I am flying 45 feet up in the air, shooting across a 350-foot-long cable in Texas Hill Country, 30 miles from downtown Austin. I am doing a ziplining tour with Cypress Valley Canopy Tours (http://cypressvalleycanopytours.com), the first zipline canopy tour in the U.S. There are six ziplines on this course, and so far, I’ve done four, plus walked across three sky bridges (a very scary cable bridge suspended high between two trees and which wobbles on every step). As the first three ziplines were not Adrenaline-inducing, I asked how I could go faster; the guide told me to just stick my legs out straight.
All ziplines – no matter where they are – work pretty much the same way. (http://adventuretravel.about.com/od/treetopaboveadventures/a/Zipline_Canopy.htm) You don a helmet, step into a harness, and a guide clips you to a cable stretched between two trees. Then, you step off the platform and you soar along the cable pulled by gravity to the next platform as you look out at a bird's-eye view of the forest. When you arrive, a guide unclips you, you walk across a sky bridge to the next zipline, and repeat the process.
As you slide along the cable. you pick up speed, but there are no brakes. To slow down, you yank behind you on the cable, being careful not to yank your arm out of your shoulder. But on this particular long death slide, on which I’ve put out my legs to go faster, I’ve picked up so much speed that either I’m going to smash into the tree or facture my clavicle trying to brake.
Miraculously, my arm grips the cable in the correct position and I come to a perfect stop. Feeling proud of my successful completion, I look at the Cypress-lined creek far below. The guide told me to be on the lookout for grey foxes, armadillos and porcupines, but I spot nothing like that. I see only a monkey: me.
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