Week 2 (again): The fall [warning:long post!]

This one story is getting really big isn’t it? Well it’s probably the most exciting week of Nepal, so go figure.

Anyway – so we stupidly bought 2 jumps. Or should I say, falls, which is a lot more accurate. The accounting was done. The bowels were empty. You could feel the anxiety, fear and tension in everyone from a mile away…

Finally the time came to walk onto the bridge. We were divided into “heavy” and “light” depending on our weight. As it turned out, Jimbo and I were on the same group as Stina and her pals. Our good friend Bong was sadly in the light weight category – at least he’d go and take pictures of our demise. The walk up to the jump point was probably the most somber thing I’ve experienced in quite a while. Everyone was dead silent. Or making crying noises. Either way, it was quite funny looking back on it now: There we were, a group 20 or so odd people, walking along a metal bridge suspended by wires, half somber as though they were at a funeral, the other half kinda crying in hysterics as if they’d won the lotto. Ok, sure it wasn’t that bad- but it did feel JUST that bad.

Jimbo and I stood there and watched the “Bungy-master” (dear God, who came up with that name?) and his minions (because obviously they were evil for being part of a corporation that exploits the naivety of people who don’t realize how high 160m is) setting up all the equipment. He was trying his hardest to butcher the bassline to Timbaland’s song that is grammatically incorrectly titled “Way I Are.” This was supposedly meant to get us pumped. All it really did was give me a headache and a bad case of irritation. I happened to like that song, but was no longer the case.

I believe that it’s times like this that you really find out what a person is really like. I mean come on, you can drop the façade at points like this (no pun intended): you’re about to die (yep, by this stage, our neurotic personalities had come out and we were all on the verge of certain death), so really what have you got to lose?

So, we became nerds. That’s right, at our core, we’re just dressed up nerds that look oh-so-good. Well at least I do. (Shut up! It’s my blog and you lot can keep your opinions to yourself!). I believe in between bouts of “Tadada-dada-dada-dada” (being the bassline as according to Jimbo) and random other shit, we discussed the pharmacokinetics of Labetelol and other drugs used in ties of anxiety. This all happened in front of Stina and her gang. They turned out to be pretty cool people. There was Lisha, the jewish looking one who latter turned out to be able to speak Mandarin (yeah- go figure!), Lyn, who was the tall, up for a good time sort. Then there was Al, who was meant to be the leader of the bunch back at work, but being a scrawny Asian dude even shorter than me, I just thought he was the group midget. Then there was Val, whom we all thought was sleeping with Al. Good on them, they both couldn’t have done better than the other. Well more like Val couldn’t have.

Ofcourse, there was Stina herself. She was Asian, just a tad shorter than me. Until this point, she was wrapped up in a long dark coat. As I’ve mentioned before, I thought she was a goth. As I stood there on the bridge, I was sure she was a goth. After having taken off said coat, what lay underneath was a body wrapped in a figure-hugging grey top with a white singlet underneath and black tights. covering (what I assumed to be) nice, toned legs. Goth much? With such variety of color's in her repertoire, I’m surprised people didn’t mistake her for a clown! I agree with Jimbo that her face wasn’t exactly the best, the hey, the bod more than made up for it.
As it turned out, it was my turn to go before Jimbo. I’d seen a few people…erm, fall. It was scary. There they were standing at the end of the bridge with a harness on. That part assured me to some extent. The part that made me very nervous was that they were connected by a rope about as thick as my pinky to yet another rope (which I assume was the same size) about 20m away from the bridge. That was all there keeping any person who took the plunge from turning into what would then resemble, a very human looking pancake, complete with a red sauce! Yum!

Kevie (one of the other guys who was jumping) was before me. One second, there he is on the side of the bridge, then with a ear piercing scream, he’s about a 10th of his size, below my feet. You really have NO FUCKING IDEA just how fast gravity makes you accelerate before you see this happen. Next thing I know, he’s hurtling across the river at something like 100km/h (aka break-neck speed). Shit!

My turn. Holy crap! I don’t think I’ve felt this nervous and afraid since I was 3 yrs old and thought that the boggie monster was under my bed, about to eat me. In fact I think my sphincters remembered that event and clenched just as tightly as then to prevent any “accidents”.

I’m sitting there, the guy is bolting me onto the rope. It sounds assuring doesn’t it? But remember, this rope is the size of my FUCKING pinky finger! It’d snap if I wiggled too much. Then this retard comes up and starts filming me!

“! How’s it going, my friend?” he says.

Wtf? No one calls me by that name! And when did he become my friend? On top of that, how does he think I’m going? I’m about to jump off a fucking bridge! I say something, though I have no idea what. I’m sure I dropped the F-bomb enough times to replicate Hiroshima if a nun had heard me at that point. Luckily, nuns are too busy being celibate to bungy-jump.

Anyway, the Bungy-master (I’d have laughed in his face for the ridiculous name had I not been very nearly shitting myself) explained (again) how to fall. Basically, he told me to go right to the edge, hold the rope (or if I let go, not to hold it again) then kinda “hop”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I’m about to drop off a bridge, I’m not very likely to try and do it in a Superman pose, now am I?

I get to the edge, slowly- it seems much more difficult than expected. I turn around and the Bungy-master has a grip and is letting me walk very slowly. I’m in no hurry to die fucktard! I think I moment ago, you were telling me to jump of the fucking bridge and now you’re grabbing onto my harness! Wrong time to stage an intervention, my friend!

My toes are off the edge. The wind is howling and as it does so, taunts me about my stupidity. My heart is pounding against my chest trying to rip itself out so it doesn’t go down with the metaphorical ship. I am grabbing on to the rope in front of me like someone was trying to play tug of war (I suppose in a way they were, and I really didn’t want gravity to win).
“Jump” yells the Bungy master.

Great! Here I go! Except my knee feels weak and I feel like fob-squatting. No! I can’t do that: if I stop now, I’ll never jump! So I jump. Not much of a bunny-hop, more like some weird version of an antalgic gait.

Whoosh!

Before I can even say “Fuck!” at the top of my lungs, I’ve traveled about 100m. The rocks that seemed like tiny flecks were now as big as houses. The falls of the cliff side blurred with the speed (or it coulda been the my eyes watering against so much cold air). Before my senses can recover, I’m hurtling along the course of the river at over 100km/hr. The rope makes a whippy noise as it slices through the cold air in front of me. My knuckles haven’t let go of the rope. They’re gripped on like they’ve just experienced rigor mortis, and they’re also that cold and white.

I slow down and find myself dangling about 50m above the river. Fuck! My senses are overloaded. I only just begin to realize that the strange sensation you get when falling has been present in my stomach for the last…erm, 3 seconds?! I still can’t believe that less than 5 seconds ago, I was up there on that bridge along with everyone else and now I’m being poked with a giant bamboo stick as the staff try to hook me back to land.

I get onto this small platform and some of Stina’s gang are already there. They “high-five” me and we sit there laughing off our adrenaline. It turns out, that they are all work-mates. This is Oliver-Wyman’s idea of a team building exercise. Actually it was just Stina’s idea. I like her more already.

“EEEEEEEeeeeeeekkkkk”

Speak of the devil, Stina just hurtle off the bridge like a shrieking parrot. We all welcome her in the same fashion as me. We all wait for Jimbo. He is a lot more noisy than I am. Obviously his senses are not as prone to being overloaded. Either that or his mouth can scream without brain input.

“Man, I’m glad to see you in one-piece!” he says.

Not exactly what I was expecting. Turns out, my little fob-squat, retarded jump meant that my head came within inches of the side of the bridge. Any closer and “you’d have half you head missing” says Jimbo. Ahh well, I’m still alive and this is an extreme sport.
Now, we all stared at 150+ meters of sheer cliff face. As a collective we said “shit” and realized that this is what they forget to tell you about in the brochures: the climb back up.

…again to be continued.