The other big event on Saturday was taking the kids to the local Slide the City event. Don’t know what Slide the City is? Check out their video:
It was a beautiful day for it – bright blue clear sky. We got there in time to check in and were handed our inner tubes in need of filling. I was able to get CootieBoy’s blown up but knew there was no way I could do the other two. The local high school’s dance team had an air compressor set up and were blowing up tubes, and the line wasn’t that long so we hopped on. Over 30 minutes later we still weren’t near the front of the line, so we sent off CB to go wait in the line to go on the slide. FINALLY we got our tubes blown up, and off CootieGirl and I went in search of CB.
The wild thing was that the line had been so long he was STILL 500 feet away from the entrance to the slide. So we joined him in line and began waiting. It took another 30 minutes or so to get to the front. At that point a mild panic kicked in – will I be a complete mess trying to go down this 1000 foot slide? – but CG and CB were both excited and ready to go. CB went in an outside lane, and CG and I took the middle lane. She leapt forward, and I just stood there for a second or two. I turned to the STC volunteer and said, “Are you prepared to see this hot mess?” and as he laughed I threw down the inner tube and gamely threw myself onto it.
Y’all – I landed on it perfectly. Right in the middle, with no part of my body touching the surface of the slide. For a good 200 feet I was coasting down that slide without a care in the world. It was awesome.
And then I saw that up ahead of me, CG had lost her flipflop. And I was heading right for it. It was like I hit a wall – that inner tube touched that shoe and I came to a complete halt and was thrown off my tube. I quickly stood up, thew CG’s flipflop to her, and then quickly got back on my tube so that I wouldn’t get hit from behind. The problem was that CG kept having issues that that point, and since I was trying to keep her ahead of me, it meant I had problems. We collided at least a couple more times before I finally broke free and sailed down the slide for the last 200 feet. It was so.much.fun.
Unfortunately, the kids were not so enthused. When I said, “Let’s go get back in line!” both of them immediately protested that they didn’t want to wait in line for an hour for a 3-4 minute ride down the slide. *sigh* Never mind the fact that we would frequently wait in line at Disney to ride a ride…
When they refused to change their mind, we hopped in the car, came home and went straight to the neighborhood pool where Denis joined us for a couple hours of more sunshine.
Would I do Slide the City again? You bet. But I won’t take the kids next time. And I’ll buy unlimited rides for myself, because it was really, really fun. Check out the site link above and see if it’s coming to a city near you. I highly recommend it – but with the caveat that you need to be patient with the long lines.