Fat Man on an Elastic

The day after our day of lovely weather and skiing it was pouring again. We only ventured outside to buy steak to cook and to ask about bungy-jumping options. The young couple sharing the unit with us had packed up and gone snowboarding again quite early in the morning, so goodness knows what the conditions were like on the slope. Soon they were replaced by a middle-aged couple from Australia. They were also very nice and we spent the remainder of the day chatting to them.

The following day the weather was better again so we headed into town to organise the bungy jump I had decided on. There was an expensive “highest” option but, when I realised it was only the highest in New Zealand, not the world, I decided instead to opt for the “first bungy in the world”, which I had found out while researching the activity's safety record, is actually just the first commercial bungy site. When we turned I up at the bungy shop, they said we could go immediately or wait for another two hours. I was tempted by suddenly rising nervousness opt for the later one, but realised that was silly and in less than five minutes we had paid and were on a minibus. Joanne did not intend to jump, but they had a spectators go free promotion on so she was along for the ride. The only other people on the minibus was a group of Muslim girls from Kuala Lumpur, all wearing hijabs, not exactly the surfer-dude stereotype I had expected to be on the bus with us but clearly the appeal is very broad. The girls told us that only one of them was actually jumping, the other three just coming along to watch.

The Remarkables

How much!?

At the bridge we went into the small office to register and have me weighed. Clearly a necessary step for them to judge the length of elastic to use. They wrote the weight on my ticket and also on my hand, presumably to prevent ticket-swapping mix-ups. Ninety-one kilos! OK, I was fully clothed, but that couldn't account for more than two kilos. That means I had gained about ten kilos while travelling! I had been getting more and more nervous, but now I had something more serious to think about: in South Africa we had both gained a lot, then lost most of it in Vietnam; in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand there was probably a steady slow increase of weight, but not much opportunity to check that with scales; then in India we lost a bit not, like many people, because we were ill, but because the food was so obviously greasy and unhealthy that we rarely had a meal to ourselves; surprisingly we put weight back on in Japan, but probably because of all the Strong Zero we were drinking in our depression; in China we probably maintained, but the real problem increase had been New Zealand, for much the same reason as South Africa: the meat is cheap and good. All those big steaks had taken their toll. It's really tough to maintain your weight when there are no scales around: it just creeps up on you!

I have to do what?

Perched

I wobbled up to the jump station on the bridge, where someone who was obviously a trainee was asking another guy questions. Immediately my focus returned from weight to jumping off a bridge: I sincerely hoped that the trainee wasn't going to set up my equipment. As I stepped down next to them, onto the platform, the trainee asked if they were going to do a dunk. I knew that they sometimes judged the jumps here so that the jumper's head is dunked in the river at the maximum stretch but I had thought you had to pay extra for that, and I had no intention of doing it.

Ready

Thankfully the other guy replied that it was too cold, then it was him who held out the harness for me to step into. It's a brand new line he told me as he clipped it onto my feet. I'm sure he says that for every jump, but I felt slightly reassured. Then he just stood back and said OK you're ready to go. I was expecting a bit more training or preparation of some kind, so I asked him whether there was anything I should know. He told me: ''stand on the edge of the platform, look straight out at that other bridge, and jump straight out as if you're flying”. Now I was standing on the edge, where I could see the drop. He told me to smile at the camera and wave to my wife. I could feel the anxiety gaining on me rapidly so, as soon I had waved at Joanne, I thought that I would have to go immediately or risk bottling it. Which wasn't an option.

So I jumped. I think I went just in time: it's really hard to overcome the instinct not to jump from a high bridge, no matter how many positive safety reports you have read or how secure the equipment all feels. It's a very odd sensation, dropping like that when the water is so close, but it was all over very quickly. I did think that I was going to hit the water just before the elastic snapped me back in the other direction and bounced me quite high up again. I bounced and dangled upside down for much longer than I expected, before I realised that I hadn't been told anything about how to get off it. Then I noticed that the dinghy I had assumed was just there in case of an emergency rescue was paddling towards me with a big pole in the air for me to hold onto. After a couple of misses I grabbed onto it and they pulled me down into the inflatable boat. I told them that I had jumped just in time because I was getting nervous as it was my first time. One of them replied “Was that really your first time? You jumped like a pro.”

Boing!

On the way back up the steps to the viewing platform, I stopped to watch the girl who had been on the bus with me, as I thought I would miss it if I continued to the top. I actually would have had plenty of time because she was having trouble going. The bungy engineer kept peeling her fingers off the pole she was holding onto and saying some, presumably encouraging, words to her before she grabbed back onto the pole and looked sceptically over the edge. This happened many time but then, eventually, it seemed like he pushed her, and she went feet first, which is inadvisable since it increases the chances of whiplash or getting caught up in the bungy. When she reached the maximum she was whipped around which looked very uncomfortable but at least she remained intact. Later I told her it had looked like the guy had pushed her off and she said that he had, because she had asked him to; I just couldn't go on my own, but I really wanted to. The price had included a t-shirt but the DVD and photos package was nothing like as much of a rip-off as the Skydiving would have been at full price, so I shelled out and got my souvenirs. It really is an efficient factory: by the time the jumpers have climbed the steps back to the office, they have your video and photos ready to view, and by the time you have paid for them, the disk has been finalised and you can take it. They must make loads of money.

The next day the weather had deteriorated again and the snow-line was only just above where the hostel was. It was freezing! I spent most of the day trying to back-up photos to DVD so we could post a copy home, but finally realised that it wasn't possible anywhere in town: the girl are reception in the hostel had assured me that it was possible but, after waiting ages while it appeared to be copying, there was nothing on the disk. At one place in town I was told it wasn't possible to write DVDs and at another the USB port was so slow the computer was reporting 100 minutes to copy everything first to the hard drive, and at New Zealand internet prices I wasn't going to wait that long. I couldn't understand it: in no matter where we were in Asia we had no problem writing DVDs. So much for New Zealand being civilised!

The other task for the day was to contact BA again about getting a quote for out requested change of route. This was now the eighth time we'd had to contact them because they kept leaving messages or sending emails to say that they needed more information then, when we phoned them back, they always asked the same questions all over again. And BA in Thaland had been so efficient! This time we managed to get a quotation from them but it was far more than we had been expecting so we even after all that we still had to ask them to leave it while we considered it.

written by

The Happy Couple on September 1, 2009 from Queenstown, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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Great Mike!

written by Bruce B on September 20, 2009

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