Beech Tree News Network

I’ve been lucky enough to get to travel quite a bit throughout my life.  I have experiences I wouldn’t trade anything for.  I have logged all of the beauty of those sites in a special compartment of my brain that I hope I will always be able to tap into.  Right next to that compartment is an equally important compartment I have labeled Comic Relief. 
    I can still see my husband, Garey, and me floating down a river on the island of Kauai, exotic flowers all along the bank, sailing toward a fern grotto under a waterfall.  Our guide, a native Hawaiian, was pointing out local landmarks, when he suddenly stopped and pointed to a big mansion on an over-hanging cliff.  “That’s my house,” he said, “I won it through Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes.  You too can be a winner!”   
That guide had probably given that tour twenty-five times that week; he had to do something to break up the monotony.  I’ve found it’s in those kinds of situations that you find the funny people.  They’re either going to find some humor or end up sounding like drones spitting out the same information with little or no emotion.
Recently, my sister, Lorrie, and my nephew, Gabe, and I went zip lining over the Red River Gorge.  It’s near Natural Bridge, and if you haven’t been, I highly recommend it.  It’s a two-hour adventure with five zip lines included in the package, which means it’s a lot of bang for your buck. 
There were about twelve people in our group, as well as four guides.  The guides were very professional in the sense that they checked our equipment each and every time before they hooked us to the line.  Two guides would go across in front of our group and two guides would cross after all twelve of us had made it safely to the other side.
The guides gave very good directions, even showing us the cannon ball position we were to assume while zipping across the wire.  They cautioned us not to touch the wire, not to put our legs out when we were coming in for a landing, and not to try to stop ourselves—there is a brake in place a few feet from the platform that stops you then the guides reach out and pull you in.  They emphasized that all we had to do was enjoy the ride.  With all of that said, they were not beneath having some fun at our expense.
My sister, Lorrie, was a bit apprehensive about being that far off the ground, and those guys picked up on that immediately.  Gabe and I went ahead of Lorrie, and as she neared the brake device, the guys yelled, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”  Of course, Lorrie screamed like a little girl because she didn’t know how to stop, because she wasn’t supposed to know how to stop, and we all—including Lorrie—got a big laugh out of it.
On one of the longest lines, they told everyone to make sure we kept our knees tucked way up and not to twist or turn, because we would slow down too much to make it to the other side.  Lorrie asked what would happen if she didn’t make it to the other side.  “Do you see him?” one of the guides asked, pointing to a big buzzard circling over-head, “You’ll want to make sure you make it to the other side.”
On the last, and fastest, of the lines, one of the guides who was going over before us said, “Now remember everything we told you, and most importantly don’t do this!”  As he finished his sentence, he grabbed hold of his tether lines, turned upside down, and hooped and hollered all the way to the other side. 
They even got me on that last line.  I was strapped on, given the all clear, and had just jumped off into the clear blue yonder, when one of the guides yelled, “Wait!”  I sucked in two cubic feet of air and a few mosquitos before I realized they were messing with me. 
I love experiences like those, where the people involved are having a good time at what they’re doing.  It makes what you do memorable, and it makes life a lot more fun.