Day #10 in DC: Adventure Park, and Girly Dinner
[Photos from 08 AUGUST 2015, posted online 25 October 2015. Distance in time is sometimes good.]
Conscious of how much fun the kids had at a tree climbing park in France, I sought out a similar park in the US, where one traverses a course that has been created by stringing cables/planks/ziplines/objects between tall trees, while securely harnessed. Tickets were booked, and this time I (Hrefna) was the one to take them, and not Finnur.
I’m not quite sure if this trip goes down in the books as a good one or a bad one, but Bjarki will probably remember it forever.
Why? Well, Bjarki and I went on one last course, while Anna waited on the ground because she was tired. We chose a difficulty above the ones we’d done that day, and somewhere along the middle, we ran into our first elevating-plank walk, where Bjarki got scared, and wanted to quit. It took such a long time for help to arrive though, that he changed his mind and decided to keep going, thinking that the crazy-long zip-line two tree-hops over, was the end.
We made it to the zip-line, but since Anna was on the ground photographing, he had to traverse it all by himself. Previously, Anna had always gone first, catching Bjarki and stopping him, with me following. Since we hadn’t really trained him, he failed to stop at the tree, sliding back, at which point he panicked, let out a loud scream for help, and the assistants came running.
One of the guys managed to get through to him (my voice wasn’t cutting it) and told him to “make life harder for the guy about to come help him, by moving towards the middle of the line” which Bjarki apparently decided was a stupid idea, because he promptly started dragging himself towards the landing-tree, disembarking the line safely. He then got himself over a tree-hop, and to the assistant guy, who then helped both of us to disembark the course by one of those things that lets you slide vertically down slowly.
Anyway, the moral of the story I tried to impart was that a) he’d been very brave, overcoming his fears, and pushing his own boundaries, b) that it was ok to panic, but c) that it was fantastic of him to overcome his panic and get himself to safety. He himself seemingly came away with knowing it was ok to cry in front of strangers, so who knows?!
In the evening, I got picked up by my friend Margrét who lives in the area, and we went out to dinner. Elsa joined us later on for drinks and a fun chat. It was nice not to have to deal with a kiddie dinner and/or bedtime!!
Photos! (20 images total)
All harnessed up and ready to go!