Daredevil Granny Takes Grand Canyon
Daredevil grandmother Susie Mann has been inspiring "The Early Show" since last September. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, 79-year-old Mann refused chemotherapy, and instead chose to live out a real life "bucket list" of adventures, from hang gliding to sky diving to swimming with the dolphins. Now, she's riding all-terrain vehicles off road in the Wild West.
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Mann told "Early Show" co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez, "Here I am 'dying.' Well, you know, we all are from the minute we're born!"
Diagnosed with stage four intestinal cancer, Mann was given six to nine months to live -- six months ago.
Instead of chemotherapy, she chose off-roading through the Sedona desert on the back of an all-terrain vehicle, her arms wrapped around her grandson Paul.
Mann's grandson said he brags about his grandmother to all of his friends in college.
Why? Because Mann is living her mantra: "There is no tomorrow. There's only now."
Through all of her "bucket list" adventures -- from swimming with dolphins to skydiving -- Mann wants her last days to be an adventure with her family beside her. This time, they roared through the desert together, her daughter, Louise Weadock, leading the charge.
On the trail, Weadock said, "There's nothing like getting pedal to metal with the ground, is there, Ma? I mean, you're just feeling every bump."
Next, Mann traveled to the Grand Canyon. Though she wanted to take a donkey down through the canyon, it was deemed too a great a risk. However, undaunted, Mann took to the skies, flying over the canyon in a helicopter, her family at her side.
Mann said of the flight, "You can see it in a picture or in a movie, but I think seeing it with your own eye in a helicopter, is indescribable. The grandness, the hugeness of it all. The enormity."
Mann says she doesn't feel sad.
"It's a fact," she said.
Weadock says during the flight in the canyon they saw a rock that was two billion years old.
"You just feel it," she said. "You feel the movement of nature, and what a nanosecond we live. It's a beautiful place. God's got a beautiful place for her."
Weadock said her mother has taught her family that you owe it to life to live.
"When you hit it you hit it hard," Weadock said. "When you live it, you live it voraciously, and when you leave it, you let the world know you're gone."
Mann says she wishes everybody could be as lucky and as fortunate as she is.
What's next on her bucket list?
Rodriguez said she's going dog sledding, adding, "She'll do it, too."