Learning To Fly

I'm back! Thanks (sort of) to Felicity for filling in while I was on vacation. This year, instead of going to Spectraland, I visited another exotic location known to most people as Las Vegas, Nevada. While I was there, I finally got to do something that Joel and Felicity learned how to do a while ago: fly. Or, well, as close as I could come to it without the use of a flying wavecast.

That's me on the Slotzilla Zip Line on Fremont Street. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it's a zip line that starts eleven stories up (for the longer, more expensive option) and travels five blocks down the entire street. You can read more about it here. The short review is: it's an exhilarating experience. Despite the fact that I, like Joel, have a slight (okay, maybe more than slight) case of acrophobia, I really wanted to do it as both a bucket-list sort of thing and also so that I could experience something close to what Joel felt when he first flew back in Volume One.

We were able to sign up and get on pretty quickly, which was nice - I think that waiting in a long line would have just exacerbated any nervousness I was feeling. Another good thing is that for the most part, you're not really aware of just how high up you are. The one iffy moment came when a woman in the group before us kind of freaked out once she was suspended in air and demanded to be let off. I thought, "is that going to be me?" I mean, it's one thing to think "yeah, okay, this will be fine," but then - based on my prior experiences with roller coasters and other scary-ish carnival rides - once you're actually in it, sometimes it's more than you bargained for.

To my relief, though, once I got going, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't nearly as frightening as I had expected. I think the key was - upon advice from my friend Adam, who had done it before - to not look down the moment you leave the gate. Would I do it again? Sure. The question is, would I (as suggested by my friend Monica) now attempt the Stratosphere Tower SkyJump on the Las Vegas Strip, which starts from 855 feet up? Well, I'll have to think about that one. I know that in Joel's subsequent adventures, he's flown from much greater heights, but let's face it - he's a lot braver than I am.