Hanging by a wire
Another early morning wakeup call, this time we needed to be in town to depart at 9am (so it was really a bit of a sleep in) for our first adrenalin rush, the ‘Fly by Wire’. Basically you lie down in a one person rocket attached to a wire strung up over a canyon, get winched up the side of the canyon and once you reach the top you release the rocket at the same time as hitting the accelerator and zoom around the canyon at rocket speed. Woo Hoo! If you control it really well (like I did) you can fly really high and fast and at the point you turn to come back towards the ground you feel like you are floating, I loved it!!! :D
I was a bit nervous about doing this one, especially after having shaky knees on the gondola last night (I know, I don’t believe it either) and squealing as the gondola started its decent.
Paul, the operator who drove us the 25 minutes to the site, dispersed all of my fears. He gave us the full run down and told us nobody had died doing it... yet. Along with Lauren and me, two others were going to take the ride, Magnus from Sweden and Jimmy from Sydney. Magnus and Jimmy were on the same Contiki tour and were even more scared of doing the Fly by Wire than either of us girls.
Once at the site, I was filling in the waiver form when the operators asked who wanted to go first, the others had filled out the forms on the bus and all took off out of the room, leaving me there alone, Elvis (the second operator) said, “It looks like it’s you Elke”.
So, I was suited up in a really attractive black jump suit and given my helmet. Elvis ran through the instructions while I got strapped into the rocket. Ok, got it, I’m ready.
What a buzz! I had a fantastic time. We were all doing the five-minute ride and you have the option of hitting a button on the consol, which gives you a further minute. Heck yeah! I felt like I was just getting the hang of it when the buzzer went off to alert me the engine was about to cut out and if I wanted my extra minute I had to press the button now. You only pay an extra $15 for the minute, so I was willing. I was the only one who hit the button though. Who woulda thought I was such an adrenalin junkie.
Lauren went second and she kept taking her hand off the accelerator and slowing down, she got the hang of it though and had a fantastic ride.
While Lauren was flying around the canyon, Jimmy and Magnus had millions of questions for me. They were both quite scared of doing it. I told them they had nothing to be scared of; it’s just a lot of fun. The only strange part of the ride was when I was being winched up the side of the canyon backwards with my feet in the air above my head, but you don’t stay in that position for very long. What goes up must come down... and really fast. Yeehaa!
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