We need to get one person across to get to the checkpoint, I was thinking come on let me stretch as far as possible to do it. As I stretch I feel a pain in my quads. Oh no, I can’t go further! It is intense and I feel responsible for getting the person across. Then I slipped… I was rushing to get my balance back just hold on to the tree I thought I saw the girl who was trying to cross, her jaw dropped, and intern I was a lot more nervous… I finally caught my balance. I hear the girl say “you did the hard part, NOW GET ME ACROSS!” I was even more nervous. That was part of my experience at the Bedford Ropes Course. If you want to hear even more of the exhilarating things I did at the course continue reading.

One challenge I really enjoyed was the rope swing. It was a challenge in which you needed to cross this gap and get to the other side without touching the gap. Firstly, it  was super fun to just swing on the rope and hopefully make it. The only problem was that when we tried a different strategy then the one we already had I tried. Sadly it was not well thought out. and then I started dangling in the air, after that I shortly then hit my head. Our first idea was to get the rope by jumping on to it (I made that one) and by jumping we would get enough momentum to get the rope. Our second plan, which was the one I hit my head with, was to put our feet into this sort of knot that was on the rope and then to swing. That would’ve probably not work (as we found out shortly after) but I decided to be a team player and execute the plan. My moment had come, I put my foot in the knot, took my steps back and…I was off! I was going so fast, at least it felt fast that when I made it to the other side I did not have enough time to get my foot out. This is where this amazing story of mine of me being the helper in the team, and getting to the other side would come to a brief and quick end. As soon as I missed the platform I knew it was game over, I got back to the other side and… my foot came out! But when it came out my hands gave out and there I was, gracefully falling on a path to doom! As I was maybe half a second into my fall I knew I had no time to land on my hands at least and then well the fall ended and there I was on the ground. But the biggest surprise of all was that I was laughing? Yup that was a cool story, but after that idea we kept on getting people to the other side, including me and then we almost finished. We missed two people or so but we still got the record! Another thing I liked was the Lava Island. I liked it because we were able to work together. Our first Idea was to hold the board up with our hands but, since we needed to get across three platforms without touching the ground we were definitely not able to hold up people with just our hands. Our second Idea was to put the beam on the ground, make people stand on it and then getting one person across at a time. That worked very well and since one person is not heavier then three it was very easy to get across. Even though we did the challenge we thought it was pretty easy, so we decided to give ourselves a little bit more of a challenge. So I had to say “let’s do it without jumping!” This was met with a bunch of groans, but after a bit we were all up for the challenge! You might be thinking there is no other way to cross but since I thought it was not too big of a gap we all went for it. In the end we all got across except for two people, but it was a super fun little challenge that I will remember when I think about the Bedford ropes trip. I didn’t really enjoy the cable walk challenge but it was not too bad. Firstly, when we did the challenge a person in my group was saying how he needed to cross a tightrope in the first challenge and how he crawled on his belly to get to the end. While that worked there, long story short it went wrong, horribly wrong. Of course I still had to be the team person and I went to try the idea. Okay I thought to myself, I can do this. As soon as I was on the tightrope it went south, I was holding on upside down even my group thought my try was over. I even hear somebody say “Andrew get to the back of the line!” I was thinking that okay, this will go wrong, time to not hurt myself. As soon as I thought that the first pain I felt. It was a small pain on my belly from the entire tightrope scratching on it. It was bad, but if you know me you know that I never give up. At this moment though that did not happen. I was twisting and turning and then… I fell. It was not too bad since I was low on the ground but I hit my head once again.

One thing I learned about myself is that I like to say ideas and execute them. Sadly, I learned this the hard way. One thing that really proved that was the rope swing. Firstly, when we did the ropes I was thinking okay let me just speak up I have a good idea on how to do this, but when I said my idea out loud I thought that oh I should also do my idea. Well I wanted to but I was never able to. The reason I couldn’t is because one of my teammates thought he was “better than everyone” and thought he was the key to winning everything. That leads me to what I learned about my classmates. What I earned was that a lot of my classmates like to take charge, sort of like me. But the only difference is that for them they feel it is a necessity they did it. That is one thing I thought was nice of them but it got annoying. For example, when we were doing the Lava Island challenge my teammate was so fond of him being the person to execute the plane he even got annoying. He was saying stuff like, “oh I should go last because I am the best jumper in this group.” Even though there was a girl who was a lot better than him. That was the stuff I learned about me and my classmates.

The Bedford Ropes Course was a fun way to include teamwork, exercise, solutions quickly in any circumstance in one huge bundle! During my time there I thought if I was a teacher I would want to take my students here to work towards cooperation. But what I want to ask you is would you also take people here? Would you do anything different (safety, groups, activities)?       

Lava Island                                                                            Cable walk                                                         Indiana Jones Challenge