Forest Adventure

Well, Sarah went with some ninth floor friends and other members of the North Island Officer Spouses Club to a park called Forest Adventure. It is actually a series of about 40 ziplines and rope obstacles. The funniest part of the whole day was when the person giving us our little brief told us, "You'll never see a park like this in the United States. There would be safety nets everywhere and a lawyer on every corner. You are responsible for your own safety. I will show you once how to properly clip your safety gear onto each obstacle. After that...you're on your own. If you pay attention and clip in correctly, you're going to have blast. If you don't, then you're day is going to suck." YIKES!!! I guess since I'm writing this I clipped in correctly, and it was a blast. Boo is just tall enough to meet the height requirement, so I'm taking he and Jimmy next week. We're keeping it a secret from Paul because he KNOWS he's big enough to do anything, but the park officials don't see it that way. I'm going to try and load a video to the blog of the "Tarzan Swing." I hope you can get a sense of how how everything was from the pics and videos. I haven't got any videos of me on my camera, they're all on other cameras and they have too many bad words to post anyway. The picture of three beautiful women is Erica, me and Mary. All Ninth Floor. We were missing our other Ninth Floor compatriots Marta, Lori and Nicole. We hope all of you back in the States are great and enjoying the Fall. (Video upload didn't work. Sorry.)

World Record

We participated in the world's largest tug-of-war with the world's largest rope on Saturday, October 11. And OUR SIDE WON!!! It's an annual tradition in Okinawa, and not necessarily tied to any world record attempts. It was originally a method of solving disputes between tribes on the island. The event got larger and larger and more ceremonial and is now the biggest rope and tug-of-war every year. The rope is so big that the "coaches" stand on the rope and set the rythmn for the pullers. You can see Boo, Paul, and two of our neighbors Aiden and Piper, standing ready to pull on our section of rope. There is also a picture of the kids waiting to run out to the rope. You can get an idea of just how big the rope is. The picture of Sarah is to show how crowed it was. There is also a picture of the king being paraded down the rope. The tradition is that after the end of the contest you cut off a piece of rope. The more rope you get, the more prosperous your year will be. We got tons of rope! It was a lot of fun.