GoApe!

So the day after wearing out my brain at the Camera Obscura and the World of Illusions, I decided to wear out my body at GoApe! According to the brochure, GoApe! is a "high-wire forest adventure."

Above: GoPlatforms!

It was perfect for me, since it crossed off not one, but two things off my bucket list. First it had zip-lines, which I've always wanted to ride on. Second, it was a forested skill-based challenge, which qualified as an obstacle course. Enough about me though, time for the pictures.

Above: Climb up, it's time for an adventure!

GoApe is made of five separate courses. Each course becomes steadily harder (and higher). They all begin with a ladder from the ground to the tree platforms. Between tree platforms were unique challenging bridges which needed to be walked, skipped, jumped, or crawled across. Each course then ended with a zip-line to the next course.

Above: No hands!

We took turns on who went first. The first person got to experience the challenge first, but didn't get any good pictures of themselves taken. The second person position was unique since the first and last person took pictures, like below.

Above: Jordan's rope-walking from multiple angles.

There was one part where there was a wooden tube we had to go through. It was by far the worst challenge. First off, no sense of height or thrill. Second, it was a killer on the knees. I went into that tube feeling young and spry and still came out bruised and with hurt knees.

Above: Wooden Tube-o-Pain.

Sara's smile is hiding the incredible pain of being in the tube.

Some of the challenges were easier to go quickly across, kinda like riding a bike. He who hesitates is quickly cognizant of how high off the ground he is. I'm pretty sure that's how the saying goes.

Above: Run, that tree's about to explode!

Other obstacles had to be taken slowly. These are the ones where I usually struggled with the most.

Above: My feet barely fit in those tiny rings.

Sara and Jordan did the best with crossings. I did the best with things that involved running and jumping.

Above: Jordan's feet fit in just fine.

But the whole time we had a great time going from challenge to challenge. Also, there were many series of ladders. Here you see a ladder going from one platform to a higher one.

Above: Tadaa!

So apparently I can be a little theatrical while I was going from challenge to challenge. So much so that Sara and some Indian boy said I actually shook the foundations of some of the trees on the Tarzan challenge below.

Above: Tree-Shaker

Unlike the others, I did a running jump of the platform, instead of gently sitting and sliding off the edge. When the Tarzan rope finally went taut I shook the tree so much Sara and some Indian boy were thrown off-balance. Apparently no one else shook the trees. I think they just didn't weigh enough people like I do. I weigh lots of people.

Above: A Green-Coated Ape

Course 5 (the final course) was pretty high up, and it took many ladders to get to the zip-line.

Above: Climbing ladder to the final zip-line.

Fortunately I was first to go on the last zip-line, and I was excited!

Above: Later, I'm outta here.

The line was so long I spun around several times on the way down. When I finally hit the net at the end I was backwards, so I dragged my butt for quite a few feet. No rug burn though, thanks to my super-jacket. Eventually Jordan and Sara made it down too, and we posed in front of the statue before leaving.

Above: Bryan (literally) Trying to Go Ape.

PieMaker's Part 2

Afterwards we were starving, so Sara and I decided to introduce Jordan to PieMaker's. After we got our food, the business owner came in and noticed us. He then offered us free food again! This time he made Scottish pancakes, which are more like french crepes than American Pancakes. Imagine a thick crepe without the little internal bubbles of an American pancake. It was covered in some nice brown sugar though, so that was pretty sweet. I wouldn't order it, but it tasted pretty good for free food.

Mathematica 8

While I worked as an assistant researcher in the chemical engineering department I convinced the University of Texas to give me free access to Mathematica as an employee. Funnily enough, the Mathematica people still send Mathematica seminars to "Professor Cropper" since I applied as a faculty (whoops). Unfortunately my license expired December 14th. Fortunately though I've got Mathematica 8 again, so now it's time for more plotting fun.

Mathematica is a wonderful math program that allows me to do stuff like this:

Above: A little (2x^2+y^2+z^2-1)^3-x^2*z^3/10-y^2*z^3=0 for my little Caiqian

I'm in a pretty good mood now. Except for one thing...

Blogger's Being a Hassle

So apparently I loaded up too many images to blogger and used up all my storage space. Fortunately Dad has chipped in $5/year to give me another 20 gig of uploading. One weird side effect though is that blogger only lets me upload pictures one at a time. I used to be able to upload any amount I wanted. By reverting to the old blogger system I managed to get google to upload five pictures at a time, which is significantly better. So you might notice that the number of pictures per post will be less than usual. We'll see how this goes.