If you like heights as much as I do, this photo is already making you queasy. Suddenly, riding in a gyrocopter and getting married on a high ledge don’t look quite so bad.

Welcome to a remote Russian village where “public transportation” means stepping onto a tightrope at one end and getting off at the other. Unscheduled stops aren’t recommended.

By an odd quirk of history, nearly everybody here can walk the high wire. Learning is a family affair, and don’t expect to hear parents saying “You kids come down from that tightrope, it’s dangerous.”

In the words of one boy, My mother was a tightrope walker, and I will be too. James Kilner tells the story, and Helen Long has a video report, and here is a photo slideshow:

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A man walks the tightrope in the remote mountain village of Tsovkra-1, some 3,000 meters above sea level in Russia’s Caucasus region of Dagestan, August 20, 2007. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Well, here’s one of my recurring nightmares. Not getting married - that was great - but standing out on the ledge of a tall building. I’d rather ride in a gyrocopter, or visit that new Grand Canyon skywalk.

Anyway, these two people both work as exterior cleaners of tall buildings, so they decided to incorporate rappelling into their ceremony, because like they don’t get enough of that on regular days. You’ll note in the caption below we’re careful to mention that the groom is the one on the right, just in case you’re confused about which is which.

Anyway, I’ve avoided using most of the tempting references - marriage is a big step, they don’t rappel each other, and so on, so feel free to use those in your comments.

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Jiang Dezhang (R), 27, kisses his bride Tie Guangju, 26, while rappelling from a building during their wedding ceremony in Kunming, China, August 28, 2007. REUTERS

I’m kind of losing the urge to travel. What’s there to see? Now we have a just-opened glass-bottom walkway perched 4,000 feet over the Grand Canyon. 

Excuse me? I’m supposed to pay you so I can walk out there and look below my shoes into eternal bottomless nothingness? That’s not how it works. You offer to pay me four million dollars to walk out there, and I still say no. Not even if you throw in a t-shirt that says, “Mom and Dad visited the Skywalk and aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!”

And I really don’t want to be the poor guy who runs the snack concession at this site. “Yessir, a nice chili dog before you go for your skywalk?” Tim Gaynor reports:

Oddly Enough Blog  

Members of the media get a view from the Skywalk after dedication ceremonies at the Grand Canyon West on the Hualapai Indian Reservation in Arizona, March 20, 2007. REUTERS/Jeff Topping

They don’t call it the Road of Death for nothing. Every two weeks on average, a vehicle plunges off this Bolivian road into the ravine below, in some places nearly three miles down.

Little shrines and crosses mark almost every perilous curve, and you’ll see human traffic lights - people who stand with green and red signs to control the flow of trucks and buses. They are unpaid, but get tips from grateful drivers. 

So why am I mentioning this place the locals call the most dangerous road in the world?  Because, since kicks just keep getting harder to find, bicyclists have discovered the road and are taking it for the adrenaline rush. Amazingly, they seem to wonder who will win if a bicycle competes with a two-ton truck on the Road of Death. Anybody want a piece of that action? 

Katie Juhl reports:

Picture it. The ultimate romantic adventure. Riding the rails to the roof of the world. A $12,000 ticket on a five-star,  ultra-luxurious train from Beijing to Lhasa, climbing through some of the most breathtaking scenery on Earth.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, this so-called luxury train will feature — hold on to your fur hat — karaoke!  That’s right, if the natural beauty and spiritual serenity of Tibet start to bore you, you can pass the time singing “Country Roads” along with a machine.

It gets worse. Because of the high elevations involved, the train carriages are pressurized, like airplanes.  That means you can’t even open the doors and push the karaoke singers into the abyss.  Total bummer.  Here is the story.

A karaoke club in Shanghai, March 1, 2006. REUTERS/Nir Elias