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SwitchYard Media, Inc.
By Scot Meyer
SwitchYard Media, Inc. - contact | website
Designed and produced by Lang Kirchheimer
SwitchYard Media, Inc. - contact | website
A production of SwitchYard Media, Inc.
Vegas Indoor Skydiving
VERTICAL IN VEGAS
Maybe you've always wanted to go skydiving, but without the hassle of dealing with airplanes and parachutes. Vegas Indoor Skydiving, located on the Las Vegas Strip, may be the place for you. It uses a vertical wind tunnel to give visitors the experience of falling through the air, even though they're actually hovering just a few feet above a mesh trampoline floor. In an hour-long session, which costs about $75, fliers attend a training class, suit up in the necessary gear and then climb into the wind tunnel for three-minutes of air time.
"That may not seem like a long time until you do it," says general manager Brad Hess. "And to put it in perspective, when you jump from an airplane you're going to free fall for about 30 to 45 seconds."
The scenery may not be as impressive as what you'd get jumping out of a plane at 13,000 feet, but the experience of free-fall is comparable, says Hess, a licensed skydiver. So much so, in fact, that he says some skydivers use the facility to hone their skills between jumps.
ADDRESS:
200 Convention Center Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89109
PHONE:
(702) 731-4768
WEBSITE:
Trapeze School New York - Beantown
BE A FLYING WALLENDA
But perhaps your idea of being airborne is not about falling or floating -- you'd rather fly through the air with the greatest of ease. In that case you might want to check out Jordan Furniture in Reading, Mass., which is located just outside of Boston. Besides being a destination for locals seeking sofas and bookshelves, the store is also home to TSNY - Beantown, the New England branch of Trapeze School New York. (Besides Boston and the Big Apple, the school has branches in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.)
TSNY - Beantown is unique in that besides having scheduled classes, there are times when the facilities are open to the public, allowing nearly anyone to take a flying trapeze for a swing. People are drawn to the trapeze for all sorts of reasons, says Theresa Racicot, who teaches there. Some want to experience the thrill of flight, some want to overcome a fear of heights, and some just want to try something different.
"As an instructor, I love feeling the excitement from students as they're learning to fly," Racicot says. "Or even helping them through the hesitation of those first few hops off the platform." Racicot estimates that about 20 percent of those who take a class wind up becoming "frequent flyers" -- people who come back between one and three times each week.
ADDRESS:
50 Walkers Brook Drive, Reading, MA 01867-3224
PHONE:
(781) 942-7800
WEBSITE:
Kalahari Resort
MIDWEST'S BONZAI PIPELINE
Many people, including the founders of Trapeze School New York, get their first taste of the trapeze at beach resorts like Club Med. But the sport works well indoors too, which you wouldn't expect to be the case with other activities common to the seashore. Surfing, for example, traditionally requires the use of an actual ocean. But that doesn't mean you can't Hang Ten indoors. The 125,000-square-foot indoor water park at Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells, Wis., uses a machine to create something billed as akin to "a wave in a box." It uses 50,000 gallons of water a minute to simulate a five-foot wave traveling at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. The water flows over a padded mat designed to ensure that surfers who wipe out get a soft landing.
Kalahari Resorts, which also operates an indoor water park in Sandusky, Ohio, claims that it is making surfing a popular sport in the Midwest, and estimates that more than 150,000 people have ridden its artificial waves.
ADDRESS:
1305 Kalahari Drive, Baraboo, WI 53913-9071
PHONE:
(608) 253-7637
WEBSITE:
Scot Meyer / SwitchYard Media
URBAN RAPELLING
A new facility in New York, meanwhile, aims to make indoor rock climbing a more viable option for city dwellers. Located in a former newspaper warehouse in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn, Brooklyn Boulders has a variety of walls, some more than 30 feet high, covered with brightly colored handholds. Adding to the atmosphere is a scalable replica of one tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. Also, the work of professional graffiti artists adorns those walls not meant to be climbed.
While most other climbing options in the city consist of a single wall in a health club, this new rock-climbing gym (it opened in September 2009) has more than 10,000 square feet of terrain suitable to clambering over, including areas for bouldering (climbing without lines or harnesses) and top-roping. There are straight vertical climbs and overhangs, for those who want a tougher battle with gravity.
The gym sells memberships, but out-of-towners are welcome. A day pass is $20 and a class, which includes gear and two days worth of climbing, is $60.
ADDRESS:
575 Degraw St., Brooklyn, New York, NY 11217
PHONE:
(347) 834-9066
WEBSITE:
Jay Moody / SwitchYard Media
BOUNCY, BOUNCY
If you'd rather bounce off the walls than climb them, Sky High Sports in Bellevue, Wash., may be more your speed. The facility, which opened in September 2009, features gymnasium-sized rooms with floors and walls made from trampolines. For $10 an hour, visitors can jump around on their own, or can participate in organized activities like a springy game of dodgeball or an exercise routine dubbed AIRobics. Another popular option is launching yourself from the trampoline into a 5-foot deep pit filled with chunks of blue foam rubber.
Sky High Sports is the brainchild of brothers Jerry and Ron Raymond, who say they wanted to come up with a fun and safe place to play with their kids. It is certainly family-friendly, with a special room set aside for "little jumpers." The Bellevue outlet is their newest; the company also operates trampolining venues in Sacramento and Santa Clara, Calif.
ADDRESS:
1445 120th Ave. Northeast, Bellevue, WA 98005-2103
PHONE:
(425) 990-5867
WEBSITE:
Ray's MTB Indoor Park
MIDWEST MOTOCROSS
In Cleveland, mountain bikers frustrated by their city's long winters have an alternative to plowing through the snow. Ray's MTB Indoor Park, which opened in 2004, offers mountain bikers and bicycle motocross racers a place to ride from October to April. The park even hosts an event, the Tri-Flow XC Indoor Invitational, where professional mountain bike racers pit their skills against a winding maze-like course with ramps, jumps, man-made hills and other challenges.
Located in a former warehouse 5.25 miles west of downtown Cleveland, the indoor bike park was developed by Ray Petro, who spends each summer changing the layout of the course and new features. A "beginners room" is one of the latest additions at Ray's.
ADDRESS:
9801 Walford Ave., Cleveland, OH 44102
PHONE:
(216) 631-7433
WEBSITE:
ADVENTURE AQUARIUM
SWIM WITH SHARKS
For close encounters with a different kind of ray, head over to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, N.J. Located on the waterfront, just across the Delaware River from downtown Philadelphia, the place gives new meaning to the term "hands on." Visitors can roll up their sleeves and reach into the tanks to touch stingrays and other sea creatures.
If that's not enough, you can actually get into the water and swim with the sharks. Launched in May 2005 as the aquarium's signature adventure, the two-hour experience costs $165. Participants get a classroom session with a biologist, during which they learn about the animals they are about to meet. Then they put on wet suits and masks, and snorkel in the tank with the sharks.
Executive director Greg Charbeneau says the aquarium offers other scuba experiences, as well as adventures that allow visitors to interact with seals or penguins. (The programs are all popular, so it's a good idea to book ahead.) From the aquarium's point of view, the goal is to offer thrills, but also education.
ADDRESS:
1 Aquarium Dr Camden, NJ 08103
PHONE:
(856) 365-3300
WEBSITE: