I’ve been meaning to post since Sunday. Where does the time go? To be fair, after last week I needed some serious recovery time: a dear friend was in town defending his dissertation, which meant much anxiety (and attendant consumption) beforehand. After he passed (excellent on written, excellent on verbal), there was of course much rejoicing (and attendant consumption). All of which more or less means not so much with the sleeping, and come Friday (when he went home) I was fast approaching delusional for lack of rest. As a result, this past weekend was largely dead to me. I did, however, manage to rouse myself for Saturday evening’s Girls’ Night activities, organized by the inimitable Jin: trapeze lessons.
Yeah, you heard me right. Trapeze lessons. In the park, with a view of the lake, boys in sequined tights and all. Cue the circus music.
Trapezing is kind of daunting. Not because I’m afraid of heights (after you’ve done something really crazy, other things just don’t seem as tall somehow), particularly, but because they make it all look so damned easy that you just know it’s well-nigh impossible. Mostly I was worried about the fact that I felt really ill and partly out-of-body and was just going to wind up making an ass of myself. Oh well, I figured. Wouldn’t be the first time. So away we went.
The first thing they teach you is how to hang. One would think this would be the easy part, but keeping your upper body relaxed while your lower body moves – and keeping your whole body straight while you’re swinging – isn’t as easy as one might think (see?). Plus, the bar is kind of textured to give you a better grip (it looks like it’s wrapped in tape and plaster of some sort), which if you’ve got no calluses on your hands is really pretty painful. Finally, and a little mortifyingly, the practice rig they used to teach us this wasn’t really high up enough for me. When they pulled the lift pad out from under me, my toes grazed the mat. So, lesson learned. Next time, use the taller rig.
The next exercise: the knee hang. Again, it looks pretty simple when they demonstrate. You swing back and forth once or twice, then kick your legs up in front of you, lean back and tuck your knees through your arms and over the bar. Then you let go your hands and swing once from your knees, arch your back and reach (you can guess what this is preparation for), then reverse the process and you’re done. With my stomachache this presented a bit more of a challenge than the first exercise, and in fact I wasn’t quite able to manage it. “Don’t worry,” they said. “You can try it later on the Big Rig. It’s easier up there.” I looked at the Big Rig, where at that moment a 13-year-old girl was swinging 15 feet above the net. Easier up there. Uh-huh. Whatever you say. And did I mention about the bar and the hands and the ow? I’m just sayin’.
Moving on. Lesson 3: the swing and drop. One of the most important things in trapeze is timing – otherwise the catches and flying about wouldn’t be possible. So there’s a series of calls used by someone on the ground to let the people swinging know what to do. The simplest of these is the one-two, which corresponds to movements that keep your swing going. Sarah, who’s 16, gets up on the practice rig platform to demonstrate what we’re going to do. She takes hold of the bar and jumps off. One-two! Swing forward. One-two! Swing forward. And then…. wait for it… Drop! And Sarah lets go of the bar, crosses her arms over her chest, and drops ten feet onto deep padding as if into a comfortable bed. We look at each other, a little alarmed. “Don’t worry,” our instructor tells us. “You don’t have to get up on the platform. We’ll just push you.”
Actually, this turned out to be the most exhilarating moment of the whole evening for me. The instructors push you to get you going, and once you’ve got some momentum built up (i.e. a full swing), they begin the count. One-two. Swing forward. One-two. Swing forward. “OK,” I hear, “You’re going to drop on my call, this time.” Swing forward. At the apex of my swing, “DROP.” Let go, cross my arms over my chest, and land deep in the padding. (I wasn’t quite prepared for the effort of will it took to actually let go, but I did it.) Lying there, my heart racing, I think I could feel every single inch of every organ in my body cavity, and they were all throbbing. It wasn’t that far off from the bungy experience, actually, except perhaps in terms of magnitude. Anyway, when I caught my breath and stood up it was with an enormous goofy grin on my face. And then, off to the trampoline.
Anyone who’s ever been on a real live full-sized trampoline knows that it’s one of the most fun activities in the history of ever. You’re weightless; you’re walking on the moon; you’re like Tigger and Neil Armstrong all at once. Only this time you’ve got a harness, because what you get to do is backflips, and backflips are fun times ten. Also nice and relaxing after a ten-foot drop that felt like a hundred because I had no harness on and for all I knew would go flying across the grass and into the treeline and break my neck. Trampoline time was over too quickly, and off to the Big Rig I went.
While I was waiting in line for the tramp, I watched several of the girls take their first turn swinging on the Big Rig. It looks just like the real thing, though not as high – the big thick net, the teeny little platform. I watched them go and it looked like fun. And since I’m really not that concerned with heights anymore (especially when wearing a harness), I just climbed right up onto the platform and got ready to go. There’s a moment that requires some pretty serious trust in your handler, though, which can be unnerving – you’re standing on the platform, you grab the bar, and you arch your body forward in preparation to jump. All your weight is forward, and the only thing that keeps you from hurtling off the platform before you’ve got a good hold is your handler, who is braced on the back edge of the platform holding the back of your harness until you’ve got a good grip. You just have to believe that a little wisp of a girl who seems about half your size can hold your entire body weight. Which, considering the harness, I was a little more willing to do than I might otherwise have been. She counted to three and I hopped off. Did I say the drop was the most exhilarating moment? Well, then this was the one I where I felt most swelled-up with pride. Hey, look at me! I’m flying on the trapeze! And then I realized that my hands really, really hurt. I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t be able to hold on any longer when the man calling (one-two, one-two) said, “OK, when I say ‘drop’, let go.” He said, I dropped, which was a little disappointing because he lowered me slowly down to the net instead of that fabulous drop on the practice rig, but still, I’d done it.
The rest of my runs on the Big Rig were pretty uneventful – I didn’t do as well as most of the others, which I attribute partly to my stomach ache, partly to my (raw and skinned) hands, and partly to the fact that I’m kind of a retard. But Jin and Rachel and MJ all managed the coup of the evening – the catch. This is what the knee hang is preparation for – and it happens so fast when you’re watching, but the girls said it felt like they were moving in slow motion. This is (secondhand) what it’s like:
One of the men (in tights) gets up on the other bar and prepares. When he’s ready, the caller cues you to jump. At the apex of the first swing: “Legs up!” At the apex of the backswing: “Hands off!” Now you arch your back as you swing forward again and look for your partner. You reach out to him for all you’re worth. It seems like he’s a mile away. And then suddenly, he grabs your arms, firmly, above the wrist. You grab him back. “Release,” he tells you. You release your knees and now you’re swinging back with him holding you, legs dangling above the net. “Drop,” he says, and you let go, and are lowered down to the net. It’s a gorgeous thing to watch, and I’m sure it’s several orders of magnitude better than that measly little drop I keep going on about, but I’m just going to have to live vicariously through their stories and the pictures. Until next time. Next time, I’ll do it too.