ultimate school run:Children ride 40mph ZIP WIRE a quarter of a mile high to get to classes each day

dailymail uk ^ | 3-22-10

[rawhide]

More than 1,300ft above the roaring Rio Negro in Colombia, nine-year-old Daisy Mora prepares to throw herself over the abyss.

Attaching herself to an old and rusted pulley system she drops over the edge before plummeting at 40mph along a zip wire to the opposite bank half a mile away - a vertigo-inducing journey she has to take every day to get to school.

For the handful of families living in the area, 40 miles southeast of the capital Bogota, the 12 steel cables that connect one side of the valley to the other are their only access to the outside world.

German explorer Alexander von Humboldt was the first Westerner to observe the unusual rope system in 1804.

They were traditionally made of hemp, but steels cables were installed with the advent of logging in the surrounding rainforest. When this was made illegal settlers turned their hand to farming and cattle raising.

Farmers use them to transport goods to and from the closest town and, for children like Daisy and her five-year-old brother Jamid, it is how they get to school. Jamid is too young to safely ride the wire on his own, so she has to carry him with her in a jute bag, controlling their speed with a wooden fork.

[rawhide]

Hair-raising commute: Villagers hook themselves to steel wires and slide half a mile at 40mph to get to the nearest town

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1259691/The-children-ride-40mph-zip-wire-quarter-mile-high-to-school.html#ixzz0iubUHYPz

School run: Nine-year-old Daisy Mora makes the trip every day to get to lessons, with her five-year-old brother riding in a cloth bag

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1259691/The-children-ride-40mph-zip-wire-quarter-mile-high-to-school.html#ixzz0iubbp3oz

[rellimpank]

-—and phy ed consists of the trip home—

[F15Eagle]

How do they get back?

JATO bottles attached to their backpacks? (hehehe)

[rawhide]

Amazing little girl with her 5-yr old brother riding along in a cloth bag. Amazing!

[Ken522]

So how do they get back? Is there an even higher set of wires further up?

[DuncanWaring]

How do they get back the other way?

[philetus]

Villagers hook themselves to steel wires and slide”

Does that mean the bearings in the rollers are all frozen?

[nevergore]

So what...

When I was a kid we had to do it both ways uphill in the snow....

Kids have it so easy now....

[ClearCase_guy]

Apparently there is a pulley system that allows a return trip, though I don't quite grasp how that works.

Also:

German explorer Alexander von Humboldt was the first Westerner to observe the unusual rope system in 1804.

So, in 1804 the natives were making hemp ropes half a mile long and using these for transportation? And (I suppose) had worked out the mechanism to maintain tension and a pulley system for return trips. That surprises me.

[Free Bee]

I can see these kids when they’re grandparents:

“Back in my day, we used to zip wire to school, a quarter mile, up hill...both ways!”

[SeaHawkFan]

The zip lines go ACROSS a valley. Doesn’t take much of a drop in elevation to make it work. It probably take just a very short hike up the other side of the valley to make the return trip. A short hike up a valley is pretty easy for the return trip.

[Braak]

These kids are lucky...most of us would have to enlist somewhere to do this kind of stuff.

[FreePaul]

I like the brake that Daisy is holding in her right hand. Does she have to provide it or is it part of the transportation system?

I guess they don't have federal judges mandating busing to solve the problem. But then our federal mandates were never about facilitating travel to school.

My favorite comment in the whole article:
Jamid is too young to safely ride the wire on his own, so she has to carry him with her in a jute bag...
Daisy is mature at nine.

[Sherman Logan]

Rope bridges have a VERY long history in the Andes. The Incas used them extensively. Andean civilizations were probably the most rope/textile oriented in history. Even their system of writing was encoded in knotted ropes.

[halfright]

Looks very plain in the first picture that the man on the right is descending to this side. I imagine when they installed the cabling the engineers would have thought about that.

[SeaHawkFan]

These kids are lucky...most of us would have to enlist somewhere to do this kind of stuff.

Never understood why people complained about the Army when people actually take vacation time to go camping and hiking in the woods; and the Army gives you 30 days of vacation to go do it some more on your own time.

[BRK]

The zip lines go ACROSS a valley. Doesn’t take much of a drop in elevation to make it work. It probably take just a very short hike up the other side of the valley to make the return trip. A short hike up a valley is pretty easy for the return trip.

That explains how you could get back, but it does not solve the problem of how you get the pulleys that you ride down back to the original side. Also, the photo shows a pretty wicked looking creek down at the bottom.

I think the pulley system has to have a way to pull yourself back up the line when you go home. If I was writing the story, I would have found out and explained it as it is the most obvious question. The idiot reporters of the world have no curiosity anymore.

[F15Eagle]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

[headstamp 2]

Man O man. Get that hair caught in the pulley at 40 MPH.

[F15Eagle]

The caption says:

Hair-raising commute: Villagers hook themselves to steel wires and slide half a mile at 40mph to get to the nearest town

They’re going down to the town. Both of them.

But yeah, there’s possibly a return system likewise.

JATO bottles would be more fun, LOL

http://pixelplanes.com/HAFB/linked/c-130%20jato%20rockets%20_b.jpg

[No Truce With Kings]

“but it does not solve the problem of how you get the pulleys that you ride down back to the original side.”

Disconnect the pulley from the eastbound wire, take it with you to the wesbound wire, connect it to that. Downhill all the way.

[calex59]

yes. This was on Television about a year or so ago. There are wires making the return trip as well.

[SeaHawkFan]

If you are going 40 mph, hair getting in the pulley isn’t a problem.

[latina4dubya]

oh—my 86-year old dad every now and then brings up this skit in conversation... good stuff!

[SeaHawkFan]

The pulleys are detachable.

[hal ogen]

Wow! Here in the WDC area they close schools when there is a snow cloud in Idaho because they are worried about the school buses slipping or something. Nanny state Ping.

[Oztrich Boy]

. Also, the photo shows a pretty wicked looking creek down at the bottom.

At that height nothing at the bottom looks friendly.

[Cvengr]

Rope bridges have a VERY long history in the Andes. The Incas used them extensively. Andean civilizations were probably the most rope/textile oriented in history. Even their system of writing was encoded in knotted ropes.

Their success is manifest by the continuing endurance of the Inca empire. ;^(

[Dexter Morgan]

It’s coming from a reporter, who thinks this trip is scary when most kids would think it’s awesome.

[Sherman Logan]

Turns out a textile-based civilization doesn’t do well up against a metal-based civilization.

Even so, Pizarro would probably have been wiped out if the Empire hadn’t just gone thru a smallpox epidemic with a death toll around that of the Black Death in Europe.

[grjr21]

Good lord this is awful”
What are her parents thinking , why isn’t she wearing a helmet ?

</Helicopter parent>

[ConservativeMind]

Ping for later.

[martin_fierro]

lolz beat me to it.

[rellimpank]

—yep-—the principles of physics still apply, even in Columbia—

[WOBBLY BOB]

They’re getting high speed rail courtesy Obammy’s stimulus package.

[happinesswithoutpeace]

Intense.