Flying High in Ecuador....

Our American Airline flight touched down in Quito, Ecuador at about 7:20PM on Thursday evening, November 8. Kirk, Chris and I...with Kirk's dad, Barry, arriving later that night.

Quito's airport sits about 9,200 feet above sea level. That complicates both landings and take-0ffs. At that altitude air is thinner. Those little molecules are way far apart compared to, say, Ocean City, Maryland. So pilots have to come in "hot" (that's pilot talk for "real fast') to allow for better control of the plane. Our guy and gal did just fine.

This was our first overseas trip together--my son, Chris and I, that is. His good friend, Kirk, had business there, so he and his dad and the two of us went adventuring. On Friday afternoon, our friend and guide from Quito, Bill, said "Let's go see the butterflies!" Now I'm all about transformation (ugly caterpillar to gorgeous winged-thing), but driving 2 hours to see butterflies wasn't really on my agenda. And, I gotta tell ya, the tone of the words and the look in the eye were a wee bit suspect.

And, with good reason. Nary a butterfly to be seen when we pulled up to this place in the Ecuadorian rain forest....to find a number of slightly-built young men in T-shirts, jeans, and Wellington rain boots carrying harnesses and pulleys. These were not for teams of horses plowing the fertile soil. No, no. These were for us. Unsuspecting gringos, about to embark on a "canopy tour" of the forest on 3/4 inch steel zip lines suspended hundreds of feet over the valley floor, were at their mercy.

You get strapped into the harness--around the waist, around each thigh, cinch it all tight, clip on the cable for the pulley that slips over the high-wire, clip on the other safety cable to the high-wire--and you're ready to go. Oh, except for the helmet. Helmets for all. Except me. None big enough. Didn't need one anyway. Might get in the way of having my head examined. The last item was the thick leather gloves, Paul Bunyanesque, with extra leather strips a 1/2 deep within the palms. These are the brakes.

They explained it simply. Two or three Ecuadorian little guys--compared to gringo gordo--would go first, zinging through space on a spider web attached to another tree about 500 yards away. Landing on a wooden platform built like something from Swiss Family Robinson, they then prepared to "catch" us as we rocketed through the ozone.

The signals were simple: if, on approach, we saw them waving us toward them...we should lean forward to increase our momentum, so as to not get left dangling in space 200 ft from the landing zone. Good plan.

If, however, we saw them pushing their hands toward us, as if trying to shove a giant medicine ball our direction, we were to lean back and pull down mightily on that steel cable, which was keeping us from plummeting to certain death amidst the sharp, poisonous, and sticky things so many storeys below.

We , of course, had the very special braking gloves, which prevent your fingers from being flileted, severed, or burned through and cauterized all in 3 nano-seconds at 183 miles per hour. This, understandably, requires a unique blend of physical and emotional focus, which at that speed and height tries the souls of men, women and large gibbons.

Things went quite well, really, in the first 25 minutes and the first 2 runs (there were ten in all). Then, in a matter of seconds, we came to understand why they call it "rain forest." It certainly does. It has a wonderful cooling effect at 9,000 feet.

What it really does, however, is negate the viability of those magnificent leather "braking" gloves. It's sort of "the Great Flying Bandinis placebo effect." It's the illusion of being able to control your destiny. Riding the zip line has a unique sound to it.... a pitch somewhere between the key of C and the scream of a banshee depending on one's speed. Hurtling along with the banshees in my next run, trying to see the hand-signals through the downpour, leaning back and pulling down with everything in me...it was 11th grade physics class at Fremont High in Oakland, CA. You know, mass times velocity squared equals momentum.

By the time the young Ecuadorians are in sight, I am at warp speed and they look like they are directing the London Philharmonic in Beethoven's Fifth--in triple-time! My thought is "This can't end well." But it does. It is my version of Joe Dimaggio sliding into second base cleats high, sopping wet. They have the gringo's size twelve imprints, no doubt, several places on their torsos. And, we all live to zip another day.

Back in Quito at dinner that night, we get word that the airport will be closed for several days. In the last hour an Iberia Airbus 340 arriving from Spain came in "high and hot" in the rain and skidded off the end of the runway. Nobody hurt. Just shaken.

They had nuthin' on us.