The Great Toboggan of China

The Great Wall of China was originally constructed in the 200s BC, though the wall we see today mostly consists of reconstructions that took place in the 1300-1600 AD timeframe during the Ming Dynasty.

Side note -- I love the word "dynasty". It sounds so rad. And majestic. And not oppressive at all. I digress.

It hadn't occurred to me before we went there that there are multiple entrances to view the wall. I thought there was one place where you go and that was it. Since the wall runs 5,500 miles through northwestern China, there are, obviously, many places where one can view/walk on the wall. We went to one about an hour and a half drive outside Beijing.

We rented a driver for the day for about $140. He picked the four of us up at 8.30am, drove us to the Wall, drove us to lunch at a nearby (awesome) restaurant, over to the Ming Tombs (blah), briefly to some path of statues, then returned us back to Jon's place at 5.30pm. A good day.

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Being that we got a relatively early start, the entrance at the Wall wasn't a complete madhouse yet when we arrived. Thank goodness. Our guide showed us to the ticket counter, told us what to do, and where to meet him after.

The wall is way up on the hill (mountain?), so you take a gondola for a few minutes to reach it. Riding a gondola in China had me a bit worried, but we made it. On the way up, Jon told me that you ride a toboggan to get down (he had been there once before). I laughed and said, "that would be awesome". He claimed he was serious. I insisted that he was pulling my leg. He insisted that he was not and proceeded to describe the toboggan in detail. Then he pointed out the metal half-pipe toboggan run from the gondola. I was a believer. And I couldn't wait.

Toboggan track among the trees as viewed from the gondola ride up to the Great Wall.

We got to the top of the wall and walked the wall until the maintained area ended, which was maybe a half mile or so. Note: the Great Wall is never flat. You're either walking up or down. Sometimes, it's so steep that I was on my hands and knees crawling up it (I'm afraid of heights). The tourist stretches of the wall are relatively well maintained and look pretty good. The unmaintained areas are overgrown with weeds and plants and have huge areas where the stones have fallen away (or been stolen/moved).

It's that steep. Yeah.

It was very beautiful, but also terrifying. I quickly realized two very important things:

1. They sell beer at the many little snack stands along the wall. How is this a good idea? Elijah partook, as expected.
2. There's no easy way to get down off the wall and no way for help to get up to you if you somehow manage to hurt yourself. Which would be extremely easy to do. Ex: falling off the side, tripping over the cobblestones, falling down an entire flight of stairs, falling off the single-story watchtowers, etc, etc. I thought about this extensively. We decided that if someone were to get hurt it would have to be Carissa since she's the only one the three of us could hope to carry all the way back down. Better option: everyone be freaking careful. And stop drinking beer.

Also, watch my video:

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After traversing the wall for a distance and coming back to the entrance, it was time to take the famed toboggan ride back down to the parking lot. The toboggan apparatus consisted of a black plastic disk that you sit on. It's roughly two feet wide and four feet long. It has no sides, front, or back. It's just a thing that sits under you and is mildly shaped to fit your bum and your feet. Your legs straddle a lever with which you control the speed of your car. The lever automatically springs to the braked position. You have to push it down to release the breaks to go faster. Then you just let go a bit to apply the brakes again. 

Jon advised us to proceed in order of who (we estimate) wants to go the fastest and to leave space between us when we leave so we don't get too close to each other on the run. Think of a water slide where you can control your speed. He said when he did this last time, he was stuck behind someone going really slowly and it was a bummer.

We proceeded: Jon, EJ, Me, Carissa. I caught up to EJ immediately. I then hung back to get some distance between us, and he decided to stop being a baby and speed up (kidding, EJ). Brakes be dammed; I pretty much held the lever all the way down for most of the ride. While there were no railings and we wore no safety gear, I didn't really feel like I could kill myself. Unless I didn't lean into the turns or was going so fast that I flew off the track completely, which I didn't feel was likely. I thought I was pretty good to go. So I let her rip and feared only the bugs flying into my gaping grin all the way down.

It was amazing. The run was very long with lots of turns. I was flying. I didn't die. The dudes who stand on the side to monitor people as they go down yelled at Jon to slow down. But he thought, "What can they do about it?" and proceeded to fly down the run at light speed. It was pretty much the best thing ever. Watch this guy's video of it to get an idea, but imagine going much faster.

At the bottom, Jon came flying into the end run followed closely by Elijah who was followed closely by me. We all dismounted, discussed said awesomeness, and looked back at the run for Carissa. We waited. And waited some more. And then we saw Ms. Clark ambling down the run at "a perfectly reasonable speed", followed by about a dozen perturbed patrons. I wanted to snap some pictures of the run at the base, but I figured we better mosey on lest we become the victims of some sort of riot, or at least angry glaring. 

Carissa was characteristically unapologetic. After all, she was keeping all those people safe.