Fun and Wild III

The next morning I finally, after all these years, went on a Canopy Zip Line. This ride was apparently invented during the logging days, when loggers would be way up to hell and gone high on a mountain cutting down old-growth giants. At the end of the day they just didn’t feel like struggling down the steep slopes, so they devised these wires, strung from tree to tree, and rode down on a pulley attached to a harness. Nowadays, this is huge business for the tourist industry. I’m guessing property owners can make orders of magnitude more money by zooming tourists over the trees than they do cutting the trees down. So I joined the industry and ante’d up my $45 (all for science you understand).

Once again (like the water slides), a big hunk of the adrenaline is knowing that you aren’t in well protected Disneyland again. You immediately see this is not disneyland any more by the happy and VERY dirty faces of the previous group.



The main assistant (There were three assistants and a photographer) gives us instructions, that were more him making jokes than useful instructions. Up we walk up on a man-made platform at the top of a ridge. Very high. Lots of Texans in the group. Everyone, including me, gasping a little. The guide making more jokes, this time very much more appreciated.

So who goes first? Of course, a guy that had done it before. So very cool to watch him float off the platform down the forest to the next platform. When my turn came, it was really exhilarating. Wind on your face, green everywhere. Just like your best flying dream. I used to do this as a kid from the highest avocado tree in our neighbor’s back yard, but this ride was orders of magnitude higher and faster. We zipped our way down a very high mountain. Here’s a movie of the middle. You can see one guy zipping way up high from right to left, followed by his fiancé coming right into the platform we are sitting on.



This was all fun and games, but everyone knows it isn’t safe. I mean the guides are really experienced. You are never untethered, so you can’t really fall to your death. But one of the women in the group somehow let go of her right hand, which is bad for two reasons. One is that letting go means your head goes down till you grab onto something else. Two is that your right hand is your braking hand. So suddenly we see something not right as Pam zooms toward us waiting at the platform. She has her head down by her knees, and she’s just going REALLY fast. I immediately looked at the guide, and watched him prepare for a “catch”. He braced himself for the collision, and caught her body with his right arm and shoulder and cradled her head with his left hand. Her out of control momentum drove them both back a meter or so. He crashed into the tree trunk (on which the platform was built) a little, but she was unharmed. Scared shitless, but unharmed.

I have never heard of these zip rides in California, I’m guessing because they just aren’t safe enough for our litigious society. But here they are everywhere. Again, the Costa Ricans have imposed layers of security on an otherwise really dangerous ride. But my point is the same. In Costa Rica they work hard to create an illusion of safety, whereas in California they work hard to create the illusion of danger.

Here I am thoroughly enjoying everything, illusions and all.