Life at the end of a rubber band

Pictures

Okay, now I’m actually writing this in march, when this happened over a month ago. But I have my numerous pictures to jog my memory!

Today is extreme bungy jumping day. Ian went out of his way to get us booked on AJ Hackett’s THRILLOGY bungy jumping tour, which includes 3 jumps from world-famous spots. On our way to the first jump, I notice the guy who drove our van to the canyon swinging place, where I conveniently lost my camera the previous day. On a hunch, I ask him if he found it, he says yes, and I have to restrain myself from jumping on and hugging me. I settle for jumping up and down like a little kid on Christmas, instead.

With my precious camera in hand, I’m ready to rock and roll and we head to the station to get weighed in and ready to go. We make a few practice jumps while waiting in line. I find out that I weighed in at 80kilos, or 176 lbs. Need to eat some more food.

BUNGY BACKGROUND: Before I continue, let me give you some bungy background. It was first popularized by AJ Hackett, one of your typical Kiwis with a complete disregard for personal wellbeing. I may have mentioned this before, but New Zealand is very conducive to extreme sports as it is near impossible to sue operators for negligence or injury should your dumb extreme-sports self meet up with the wrong side of the ground, shark, or failing parachute. In exchange for this limited liability, the Kiwi government will compensate you directly if you get injured/maimed/killed/castrated/etc.

Any, AJ Hackett somehow figured out it would be fun to jump off a bridge while tethered to giant homemade rubber band. I suppose the first site was over a river so if the cord was accidentally made too long, at least the water would break your fall. We definitely saw some videos of ancient Africans performing similar feats, but it seems that the Kiwis were to first to commercialize this business.

What disturbed me most was when I learned they still custom-make their bungy cords on-site for their jumps. I was assured by several different people that the cords would hold you even if they were severed more than halfway through, so this comforted me a bit

Anyway, back to the bungy.

KAWARAU STATS:

• Height: 42 meters (137 feet)
• Strung up by: Ankles, backup waist harness
• Jumping from: A bridge

Once we get our forms sorted out, sign our life away again, and rummage through the souvenir shop (I refrain from buying anything until after I have completed the jumping alive), we hop on the van and head to our first site, Kawarau, coincidentally the world’s first Bungy site.

So this site uses the popular string-em-up-by-the-feet-hog-style method of attaching you to the cord, which is actually fairly primitive. It consists of a towel wrapped around your ankles, with a cord simply tying you to the main bungee cord. For backup, you’re clipped to a safety harness so that makes us feel a little better.

The dude at the site asked me how wet I wanted to get. I said “A light dusting”, and I see him let out the cord quite a bit. On second thought, I went ahead and took off my shirt just in case. Good thing, too. For maximum scariness, I decided to jump backwards off the platform. It was pretty extreme, if I do say so myself, and I did have pretty good form in the process too.

After my light dusting, which turned out to be a full torso dunking, replete with freezing water, they reel me in on the raft and untie me. That rope gets pretty damn tight on the ankles, but better to have no circulation than to let gravity take over!

Conclusion: Bungee jumping is extreme, my pulse definitely took a while to come down, and now I’m pumped for some more action. Good thing this was the beginner jump—bigger ‘n better things to come!

Our next stop was at the Nevis, one of the world’s tallest land-based bungee sites.

NEVIS STATS:

• Height: 134 meters (440 feet)
• Jumping from: High-tension cable-supported jump pop
• Strung up by: Releasable ankles with full-body harness backup.

I thought I had gotten over the initial fear by going off the first jump, but this proved me wrong. Once I saw the jump pod suspended over the canyon, my knees definitely got a little weak. I wasn’t the only one who was nervous, some of the girls were practically flipping out (I won’t point out any names here to protect the (somewhat) innocent).

To get out to the pod, we had to take a cable car which was quite small and shaky. When they had us clip onto the safety line in the cable car, I knew this was going to be extreme.

This bungy site was far more advanced than the first one, with lots of winches, ropes, cables, buttons, pulleys, etc. I guess the workers wouldn’t have liked hauling up a 100-meter long rubber band by themselves. The worst part about this one was the little dentist chair they had you sit in as they strapped you onto the cord. This was mainly because you knew you couldn’t go back at this point.

Actually the worst part is stepping out to the edge with the cord pulling at your ankles and nothing but canyon underneath you.

Once you actually jump, the fear changes to exhilaration quickly and it is one extreme rush. This jump was so tall that once I rebounded, the second free-fall was still longer than the first bungy jump of the day. After the second or third rebound, you’re supposed to reach up to release your feet from the bungy cord, so you’re just hanging by the harness. This helps keep you from killing too many brain cells from the blood rushing to your brain. I must say though, it is rather unnerving to unhook part of yourself from a bungy cord, no matter what else is attached!

THE LEDGE BUNGY:

• Height: Approx 50 meters
• Strung up by: Full body harness, at the waist
• Jumping From: Ledge extending from the side of the mountain

This bungy had us suspended from the waist. The advantage to this is we could jump off however we wanted. I elected to try the “running man” all the way down, and the results were fairly humorous. This one was by far the least scary of the three, but I still had a lot of fun doing it.

EXTREME STREET LUGE: A nice unexpected gem at this final bungy site was a downhill street luge course. The idea is simple; cost a souped-up-skateboard down a racetrack, ride up on a ski-lift, and do it again. The speeds were pretty damn fast, and we had a blast doing it. The experience reminded me of Mario Kart for humans. I knew it would be fun once I saw that helmets were required, but I was rather surprised when I didn’t have to fill out a won’t-sue-if-I-get-maimed-or-killed waiver. At $5 a run, it was a bargain.

CASINO: I was thrilled to learn that Queenstown had a casino. My logic was that I had survived all the extreme events thus far, so obviously my luck was good. Since I like playing streaks, it made perfect sense to hit up the casino. Sure enough, unlike the other nights, I came out a little bit ahead and was back even for the trip.

Once again, this weekend is packed, and we have to be up and at ‘em early to catch our flight back to Wellington. Being up since 7AM really takes the steam out of you.

--P