I Slid Down the Longest Slide in the World!

Today, my class took a tour of Hackney West, the area where London's Olympic Park is built. The commute from the Arcadia Center took us quite a bit of time, but it was cool to ride something other than the Underground. When we arrived, we were greeted with a horribly foul smell which our tour guide, Richard, claimed was bad water.

As we started to walk towards the arenas, we noticed lots of street art in the area. Unfortunately, much of it had been stripped away because buildings were being demolished to make room for new housing.

We passed by the basketball and netball arenas, which are now fully functional gyms. We then stopped somewhere we could sit down: a cool set of wooden bleachers with fun facts on them like the ones you would find on the caps of Snapple bottles. After this, we walked past the cycling arena, which is also still in use. We saw two cyclists going around the track while we were there, but they weren't doing anything crazy.

Finally, it came time to ride the slide and I was extremely excited! As we got closer, the slide looked scarier and scarier and I was about to chicken out. We paid £1 for a token to a locker for our belongings that we would get back upon returning the token and headed outside towards the slide.

Now, this slide already looked intimidating from afar, but standing under it allowed everything to sink in even more. Again, this is the longest tunnel slide in the entire world. Intimidated is a huuuuge understatement for how I was feeling. I mean come on, look at this thing! If you thought that the wider part was the slide and the silver spiral was just for aesthetic purposes, that's what we thought to. Our hearts all dropped when we realized the larger one held the steps to go up and down the Orbit and the seemingly thin metal tube spiraling down was the actual slide. Let me tell ya, that thing really is as thin as it looks.

They took our picture again right before after we were all geared up and even asked if we wanted to rent a GoPro. As funny as that sounded, I wanted to experience the slide fully. I was originally going to be the first one to go, but I chickened out and I ended up going last. I was extremely nervous because I absolutely hate roller coasters because of the drop, but I love waterslides and I love the rush of going fast. It turns out that this slide was one of the most fun things I have ever been on and I even wanted to do it again. It's mostly metal, but there are a few openings that allow you to take in the incredible view. Of course, I was too busy feeling simultaneously excited and terrified while being shot down this thing at an insane speed! When you're in the slide, it feels like a long time. It's said that it takes about 34-40 seconds to slide down the Orbit. However, once you get off it seems all too short. Unfortunately, you can only ride once, but I have kept the joy from those 40 ish seconds well in my memory since then.

After we all got out, we want back upstairs to the observatory deck to look at the view and it was surely one of the best views I've ever seen. It was a beautiful 360 degree view of London and it was absolutely breathtaking. There was even a large touchscreen device inside that allowed you to scroll through a panorama and select almost every notable building to read information about it. This was how I first learned about the Shard. The weather was perfect and we enjoyed standing outside to avoid the reflection of glass. There were some cool mirrors on the half that faced away from the city that were concave, so it made you look upside down at a certain distance. My friend Jackie and I stood on opposite sides of the room, but we could see each other in them!

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/909f9d_a86f46a022284c129bad3635f2c40ae3/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

This was a really incredible experience and I'm so thankful that I was brave enough to take it on. The four of us really bonded in that short period of time in fear of a not-so-near-death experience, but it was definitely exhilarating!