First blog post in a long time, but it’s been a busy Spring
and Summer so far. CW worked on a
project that kept him in Houston for five out of seven weeks in April and May
with SoulSwister and the minions joining him for the last week. That was a nice time for everyone to
meet up with friends and enjoy being back in the States. Afterwards, everyone was back here for a month
or so and were excited and grateful to have two sweet families from Houston come visit. We loved visiting, first with the Kochs, and then with the Jacksons. We toured castles, visited (and tasted our way) through a chocolate factory, strolled through a French Renaissance village, explored Roman ruins that date back to the time of Christ and got our second speeding ticket! Oops! Didn't even know we had earned it until July when it arrived in the mail. (Speed cameras.) Funny that our first speeding ticket was awarded during Tina and Matt's visit in the early spring. Hmmmm.....can we really afford to have more guests? You betcha!! While more blogs will be required to report on all of the fun had by everyone--CW would like to begin the adventures in the spirit of Tarzan with....ROPES.
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| Practice time--Don't Look Down! |
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| Over the river and through the woods |
One of the most enjoyable activities we’ve found over here
and have been able to share with our friends are “parcours” parks or ropes
courses. We’ve found two near the
house, one in France and one in Switzerland, but there are a number of these
close by. “Parcours” means
“course” or “route” and in the US, we call them “ropes courses” (though the
ropes are all wire rope). The idea
of these places is that you have a series of elements or events at particular
heights off the ground. The
adventurer’s objective is simply to complete all of the elements. Different courses are at different
heights—for example, the park in France has courses that are 1m, 4m, 10m, 15m,
and 20m (>60 feet!) off the ground.
The Swiss park has about 10 different courses of varying heights for
everyone from toddlers to adults. You
pay one fee and can do any of the courses all day long. The elements range from simply crossing
a suspended balance beam while holding onto a guideline with each hand (easy)
to crossing a rope where your only support are hemp ropes suspended about every
3-4 feet (harder) to hoisting yourself up into suspended barrels and crawling
through them (hard and funny if you can imagine some of the less svelte dads
who tried this—trust CW—these courses favor the thin and those with a low
center of gravity!) But everyone
agrees the most fun are the zip lines!
Just hop off your starting platform and enjoy the ride.
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| Zip Slidin' Away! |
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| She Flies Through the Air with the Greatest of Ease |
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| That's Mr. Jason in there Somewhere |
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| Dash and Miss Jennifer Taking a Break |
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| Reece Jackson, the Next Flying Walenza |
If you’re wondering about safety, they do quite a good
job. You can see that everyone wears a harness with
two carabiners as well as your zip line trolley. You are always supposed to
have two carabiners hooked on to the guide lines. In France, you have to do this manually, but at the Swiss
site, there are actually locking mechanisms that ensure that you can only ever
have one of the carabiners unlocked at a time. So it seems to be perfectly safe. Both sites had helpers who would patrol the course in case
anyone has a problem. Like All
American Boy. One element was a
standing swing trapeze. You were
supposed to step on it and push off, gliding to the next little platform. AAB didn’t really push. So he got halfway across and
stopped. CW couldn’t reach him
from the landing platform and AAB’s cub scout buddy hadn’t completed the prior
element, so he couldn’t be pulled back to the start of the trapeze to start it
again, so for about 10 minutes, AAB just hung around (literally) and giggled.
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| Bekah Jackson--No Fear! |
There is one real danger to these courses. They exercise muscles you didn’t know
you had. You might not know it at
the time (though you definitely stretch), but the next day, your arms, shoulders,
hamstrings, and calves will feel it.
Guaranteed! And I must
admit, no one looks good in the harnesses! But they’re a great way to have a family adventure filled with laughter.
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| Stuck on the Trapeeze and Not Bothered At All |
