Sorry mom....

Sheer, abject terror ---from the moment we stepped into the booking office until we were safely hanging from our bungy chord 440 feet below the jump platform. The Nevis bungy is the second highest bungy in the world with a free fall of 8.5 seconds. To you skydivers out there, this may seem like a walk in the park, but as the relatively close ground below accelerates toward your delicately-formed skull at 9.8 m/second squared, it's more like trying to outrun a bear with a piece of prime rib stapeled to your pants.

I must admit, I couldn't shake the idea that I would plunge to my death in a freak accident. How strong is nylon anyway? It's all just a numbers game isn't it? As we were shuttled to the jump sight, the bus was as silent as a prison transport taking fresh young cons to the hoosegow.

When we arrived at the jump, we all put on our industrial-strength, five-point harnesses as we deperately and breathlessly tried to convince ourselves that "this is going to be fun!" Fortunately for Christina and I, the heaviest people go first, eliminating the possibility that we were going to be the first jumpers of the day.

Finally it was my turn. Days of nervous anticipation were about to come to an end ---- one way or another. I wish I could describe the feeling of the last five seconds before jumping. It's really a battle between your natural survival instinct and your will. Your body tells you that this is a baaaaad idea. Your mind does too, but it's wrestling with your desire to prove you have free will. As you inch toward the edge and the five second countdown begins all I could think was "Can't be like that chubby girl who cried and didn't jump". So a last breath in and.....

I(Chris) let out a pretty nice yell which quickly turned from death-call to "Whoooooooo! Yeah!!!!!!" A switch flipped, the fear dissipated, and the rush just took over. I absolutely loved it-loved it.


I (Christina), on the other hand had a completely different experience of the free fall. My intial exclamtion was "Woah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" followed by "Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit." I couldn't shake the feeling that I was plummeting to my death even though I (sort of) knew I wasn't. It was by far the longest eight and a half seconds of my life.

I will admit that there were times while I was writing my dissertation that I seriously considered jumping out of a forty story building. Glad I saved it for something that was a round-trip.
(check out this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pIzZJSvKPqw&feature=related)