Finding your zip-a-dee-doo-dah

BE it resolved that some of us are not Action People.

We do not jog. We do not windsurf. The fact that we had children did not suddenly foster in us a compulsion to form family soccer teams, or scale mountains with our offspring slung on our backs like baboons.

We don’t begrudge the Action People who see every gathering of more than two people as a competitive sport moment – we just find them incomprehensible.

Some of us Inaction Types may be lazy; some of us may be preoccupied with armchair sports or other observational opportunities. I’m just clumsy. My hand and my eye aren’t just uncoordinated, they’re not on speaking terms. Not only that, but I’m a poor sportsman. I get no thrill from having played the game; nor do I ever win it.

For us true “sedentarists” (yes, I made the term up), it doesn’t stop there. Inadvertently, we also tend to throw a wrench into the wiring of real athletes. Balls mysteriously veer from their natural course to connect with our heads (although this may be intentional). I was once sitting in the passenger seat of a car that was driving on a highway past a baseball diamond. No word of a lie, an airborne softball sailed to the edge of the grass, where it bounced once, then flew inside the passenger compartment of my moving car and hit me.  I wasn’t even surprised.

If people are going to laugh at sedentarists, we’d rather decide why. So, at any event where activity might conceivably break out and humiliate us, we arm ourselves with something to read. We politely put up with the thunk and whir of others’ sweaty and ill-advised machinations and proffer a mild “good for you” whenever whoever it is announces that they’ve won whatever it was.

Thankfully, sedentarists’ famous ineptitude means that eventually, nobody who knows us dares ask us to participate. The spry and the restless don’t need our sarcastic responses to their paddleball invites, or the death stares they’ll encounter the instant they propose mini-golf.  Risk of any kind, including scrupulously maintained roller coasters, also tends to be right out for us. That is why my family was shocked when I suddenly decided to brave the Grouse zipline last weekend.

This would never have happened if my daughter Petunia hadn’t already been and loved it. Nor would it have occurred if our friend Bruno, the gymnastics coach, hadn’t been visiting. Bruno’s obsession is exercise of all kinds; he mainly works to fund his hiking trips all over the world. (It’s not as bad as it sounds -- he also reads.) Bruno’s a self-disciplined fellow who’s not a fan of overeating or overdrinking, both of which dominated the Thanksgiving weekend. So I felt I had to redeem myself somewhat by chirpily encouraging him to zip over hill and dale at Grouse. The only way to do that was for me to “go with.”

I didn’t think about what this excursion would entail. I expected it to be a short, mild float over a bunch of trees, a non-virtual version of the Disneyland ride Soaring Over California. 

Petunia announced that she’d be coming with us.  She promptly began assuring me that I didn’t need to be nervous. “Trust. Trust,” she kept saying, like a mantra. Uh-oh. Then I saw the helmet, the giant diaper-like seat I had to step into, and the harness I would have to tote between the four segments of the zipline. What on earth did I think I was doing?

Our two guides, luckily, were charming young men who were so relaxed and funny that they put even an awkward lummox like me at ease. Bruno, of course, was unfazed. He had already zipped almost everywhere on earth that is zippable. Even if he had fallen out of the diaper, he could have clambered one-handed back up any crevasse. After our ride he told me he had also watched the guides as they strapped us in and had noticed there were several different safety measures in place, so the contraption was as secure as anything that whips you high above thousands of pointy trees on a cable could be.

The first zipline was a mild intro, short and sweet. Once you settle into the diaper – which resembles those Jolly Jumpers from which babies dangle – you’re fine. The guides’ reminders to assume the landing position (knees up, arms locked on the bar, chin tucked) while approaching the end of each track gave me pause, but landing was only a tad brisk once, on the second leg of the zip. Number three zipline whisked us over placid Blue Grouse Lake, higher up the mountain. By this time, I couldn’t have been more confident in the abilities of our guides.

The last and longest track stretched from the peak of Grouse to the peak of Dam Mountain, and was, unfortunately, accessible only by mounting an elongated set of wooden stairs much like a gallows. Petunia, who is fearless, kept glancing at me with an encouraging expression on her face, waiting for me to start my standard chickening out.

At the top of the steps, I did briefly speculate on how, exactly, I would die if I tumbled down from that height, in my giant Depends, at a speed that can reach 80 km per hour. Would I succumb to hypothermia after nobody bothered to search for my mangled chassis, or fatally bash into an old growth tree, of which there seemed to be way too many?

Or would the end come courtesy of bears? In October, I felt, they must lie in wait below the zipline, hoping for Starbucks-flavoured humans to drop from the heavens before hibernation begins. I pictured a bear rubbing its paws together, thinking, “I sort-of feel like a vulture, but what the hell.”

No worries. We plunged off the gallows and glided into space, gazing over the dense, dark forest to pewter-skinned Howe Sound, the bristled cap of Stanley Park and the oyster-grey horizon. We might have seen infinity if the day hadn’t been so cloudy. Even worldly Bruno was impressed.

Then it was over. And what was this new feeling? Triumph.

It’s not that the zipline had taken agility or aptitude on my part. All it required was the teeniest bit of chutzpah, and Petunia was actually proud of me.

“Could it be possible that sitting around doing nothing is over-rated?” I wondered. Then, “Perish the thought.”