03 August 2014
Traunkirchen, Austria (8 miles; Total = 496 miles)

He’s tall and scruffy with his 3-day old growth, he smells like beer and sweat, and he seems to be taking a particular glee in standing next to me and loudly declaring “EEEWWWWWWEEEEEEE” every time our cable car glides down through a tower, causing us a brief moment of weightlessness before it catches once more, these many thousands of feet above the ground. I can’t tell if he’s doing this purely for my benefit because he senses my nervousness or if he’s truly enjoying the ride down, like an 8-yr-old boy on Space Mountain.

Either way, I smile and keep my eyes focused on the horizon because everyone knows that if you look down you’ll realize how insane and stupid it is that you’re dangling so far above terra firma BY CHOICE and you’ll instantly careen into a full-blown panic attack and that will be a very bad thing here in this death trap of a flying cart that’s full to the gills with other boozy, sweaty people because you frantically spinning around in place will cause the whole contraption to start tilting and swaying and SNAP, down we’ll all go, all because you couldn’t simply keep your eyes on the horizon.

We’re coming down from hiking the Feuerkogel, the mountainous region at the southern end of the Traunsee. There were peaks to be seen sneaking in and out of the clouds, cows to traverse, and a traditional alpine pasture festival to view. This is where we feel most in the zone, our cable car tickets the same to us as a museum ticket to someone else, giving us entrance into a world that triggers our senses in all the wonderful ways, even if the cows and my cable car mate might be a little bit stinky.