October 22, 2010
This adventure rocked! I went with a group (about 35 or so) to Richland Creek Zip Lining for a night of hanging from wire under the full moon. http://www.richlandcreekzipline.com/ We arrived to a campfire, which was much appreciated since it was a tad bit cold out. We were harnessed and then given glow necklaces, so we could be spotted in the woods. Some other folks brought glow bracelets and shared them. We received instructions and all of the hand (glow stick) signals. Up and down meant break. A circle meant keeping coming. A figure 8 meant ridiculous - translation: you a going so stupidly slow that we are laughing at you.
Then it was time to fly. They clip in your harness and you are off. Down the cable you go and you have the option of stopping yourself with you brake (gloved hand) or by using a tree. Now if you used too much brake, you could potentially not make it to the platform. At which point, the guides would laugh at you, take you picture, and you would have the pull yourself to the platform. If you were unable to do this, the guide would have to come and get you. This did happen once. Poor "A" got stuck and the guide had to go get here. And one person did use the tree for stopping. I was glad that none of that happened to me.
Now, what did happen to me is that I was laughed at a lot. And to be fair, I was laughing at myself. As those of you who know me realize, I'm short. Not quite midget short, by under 5'. The lines that you are strapped into are sometimes high. In order to be strapped onto the line, I would have to stand on my tip toes, while the guide pulled down on the cable. I don't know why this helped, but standing on one foot tiptoe seemed to give me some more height. Not only are the zip lies high, but sometime we walked across bridges to get to different platforms and you had to clip on to a cable above your head. Well, by the time we got to these bridges, the guides were quite amused by my shortness. The cables were high and I was struggling to keep my feet on the bridge. The guides decided to help me out on several occasions by pulling down on the cable, thus make the cable higher, and leaving me dangling by my harness. It was quite amusing!
This was an awesome adventure! You gotta try this!
Sorry, no pictures. It was dark and what if I would have hit a tree with my camera. Anywho, you just need to experience this one for yourself.
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