New Zealand Travels (April 6th, 2003) The Day of the Bungy

I awoke to find myself getting tea and toast in bed. I even had some Vegemite on it. Thanks, Amy. Chris had gone off early to do his big Nevis jump, 134m straight down, 7 seconds of free fall, the highest jump in New Zealand. So Amy, Amanda and I shot the breeze while watching Sunday morning TV. With Chris doing his big bungy, my thoughts naturally turned to my own. I still hadn’t reconciled why I wasn’t inclined to do the bungy. In the end a childhood memory came to my rescue.

When I was about 12, I had a friend called Jason. He was one of those people that had a lot of self-confidence and enjoyed taking risks. One day, we found ourselves out at Seagull Rock – just at the end of a headland off a secluded Cornish beach.
The great thing about this rock was that it provided a clear drop of about 8m into the sea below. Now as a kid of 12, I’d never even dreamed of jumping from such a height. Add to this my (then) recent climbing wall experiences, and it would be easy to conclude that I wouldn’t be too happy about jumping off. Jason went first, feet first, followed quickly by another friend, Simon. I was left all by myself at the top of the rock, looking down at my two friends swimming back in. I had to act. Failure was not an option. So I took a deep breath and cast myself into the void. I fell for what seemed like hours and then I splashed down. I was alive! After that, I was hooked. We spent the day jumping off various parts of the rock, Jason was even swan diving off it by the end but I drew the line at that. I guess I just didn’t have the bottle.

Anyway, the point of all this useless narrative was to being back the single epiphany that blew away my clouds of doubt and enabled me to make my decision. It occurred to me that what was stopping me (by making me indecisive) was my Fear of the initial drop. The act of Will that overcomes the instinct to avoid steep edges and forces rationality over base Fear. However, I had already overcome that Fear in my childhood so there was no longer a need to conquer it again. Now the question was simple: Would I like the experience of doing a bungy jump? Hell, yes, came the immediate reply.

I strode down to the booking office and slapped down my credit card. I was committed now. The bus took us out to the Karawau Bridge and we went through the registration process. At the time, in all my clothes, I weighed 81kg (tubby ball of lard). During the bus ride I had met up with Martin, an AA roadside mechanic, who happened to come from the same town as me and even lived about half a mile down the road. Weird how these things work out, eh? So we chatted and it was obvious that he was more than a little nervous, so I spent much of my time with him reassuring, empathising and generally making light of what we were about to do.

Quickly our time came about. Martin went first, and without a sound – he even had his head dipped in the “Kiss of Death” option. I opted to keep dry since it was freezing and the idea of actually hitting the water gave me the heebie jeebies (OK I can let a bit of fear get the better of me).

I put on my harness and sat down near to the ledge. My guide wrapped a towel around my ankles and secured it in place. He then attached a second safety cable to my harness in case the towel somehow managed to slip off. All through this the familiar feelings of stomach churning anticipation continued to gnaw away at me.

"Don’t do it! There’s still time to stop all this!"

My little inner voice didn’t want to grow, but I did. I wobbled to my feet, and hobbled to the edge. “This is the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life”, I said to my guide, who was without doubt the single most reassuring presence on that windy platform. I knew I was being videoed so I made myself stick my arms out in a swan dive stance. I took a deep breath, looked at the horizon and felt the pounding of my heart. 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1.. Bungy!

I went.

I left the platform in a haze of fear and adrenalin. As I fell I yelled out, "Who’s your Daddy!?" and the river came so close, so fast that I thought I was going to touch it. I wanted to touch it. I wanted more. I twanged back up, catapulting up into the air, this time yelling, "I’m your Daddy!" As I flew through the air I became disoriented, I wanted to do back flips and somersaults but I didn’t know how to get the timing right.

And then it was over.

I was gently lowered into the inflatable boat and deftly unhooked from my harness. I had crossed over to the other side. I had done my first, but not last, bungy jump. I came up the path back to the bridge with Martin, both of us pumped, psyched and feeling invincible. In what seemed a matter of moments we had our AJ Hackett Bungy Goodie Bags and were sipping tea on the shuttle bus back home.

For the rest of the day I kept going back to that one moment on the ledge where I just blanked my mind and went for it. Every time I look back on it now, I still feel that pure buzz of thrill and excitement of dropping into the void with only an elastic band to bring you back from the kiss of death.