Zippity-Do-Dah!

25 Jun 2011--We went to the Texas Hill Country yesterday, to a town called Wimberley, to go "ziplining" and had an absolute blast!!!



From left to right in this picture is Hallie, Lynn, Breena, Cathy, me, and Barb. Lynn was the only one who had any experience with this...Breena said she had done a short version in a basketball gym (I think) so I don't think that counts (haha). Lynn actually used to teach this for 3 years when she was in the Air Force out at Camp Bullis here in San Antonio, so she was more than familiar with how this worked.



Here we all are after getting suited up. I think we all look like telephone lineman more than anything else! Can't you see us climbing a pole!




I have no idea what Hallie and I are laughing at in this picture, so I am hoping Hallie looks at it and reminds me...it looks like I am totally cracking up, but for the life of me I can't remember what was so funny!



Here we were told to do the "5 finger test"...so they could check when we got back to make sure all our fingers were all still there. When you "brake" to stop yourself at the end of each zipline, you use your gloved right hand behind your head on the line, pushing down to slow your momentum. If you make a mistake and put your hand in front on the line, you could very well lose all your fingers!



Fortunately, they made us all line up at a test ramp to show us how the equipment worked before they took us up the side of the mountain. Notice I am only 2-3 feet off the ground when "flying". Not being very tall I had to go on my tippy toes to hook on the line.



They packed us into a couple trucks to take us up the mountain. The ride was pretty rough.



We had to climb a bit of the mountain even after the ride, and then again between a couple of the lines.



Here we were all lining up to go on our first run. They name all the lines, so this was called the "Bunny Run", at a length of 250 feet! I don't remember why I uploaded this pic of Lynn and Breena, but as long as I did I put it here. haha



I put these pics here so that you could click on them and actually see how high up we were flying. You can see the lines over the trees when you blow them up. The lines were anywhere from 250 ft up to 900 ft long, and as high as 100 ft in the air. They also said we would reach speeds up to 30 MPH...it was GREAT!!!



So here is Hallie. You can see in the 3rd pic that she is "braking" with her right hand behind her head on the line.





This tree is called a "Texas Madrone", and as small as it is, it is 200-300 yrs old. It is called the "shedding tree", because it actually sheds its bark every year. We thought it looked more like it had been in a fire and was partially dead, but that is not the case.



Here is Barb. Unfortunately, Barb took most of the videos, so she is the only one we didn't get a video of. But blow up the 1st and 3rd pics...they will give you a good idea of how far up we are.




After the 1st couple lines, once I figured out the braking system and grew confident (haha), I actually started doing some tricks (hahaha). Blow up the 1st and 5th pics to see me twisting side-to-side, and in the 3rd pic I am leaning back and balling up my legs...they said to do this to increase our speed. Seeing as this blog belongs to Cathy and I, we got 2 videos!!!





Breena came into some of the stops at screeching speed! This is why I didn't take her "gym experience" into account! haha





And now the "old pro" Lynn. Needless to say, she was confident from the start. Can you believe that Lynn has actually rappelled out of a helicopter before?! How cool is that!!!???





And for the finale, here is Cathy. Nonplussed, as always!