New Zealand
My leap of faith
Simon Reid
SOME of you may have been too busy or distracted to clock this, but in Queens- town, New Zealand, official home of Extreme Sports, the Big 2000 was marked not by a I1-million firework display, or by acts of gross indecency inexpertly per- formed in public, but by the First Bungee Jump of the New Millennium. It was a leap of faith on the part of the intrepid Kiwi who made it, though not as great as the leap of faith made by the millions of us Londoners who turned out for the River of Fire.
I saw the jump on television the next day and I admired it for its grace and high technique, although there was a little too much shouting on the way down for my taste. What a grand way to end the centu- ry, I thought, with all that adrenalin and self-esteem pumping through your veins. I am fortunate enough to know exactly how the Kiwi was feeling. I have made the same jump. Last year a friend of mine won the adventure holiday of a lifetime for two in a competition organised by the manufacturers of a leading brand of men's toiletries. I went along to Queens- town as Number Two.
What everyone wants to know about bungee jumping is the nature of the fear it inspires. You'd think that most people standing on the edge of the abyss would fear death above all else. That's not how it is; it wasn't in my case anyway. Fear of death can easily be counterbalanced by the pleasure of imagining the tear-soaked speeches at your funeral. You can even compose them yourself. No, what I was most afraid of was a rumour, part of bungee folklore, that the impact of the bounce forces one's eyes to pop out of their sockets. On the morning of the jump I casually asked an instructor about this and she said that even if my eyes did pop out they would remain attached to their stalks. The idea of my eyeballs doing a bungee jump of their very own, and me being able to see through them all the while, filled me with terror.
The bungee jump was the high spot of the week and the organisers were determined that as a lucky prizewinner I'd have the time of my life and bloody well jump. I didn't share their enthusiasm. I had planned to say that, for unavoidable but confidential work- related reasons, I would be unable to attend the jumping party. I had meant to do this long in advance of B-day, but I had continu- ally put it off until tomorrow; until tomor- row became today. So, instead of enjoying the last day of my adventure holiday adven- turously getting to know the Irish in Queenstown's 'Irish' pub, I found myself in a sports showroom, horribly early in the morning, with my mind racing up and down empty corridors searching desperately for a plausible excuse not to jump, some device that would allow me to emerge with dignity and a sympathetic (but not pitying) pat on the back.
Alas, I had left it too late for such an excuse. I was shown a disclaimer, which carried a list of serious crippling condi- tions, diseases and other ailments which would have excluded me from the jump. I wasn't lucky enough to have any of them. Up at the bungee bridge there were half a dozen or so people waiting to jump, all lost in troubled concentration. A Japanese couple occasionally broke into hysterical giggles. You had to feel sorry for them. The bridge was 72 metres above the river- bed. There was very little water in the river — hardly enough, it seemed to me, to accommodate a Tarzan-like dive if I slipped out of the harness — because there had been a drought. Our group was resignedly deciding upon the jump order. We were no longer free men and women. I yearned to say, 'Look, I'm an adult and I'm not going to do this', but that's the trouble with being an adult: you can't say things like that.
Then a miracle happened. I was visited by the will to jump. It came in the shape of six or seven drunken mountain men, all of them clearly excited at having stumbled upon a group of helpless tourists. As they staggered towards us, I felt considerably more fear than I had all day. Muttering to themselves, answering imagined voices and struggling to suppress laughter, they moved about us, sizing us up, smacking their lips. I didn't want to see what these trolls got up to for sport. The only way out was down. One of the girls began to move towards the bungee tower: her boyfriend had just jumped and she wanted to follow him. 'I'm next!' I shouted, barring her way.
Inside the tower someone attached a rubber band to my legs. I gave a feeble thumbs-up to a camera mounted to one side of the tower. (It was perhaps the most pathetic gesture ever made by a human being, I reflected, while watching a video of my jump later.) I was counted down, jumped first time and jumped well. I admit that my eyes were shut tight for the entire fall and I can't remember much, but I can say with authority that it's not as bad as it looks when viewed from the ground. It was over very quickly, like a good hanging.
Once I stopped bouncing I prised my hands away from my eyes, confident that it was now too late for anything to fall out, and watched as a huge white pole came towards me from an upside-down boat. I grabbed the pole with shaking hands and was pulled aboard. Ordeal over. No prob- lem. 'No problem,' I said through chatter- ing teeth to the guy in the boat. He took one look at my white face and said that if I was going to be sick, I should do it over the side.
Back in bustling downtown Queens- town, I was given a document certifying that I was a 'Jumper Extraordinaire' and that I had 'gained a touch of reality and a sense of responsibility towards Life'. If only. . . . The fact is that I felt so chuffed with myself for having survived the jump that I really wouldn't mind having anoth- er go.
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