Best Day Ever

3/21/2012 - Suva, Fiji

Today was the adventurous day so far. In the morning, we met with someone charismatic, intrepid, and incredibly controversial. I can't say who it was, and we had to meet in an undisclosed location where all the curtains were drawn shut. This meeting is a story I think I'll be telling my grandchildren.

The afternoon was a dream come true for me. In my dream, I'm in the rain forest looking up at the canopy. The ground is warm, and the air is so humid it seems to be breathing me in instead of the other way around. I can hear birds who tweet, chirp, whistle, and caw. Giant drops of rain mute the sounds as they julienne the thick air. I got to experience it all and more zip lining. The harness goes around the hips, and attaches 2 straps to pull tight around each leg. Two more straps are attached to the front of the harness by a steel O-Hook, and there's a carabineer at the end of each, one of which is attached to a pulley, which is attached to yet another carabineer, which links a final pulley up to the configuration.

Then it all happens in under 5 seconds.
Clip, Clink-yank, clip: the first pulley is hooked onto a zip line and I'm jerked upwards by the straps around my thighs as I'm clipped in.
WHOOP!: the guide who is clipping me in signals the one across the aerial abyss that a zipliner is ready to go.
Clip, rattle, click, clip: the second pulley is hooked onto a safety line 6 inches above the zip line, and the lower pulley is clipped into it.
jfknBwEoivnVVkjxKsjek: the sound of fear, doubt, anxiety, and disorientation jumbles the sounds of everything else together
Thump. Thump. Thump.: a heart-pounding 5 seconds passes after I put all my weight into the harness, with nothing between me and the nothingness in front of me except the guide's hand in front of the pulley.
go!: the muted signal from across the abyss that the path is clear.

A nod from the guide next to me, a second to think, and then I soar across the jungle, from one tree to the next, where I slow down and land on a platform.

Then, in under 5 seconds…
Clip, rattle, click, clip: I'm unhooked from the lines.
GO!: the signal, much louder this time, in response to a whoop inaudible to me over the adrenaline rush
Clip: one carabineer is clipped into a rope tied around the tree so that I won't fall off the 2 foot platform encircling it.
Clip, clip, rattle: the pulleys and carabineers are hooked back onto my harness.

I flew from treetop to treetop in this manner, 16 times (we did a run of 8 zip lines twice). Sometimes all of us would be hooked onto the next tree, so we'd walk around it to the next line in a tight circle, like a human may-pole. The most adventurous of us tried to one-up each other continually, flipping over, running and jumping off, letting our whole bodies go limp, facing backwards, lying sideways, falling off the platform and letting the line take us to the next tree.

I was most proud of Yashreeka, who, shaking and teary before the first line, was going as fast as she could by the last line. Rob was impressive, too. His fear of heights kept him from doing the skyline luge (which is *considerably* safer than zip lining, but then again, taking a gondola up the side of a mountain makes the distance to the ground obvious, whereas gradually hiking through the jungle to the canopy disguises your altitude). But after the last line, Yashreeka and Rob were stoked about the suggestion to do a second run.

Mirae and Josh were the MVPs. On the second line, before we knew it was possible to do anything but go straight while holding on for our lives, Mirae lets go, flips upside down, faces us like a starfish, causing us all to scream. Grinning, Mirae waved and flipped back up. She and Josh were always the first to do something crazy, leading the rest of us waiting in a tree screaming at each other in adrenaline-infused joy and amazement.

Fearing more insipid hotel food, I went out with the group to eat in Suva. Colby and I shared a dish called "Stir-Fry Vegetables in Dalo Bowl." A dalo bowl is a bowl made of taro, and it was incredible. We were supposed to meet a group of Fijian law students for drinks, but I think the adrenaline completely drained me, so Rebecca and I came back to the hotel for some restorative sleep.