A Gephyrophobiac Would Never Do This

/ Liz Mayers

Here’s the bridge.

American River Canyon by Nick Ares from Auburn, CA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

The Foresthill Bridge is the highest in California at 730 feet and located outside Sacramento.  I think I’ll have plenty of company when I say I’d never climb out onto the catwalk or the girders below it.

Foresthill Bridge by Nick Ares from Auburn, CA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Yet lots of people do.  On Tuesday a woman risked it and while taking a selfie fell 60 feet to the ground below.  She’s been hospitalized.  Lucky woman!  Click here to see the spot where she fell from as documented by the Placer County Sheriff’s Office on Facebook.

She’s down to 8 lives.

I saw photos online of people sitting on the girders with feet dangling, smiling, hugging, and breakdancing.  I cringed for them.   But everyone seems to be having a good time – at least at the time of the photo.

How does anyone look at the width of a girder – and not think of the consequences of one wrong step here or there?  Maybe it’s just for the young and daring.

Or maybe we just all see things differently.