Zipline adventures… you know for kids!
Jan/090
This isn't me (for instance this person isn't peeing themself), but this is the same line I went down.
I went ziplining yesterday. We take a sky tram up to the top of this mountain and then zipped down on wires. The first one we did was a quarter mile long and 600 METERS TO THE GROUND. The thing about ziplining is once you get to that point is there is really no turning back at that point. Once you’re up there and you do the little test wire, you’re stuck. There is no going back. So I had to do it. No wimping out, which sucked because I wanted to wimp out. I did the first one and I looked around at first, but holy crap was I high up in the air. If I fell off this thing they would probably have never found my body. That wasn’t necessarily something that could happen, but you know. I got to the end and my heart was racing pretty hardcore. So hard that I had to go last on the next run. Of course, I hit the next run and try to just keep my eyes straight as not to freak out and ended up going about 10x faster than anyone else on the entire run. I hit the end of the wire so hard I scratched my arm on the wire. Great, so not only am I having a coronary I am having it at 60mph. By the time I did the third one my heart was beating so fast that I felt like Rachel McAdams in The Notebook. The views were pretty amazing, but I’m a bit of an acrophobic so it wasn’t as amazing as it should have been. Plus, I’ve never really liked riding motorcycles after my moped accident so this wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. By the time we got to the final run of wires I was actually enjoying it. Maybe it was the extreme altitude that we started at that freaked me out or just the general shock of doing it, but by the time we got to the home stretch my heart started to slow down and I felt more comfortable. Of course, I was still going entirely too fast for my own good but what can I say? I have perfect ziplining form. One of the guys that was with us got some video of me coming down and promised to email it to me when he gets home so I will try to get that up here at some point.
When I got back to the hotel, I thought I was over my nerves. Then I drank three beers in about 15 seconds, so yeah, maybe I was a little freaked out. That’s okay though because beer is fucking awesome.
In the end, it’s just like when I was 12 years old. When I was twelve I went to Wisconsin Dells with my family and another family. The kids in the other family (who I found annoying) wanted to go bungee jumping and I said if these fucking d-bags are going (actually, I probably didn’t say that. I was 12.) so am I. So I climbed up this thing, tied on the rope and jumped. Did I want to? No. Did I do it? Yes. Was the only reason I did it to show everyone that nobody is cooler than me and nobody can do anything that I can’t do? Of course. You would think I would have changed in the past 15 years, but I say why change a winning recipe? I’ve been awesome all this time, there’s no point in changing things now.
