wiffA very exhilarating method of transportation! I think every single human being has fantasized about making a zipline from their own home to another location of their choosing. Take a clothes hanger from the closet, a piece of string, and you have the ability to zip from one place to another. I never knew how ziplines actually functioned until I was 12 years old. We went on a vacation south and decided to spend a day ziplining. This was sadly at the time that my father had torn his ACL, so he was only able to watch from the ground as we zipped from one tree to another. The ziplining experience culminated in one final zip: we would climb about 200 feet high to the top of a pole, and then zipline to the bottom. I must introduce an important aspect of ziplining. Ziplining takes place above the ground, usually at heights that could seriously injure or kill a human being. Because of this, protective gear and carabiners are used to keep zipliners from falling. While this equipment ultimately saves lives, they reduce the mobility of a zipliner, making it harder to navigate around. This often manifests in moving a few feet, unclipping one of your carabiners, attaching it to the next segment, then unclipping your second carabiner, then attaching it to the next section as well. This means there is no gap where someone could fall and not be saved by the carabiner. As I am climbing up this 200 foot pole, I suddenly jerk to a stop. The way my carabiners are arranged makes it so that I cannot move any further. This is because I have put my carabiner in a way that made it so that it is easy to attach with another carabiner attached to another segment, but is difficult to remove if you're also attached somewhere else. Furthermore, my brother is behind me, trying to climb up the pole so he can enjoy the ride down. He pesters me and I suddenly become panicked. I finally remove my bottom carabiner, yet my brother is still pestering me. He is complaining that I have been too slow. Because of this, I decide to unclip both carabiners, meaning I have no safety net if I were to fall. I am also about half way up. I clear a few more feet of ladder to get some distance between me and my brother before finally clipping myself back to the pole. The ride down was alright, albeit a bit too slow. When I get down my father is terrified. He has witnessed the whole thing. My mother, who was above me on the ladder, thankfully did not witness me endanger myself to appease my brother. I don't know why they would worry though. By the inverse square law, the smaller an organism is, the less impact they experience from a fall. I could have survived the fall. I have another story about ziplining. I went to another country with my aunt, uncle, brother, and cousin. We decided to go ziplining in a forest, and compared to last time, the location was more remote. We had to take a bus to the location. The ziplining went pretty fine, and after we got to relax in a small pond. I decide that I have to go to the bathroom. Usually, for people who see natural bodies of water, they decide to urinate in that body as to not waste time, as the water is already pretty dirty. However, I get out of the pond and wander the forest in search of a bathroom.This continues for about an hour. I cannot find a bathroom. After about 90 minutes of searching, I come across another person. She is also part of the ziplining group. I ask her where the bathroom is, and she tells me to follow her. She does not lead me to the bathroom. I enter a clearing and there is the bus, as well as my aunt and uncle, who are very mad at me. They are yelling and telling me not to wander off on my own. I still get comments about this incident to this day. Overall, I think ziplining is pretty fun, although I don't think I would ever do it again. I don't want to be yelled at.
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