Be Afraid But Do It Anyway: Erna Morgan McReynolds

Bridges, Hostels and Other Fears

Vancouver. Back in 1975, the biggest city in which I had ever spent a week: 1,100,000 people. I had visited New York City, but my partner had never even been to a city with more than 700,000. A fearful adventure?

From center city, we figured out the buses to our youth hostel in a far suburb. Challenging, but nothing compared to the next day. On $1.00 a day, we couldn’t afford to take buses or trains. Instead, we traveled “Shank’s mare,” armed with maps and a plan for touring the city.

Vancouver is surrounded by water. Linked by bridges. And we had to cross one of those bridges to get into the city center. All my life, I had been terrified of heights. Even stepladders made me queasy. Gusting winds howled and rocked this bridge—1.14 miles long and 400 feet above the sound. With a three-foot railing to keep pedestrians from falling off. I swallowed my terror. Gripped Peter’s hand. My plan to keep my panic in check was to rely on him. We held each other’s hands and marched forward. As we reached the point of no return, Peter clenched my hand so tightly I thought he would break my bones. Worse than the pain—he said the bridge was moving. He predicted our nosedive. Our plunge into the sound. Scared? I had thought I was terrified. He was more petrified. As tractor trailers tore past us at 70 miles per hour, Peter wanted to end his suffering by vaulting over that low railing.

Fear? Somehow we made it across, collapsed, and tried to keep our knees from banging together. Our whole stay meant a lot of bridge crossings. At our first landing in North America and we already had busted our budget. We took buses to and from the youth hostel.

And then a big bus—we decided to try out Greyhound to Seattle. At least we wouldn’t have to cross bridges over terrifying heights, such as the Columbia River, on a motorcycle. We had thought a motorcycle would be a cheap way to cross the country—with our tent and our worldly possessions strapped on.

After our first bridge crossings together, we decided to bust our budget and ride Greyhound. Instantly we learned inter-city bus terminals were in the seediest, scariest neighborhoods of cities. Boarding the bus, with its tinted windows, felt like crawling into a black tunnel. With our first breaths, the revolting toilet smells made worse by nauseating disinfectants smacked us. Climbing out in Seattle, we waded through the street people—the drunk, addicted, homeless, ladies of the night. From there, we went to the nearby Y. So scary we slept in our clothes. Money tucked in our underwear. Our backpacks served as pillows. Wished we had disinfectant to wipe out the smell of those incontinent, sick drunks who had slept there before. Within a few hours, we wanted countryside. Longed for those safe New Zealand cities.

But fortunately we found out you could buy a car cheap on the West Coast, cross the Mississippi and sell it for a lot more. After a couple of days pounding the streets, we found a bargain car. A VW square-back—a kind of station wagon with the engine in the back and real good on gas. Its virtues mounted up. The back seats went down. It could serve as a hotel room. Cheaper, cleaner and safer than those hostels where we had dossed in before.

One fear which had sorta been faced—heights. We conquered those bridges hundreds of feet above rivers and seas. With Greyhound buses.

Erna Morgan McReynolds, raised in Gilbertsville, is retired managing director/financial adviser at Morgan Stanley’s Oneonta office, and an inductee in the “Barron’s” magazine National Adviser Hall of Fame. She and her husband, author Tom Morgan, live in Franklin.