My Experience Going Ziplining!!!

I had quite an adventure going zip lining this weekend! It was really fun going with my family and friends. We went zip lining in the Santa Cruz Mountains and as I was sliding from tree to tree, I smelled the fresh redwood trees.  We all had heavy and strong harnesses on and it felt as if I gained few extra pounds. We wore special helmets and gloves. All that harness made me doubt myself, why did I say yes to zip lining? Was it a good idea to go on this zip lining tour when we had to wear so much gear? Wasn't it a bit too risky? We had our training on a short zip line... just for some practice. We practiced doing brakes in the middle of the zip line.  We learned what to do in case something happens when we were on the zip line. That made me have butterflies in my stomach. After the training, it was thrill time!!! We walked across a wooden bridge to the first zip line platform, out of five in all. It was time to see who was the chicken and who was not.  I didn't want to be the first one to go on the zip line so I stayed towards the end. But, when it was my turn, I held on tight and closed my eyes tight. I gave a big push off the platform and off I went. I could feel the cool air brush against my face. It felt as if I was on the zip line for many minutes. As I landed on the platform, I realized that it was actually pretty fun! Some zip lines were very high off the ground so we could look below us while we were on the zip line and see the small creeks running under us and we could see people hiking beneath us. The highest zip line was 150 feet above the ground...and that was really breathtaking. Finally, we got to our last platform, Platform 5. After we all finished our zip line tour and landed on the ground, it was amazing that nobody had chickened out :) ! I felt so brave and accomplished that I had gone through an entire zip lining tour. All that zip lining made me wonder, how did zip lining start? To find that out I did some research on it. 

My first zip line

   I was surprised to know that zip lining was an old invention. The thought of a human riding on a cable was brought up in the book, "The Invisible Man", by H.G Wells. In 1793, Robert Cadman died from descending from a church when his rope snapped. Soon after that, Australians used the "flying foxes" to deliver food and supplies if their crew was working on something on the other side of a river. The "flying fox" was used in children's play structures. The flying fox didn't work exactly like the zip lines today. The flying foxes had a box car attached to a cable. The person riding it would sit inside the box car and hold on to the handles. Then, the box car would descend propelled by gravity. Then came the real zip line.  These zip lines were on a higher slope than the flying foxes so they would travel at higher speeds.  But, in these the rider would be attached to the cable by wearing a harness and a helmet. It was around 1970 when zip line tours started. Now, zip lines are a fun way to show of your courage. With proper training, zip lines are easy and safe to use. Zip lining was very fun and thrilling!!!

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