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It's homecoming week at Valdosta State University. This means that frat houses are being sabatoged, random girls are littering campus with requests for homecoming queen votes (does that even make sense out of high school??), and all students get to go to Wild Adventures for free tonight. Now, for those of y'all who aren't South Georgians, Wild Adventures is our answer to Six Flags. We've got 9, count 'em...9 roller coasters, a water park, and even some concerts. And tonight it was all for free...even that bungee jumping thing that normally cost $20 a person. So after a few rounds on a few roller coasters and a sufficient amount of terror being instilled in Lizzy by Alex (she hadn't been on a roller coaster since she was 7, he had to help her remember the fun...yea, that was it.) we saw that they opened the Skyflyer! So we get in the presumably short line, pick our groups of 3 (Jeanmarie, Anna and Joe first, then Lizzy, Alex, and me), and wait for our turn. And wait...and wait...and wait. This "ride" is very slow. We keep ourselves entertained by helping Alex explain the process to Lizzy, and a soon very terrified Anna. Looking back, one of us should have shut him up in the start, because by the time we reached the front of the line, everyone was scared but me, and Alex, Lizzy and my strong protector man, was shaking so badly he couldn't take pictures. That boy really was all talk...So anyway, let me explain this skyflyer thing now, so you understand why we wainted almost 2 hours to do it....it really was worth it. What happens is 3 people are put into body harnesses and they hook arms and are hooked together on their backs to a string....a thin string. Then, the floor falls out from under them and they are pulled backwards up 180 feet, and when you hit the top, the announcer say 321 pull and the person on the right lets go of a cord and you all drop and swing back and forth starting at about 60 mph in an arch. It's a major adrenaline rush. And as we stood in line watching everyone before us swing, it was obviously too much of a rush for one poor girl, because all we saw on her down swing was the vomit spewing from her mouth...and onto her date's face. That'll kill an evening fast. In order to keep our minds off decided how much of our Palms dinner we had to worry about seeing again, Alex explained to the shaking Anna what happens when that thin string breaks...and why you will see spots of red on the ground....new word of the night? "SPLAT!" It was a horrible image to think of on the ride up...So finally it's our turn to ride, Anna, Jeanmarie, and Joe go first, and for all of the fear we gave Anna, she spent the entire ride laughing at Joe scream. (If you haven't heard this boy scream, ride with him on a roller coaster. It will make your night.) So then it's our turn. Since the big protecting boy must be in the middle, I'm elected to pull the cord and make us drop...but as we ride up to the top of the tower, I'm distracted by the massive bullseye they have painted on the ground below us. Now that's just mean. And because I'm distracted, or maybe because I'm in strong wind 180 feet up in the air, I can't hear the lady say pull, but after I hear her crackle for the second time, I decide to do my own countdown. Lizzy's yelling "pull it!", Alex's spazzing and saying no, so I say "123 GO!"...and nothing happens. But about 5 seconds later, we jerk and fly downwards with all 3 of us screaming at the top of our lungs. Once we are over the initial terror, and speed and height, we release our death grips and do the "Superman" flight with our arms out. Ought to be some interesting pictures from the ground! Overall, I think we all did well going out of our comfort zones, and even though we missed every other ride in the park, it was so worth it to do this "bungee jump" and to do it for free. (Hey, we are college students here...all our extra pennies go to Ramen...) But the next time I try something death defying, I'm getting a muzzle if we bring Alex along.
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