The air was crisp and the sky was clear, the clouds had decided to stay home that day.  I looked over to my cousin Eileen on my left. She was a deer in the headlights and her knuckles paled latched onto her zipline harness like a child to their mother on their first day of school. I was shaking like I was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts on a January morning. We looked at each other and smiled nervously.

¨ I feel like I´m going to die,” I said to her, she replied in a nervous laugh,

¨I´m going to die too. Tell everyone that I said I love them.¨ 

Before we had gotten on, we had watched a kid go down screaming like his life was going to end then and there. He had gone completely white and his face looked like The Scream. The two workers there were completely unbothered standing by the edge of a mountain, strapping people in like it was just another day in the life; which it probably was. They were both college students, the redhead strapping Eileen. The guy that strapped me in had a faint Spanish accent, he told me to lift my arms and buckled me in. I pulled the strap on my seat as tight as I possibly could: I was scared of falling out.  

After we had both tightened our straps, the two workers stepped back and spoke into the walkie-talkie. My cousin and I took this as our queue to hold our breaths. We looked at each other and then down. My heart was beating so hard that it had taken over the rest of my body and made me shake like I was out in Antarctica in the middle of winter. Suddenly, the door we were leaning against opened and we were flying in the air. 

I thought it would be so much worse. I thought the wire we were hanging from would creak from its constant usage and the air would be raspy and harsh. I thought everything was going to zoom by us and make us dizzy. Instead, everything felt like it was in slow motion. It felt like we were just going for another casual ride in a car. The air moved around us as if we were trapped in a bubble. The hook on that made sure we didn´t fall 1000 feet to our death made a zipping noise that was just white noise as we took in the view. Eileen and I could see each other clearly even if we were going as fast as we were. We could see the people below wandering around all the other rides; and as we approached the end, everything felt so normal and my heart wasn’t beating out of my chest like it was in the beginning. The workers at the bottom asked how it was and I replied with enthusiasm that it was so much better than I had expected, and that was the truth. When we hopped off, there was a smile on my face that I couldn´t wipe off as much as I tried. Eileen and I met with my brother, who had been waiting at the bottom since it was a two-person ride. We wandered off to find another ride to try out but I was really hoping we would be able to go again.