sunglasses I wore. Our helmets were not standard issue bike helmets – they had no protective face guard and were padded on the inside with worn foam, and most certainly not fitted properly to our heads. I was more concerned about the hill that loomed in the distance ahead of us and whether or not the ATV I was on would make the climb. To be perfectly honest, my concerns lay with the very real possibility of imminent death as opposed to the beauty that surrounded me.

What I will say is that no matter my fear, the fact that I was doing something so out of my perfect little box of safety was invigorating and refreshing. Here I was, little miss safety, miss stay on the Sidewalk and play it by the book and don’t do anything that isn’t sanctioned and safe and signed off on, riding on an ATV in Greece on the side of a cliff with a shoddy helmet on my head.

At some point it was decided – how, I’m not sure, what with the road noise and wind and whatnot; maybe before our expedition even started, I’ll never know – that we would be making our way to what was called the ‘Red Beach’. I was fine with this. It meant parking the ATV and getting off and regaining feeling in my fingers. Most of us had packed a small bag with swimsuits and sunscreen because we knew that after riding the donkey’s we wouldn’t really have an opportunity to go back to the hotel. At some point we must have stopped to change (the day was beginning to turn into an adrenaline fueled blur) because mercifully, I did not have to ride an ATV and navigate traffic and focus on not dying while wearing sandals.

The others clearly knew far better than I where we were going, because at some point we ended up at the foot of what looked like a literal mountain.

“We have to climb over it,” I remember one of the girls telling us.

I also remember thinking that wasn’t going to happen. I am no hiker and I have never been spectacularly good at anything physical. I did, however, take it as another challenge to tackle – but there was a lot of suffering involved. The hike was grueling for me. I was not in shape, I’ve never been in any kind of shape. The closest that I would say I’ve ever been was during high school and immediately after, due to band practices and holding fifty pound drums in the blazing heat.

That in no way prepared me for a hike over a mountain to get to a beach seven years later.

At the top was a young woman selling handmade jewelry. She had a blanket spread out with an array of things, and a small crowd was watching her work. I probably spent a solid twenty euro on several small tokens of my conquest, but I didn’t care. I’d made it.

The view before me was utterly breathtaking – I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Knowing that this was literally a mountain (albeit small) that I climbed and made it over made the moment even more perfect than I ever could have imagined. My whole life I’ve stuffed myself tidy little boxes that I’ve perfected for ease and convenience, and to break free of self-imposed confines was liberating.

In the back of my mind I knew I had to keep going down, and then to leave the beach, I would have to climb back up. At that point though, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the fact that I had done it. I’d gone against ‘adult’ recommendation and rented an ATV and risked my personal safety in a foreign country – because I wanted to. I’d stepped so far outside of my tidy comfort zone I felt like I might actually explode with happiness – and I’d come out alive.

Push your boundaries. Take the leap. Believe in yourself – and trust yourself. You can do it. Slow down, and just breathe.