The main thing stopping me from bungee jumping was that my mom was going to kill me. That and it's not available in most malls. When I went to Las Vegas, I had heard there was a bungee jumping place. I wasn't imbibing from any of the other vices offered in Vegas, so I might as well go with the adrenaline surge.
I found the bungee bar, a small building at the base of a 17 story white platform. Inside were half a dozen comedy club tables with clipboards on them. A bar was against the center wall; a fridge next to it was full of sports drinks and beer. A surfer guy behind the left wall counter looked up. "Hey, you jumping?"
"Think so."
"Cool. Release forms are over there."
Here was my first sign of trouble. I wasn't expecting anything to go wrong, but if anything did, the limited time my mind had left would be filled with this damn form, and the half dozen times I was swearing that I wasn't holding Hackett Bungy Inc. responsible if it forgot to double knot the cord. The company doesn't even spell bungee right.
I handed in the form and they asked me to empty all of my pockets. So that's why no one on the ground gets killed by falling change. Then they weighed me to figure out which cord they'd be using. They mark the weight in kilograms when girls are on the scale, just so they don't have their weight shouted across the room. "Whoa Chad, this girl weighs more than you do!"
It was $49 to jump the first time, $59 if I wanted a t-shirt, $69 if I wanted a video of the jump, and $79 if I wanted the video and the t-shirt. After the first time, it was $25 a jump, with every fourth one free. I was debating about buying the tape. I thought it'd be cool to have a camera follow me through the whole jump sequence. Maybe after I saw it.
I was curious how safe this stuff was. "So is there any Workers Safety sign up? You know, 'No accidents since June '95 or something?'"
That's not the sort of question you pop to bungee guys. Imagine the sort of person to become a career bungee jumper. In Las Vegas. "Oh, that damn thing's always at the painters. So many paint jobs, dude. Hey, what's today's date?"
I tried another approach. "So do you guys get to jump much, working here?"
"We go every day, usually. Sometimes when it's really busy we don't get a chance, though." That's what I needed; the people who know this stuff trust themselves with it every day. Unless they lie, of course.
Three other people were jumping with me; they were all very iffy. By contrast, I was the confident one. They were scared to death of jumping first; I volunteered. They were skittish and nervous; I was making conversation, trying to talk to bungee professionals casually about the one subject I knew they could talk me over a barrel on. "I thought the jumping was off the Stratosphere when I got here. First time in Vegas." The Stratosphere was a Space Needle nearby that had a roller coaster and free fall ride on its tip. I assumed would host the jumping. In actuality I was in an alley behind Circus Circus.
"That was just a promotional thing MTV did once. Dude, do not mention that to Woody. Seriously, don't." Woody was the jump master, the guy responsible for getting the cord secured and the first guy named in any wrongful death lawsuits. Nice to know he could snap because of an innocuous remark.
We went outside and got into blue harnesses, mini mazes of Velcro. I snuck a look at the pool below the drop site. It was 12 feet deep, made just for the jump. Good; a 171 foot fall into a mere 8 foot pool would be dangerous.
We met Woody by the elevator. He was a grizzled patch of leather with a skinny ponytail escaping a florescent cap. The first words out of his mouth were "Get all the way in the elevator. All the way. Towards the wall, up against it. All the way!" This had nothing to do with the safety of the elevator, which was perfectly normal. This had to do with Woody's chair, a five gallon bucket flipped over with a broken barstool cushion on top. He didn't want anyone touching it.
With an obvious disgust for us both in general and individually, he went over the bungee process. Our harnesses weren't for the bungee cord, but the rope to drag us up. It would be lowered down after the jump, we'd grab it as soon as we stopped bouncing, hook it to our harness, and it'd haul us up.
The platform was a metal mesh painted white; you could see through the floor. A long arm reached over the pool, ensconced by a guard rail. At the end was a gated chamber of ropes and pulleys. I was first, so I went in the chamber with Woody. He demanded that I get along a wooden bench, all the way. I stayed still; there wasn't much of a guard rail in the chamber, and I was suddenly aware that this place was designed just so people could jump off it.
He wrapped a giant blood pressure cuff over my ankles. A nylon strap wrapped around the fabric between my ankles six times before being tied off. Woody grabbed a thick rope on a hook. "Where does this go?"
OK, stupid question time. "Around my ankles."
"Where does this go?"
"Around my ankles."
"Where does this go?"
"Ankles."
"Geez, I tell you one thing and you don't remember it."
"Oh, that's the return rope! Right on the harness."
"What's your TV show?"
"What?"
"I said where does the bungee cord go!"
"Ankles. I thought you said 'What's your TV show.'"
'Tunnel hearing."
"What?"
"Tunnel hearing. When you're scared to death, you stop hearing. Brain shuts down." OK, 1. I was not scared to death, 2. The major obstacle to my hearing was the 90 decibel surf rock blasting off the platform (although it was Weezer-heavy, so my only complaint was the volume) and 3. Woody wasn't going to be hired as a diction coach any time soon. But I wasn't going to argue with the guy literally holding my life by a thread.
The bungee cord was hooked on and I was ready to go. The wooden platform was six feet from me. I shuffled there the best I could, Woody screaming at me if I hopped or moved an arm. The wooden platform was only a two foot extension of the metal one. The pool below wasn't vertigo-inducing, but still a long journey's away.
Woody's voice came from behind me like belligerent ghost. "Toes over the line, arms out, lookoutatthemountains,5,4,3,2,1,jump, why didn't you jump?!"
Jump? From his tone of voice up until now, I seriously thought he was pushing me off. I wasn't thrilled by being shoved, but at least that would take the burden off me to jump.
I turned and reached for a hand rail. "I thought you were going to push me."
Woody slapped my hand away. "Don't touch that! Turn around, armstowardsthemountains,5,4,3,2,1,what's wrong with you?!"
Jeez, give me a minute to get used to this. Here was my problem: those other three people, who had been quaking ever since entering the bungee bar, had been thinking of this moment the whole time. I wasn't. I was thinking of the bounce, or writing about it afterward, or telling people. The actual moment of jumping I put off dreading until right now. And it was one high hurdle to clear.
I had lived my entire life up to that point on the not jumping principle. Not jumping had treated me very good. I had gone to great lengths to not jump, sometime even holding onto a handrail. I knew I was safe with the cord (hopefully), and that this was a split second burst of courage I needed to scrape up. But this would still take a bit of time.
I turned again, and Woody slapped my hand again. "If you don't jump right now, I'm going to throw you back in that elevator and everyone will go but you."
Elapsed time from me first putting my toes over the edge to Woody threatening to screw me: 20 seconds. Number of times I said or expressed desire to not go through with the jump: 0. Number of jumps Woody had been jump master on before: a lot, I'm guessing. Number of people who would be momentarily hesitant on doing what normally constitutes painful death: a lot, I'm guessing. Jackass factor of Woody: 9.5 out of 10 (to his credit, his insults never mentioned race).
Scumbag though he was, Woody's threat worked. I did not plunk down $49 bucks to not jump. I shifted the weight on my feet, leaned forward a little, and let gravity take over.
It's only two or three seconds of freefall. The first second is the realization that, duh, you're falling. It's like being weightless, except for the wind. The second second begins the shirt-ruffling. My arms and legs were fully extended now, this being the only thing they could do. The pool rushed at me, still a good ways off. Second three begins the slowdown. It's gradual, but over the course of a second it dangled the pool in front of you a goodly time before you bounce up and your line of sight gets gyroscoped.
It wasn't jarring or painful at all. I was expecting my spine to be yanked out like a dipstick, but it felt like nothing. The 100 foot bounces right afterward, the cat toy dangling that follows a jump, didn't hurt either. By all accounts it should have, but rubber's a wonderful substance.
Upside down I could see the harness rope already being lowered down. A solid minute of lessening bounces and near misses with the rope before I successfully grabbed the end. The dragging up was smooth; thanks to the pulleys, all it took to haul me up was Woody's weathered arms. At the halfway point you flip upward again.
Some time during this I made a few happy screams. I felt obligated to do this thanks to Mountain Dew commercials. No one else did, so maybe screaming isn't an intrigal cog of this machine.
Woody was even more disgusted with me than before. "Don't touch anything coming up. Anything!" I did exactly what the grizzled bastard said and went limp as he hauled me up. No help here, Wood, I'm not allowed to touch anything, anything.
"OK, walk over to the bench." I started moving. "Hey! You knock me off and you will not like the consequences, believe me." I figured Woody would be on the short end of how that stick would turn out, but he had a safety harness on. I hadn't thought of throwing him off the platform (it would have made my day decidedly pleasanter) and he wasn't the guy with his heels still over the edge, so the threat should have been reversed.
The other jumpers did much better than me. The third guy did the classic head first T jump, which is very pretty when executed. Everyone went; no one chickened out. I thought Woody might have been playing drill sergeant, acting tough so all us jumpers wouldn't chicken out. But he shot that one down as we were going down the elevator. One of the surfer guys mentioned there were water touch jumps this weekend, where the cord would be lengthened so heads would touch the water.
"I wanted that," the T jumper said, "sorta wish I was fat enough to do it."
"You are," Woody said. Silence for a couple seconds, enough for the insult to firmly settle and be diagnosed by everyone as not a joke or observation or explanation of bungee technique but a solid, completely undeserved insult. "Just not today."
The tape of me was embarrassing. A very short time standing on the ledge (it really was just twenty seconds), then me bending my knees and falling in a wimpy hunch. Each one started with a montage of jumpers, and then a NOW ITS YOUR TURN, complete with misspelled IT'S. Good thing I wasn't trusting my life to these guys. No interview, no sound except for the half-assed scream. I passed on the video.
Despite all this, jumping was the easy part. Telling Mom was the hard part.