Last week I decided to get out my climbing gear and set up a slack line between two trees in the Quad here at UW so that one of my buddies and I could see how hard it was.
It was very VERY hard.
Over the course of probably about an hour and a half, I managed to be able to balance on it for a a total of four seconds at a time. I was pretty happy with that.
My buddy only managed a max of about half a second of contiguous balancing. That was, of course, after he decided to do something stupid. After I told him not to, and that it was ludicrously stupid, he decided to try and to a handstand on the slack line. The even sillier thing? He can’t do a handstand on solid ground. So he goes for it, does about half a cartwheel, and then buckles and falls on his side, on his arm, which knocks the wind out of him, and I can’t help but laugh.
That’s the horrible thing about those situations, you make sure they’re mostly ok, and then you laugh your head off at them. Gasping for air, between rolls of laughter, I attempted a few times to get out an “I’m sorry!” or an “Are you O.K.?” It barely worked.
By any means, he survived, and decided afterward that it was a really stupid idea, and he would definitely not attempt that again.
Ah, the fun of a slack line.