Looking Over The Edge: A True Story of Bungy Jumping

When I was nine years old, my family went to Disneyworld. My brother, ever the hellbent yin to a stoic yang, especially at seven, decided that he wanted to go on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride, a 13 storey elevator drop in a creepy old hotel. He probably had to stuff his sneakers with tissues to meet the height requirement. The queue for the ride was immense, even by Disney standards, the lineup winding through a dilapidated lobby and corridors while your anticipation built – or, in my case, my resolve that I should have just gone on the It's a Small World boat trip instead. When we finally made it to the front of the lineup and the ghastly bellhop raised a crooked finger to beckon us on – well, take a guess as to what happened.

I cried. That's what happened, and after waiting in the lineup for an hour and a half, maybe longer, I didn't get on the ride. I don't remember how I got out, but I assume that I was escorted out by some guy who didn't realize working in the happiest place on earth meant he'd have to put up with this crap.

That was in 1999. Since then, I've grown up. When I stood on the tiny threshold of the Nevis Bungy, bound in a harness and shackled at my ankles to a giant cord, looking down at the open gorge beneath me, I dealt with that sudden fear in a much more sophisticated, adult way. I think it went something like this:

"3 . . ."

Jesus Christ. Alright, I'm ready for this to be over now. If there's a merciful God somewhere, anywhere . . .

"2 . . ."

. . . then please, PLEASE, all I'm asking . . .

"1 . . ."

. . . is to just strike me dead, right here right now. Because there's no way I'm going to . . .

"Go!"

Woah woah woah – hold the phone, make that record scratch noise and pause in midair. My nerves are still fried, I can't just dive into that part of the story again right away. Back up to the night before.

I had a conflict on Thursday night. I had to get up around 8:00 the next morning, and the last thing I wanted was to dive headfirst down a canyon with a hangover. On the other hand, I was starting to get really nervous and kind of needed a drink. I fell in with a Scottish guy, Dave, who heard about a contest to win a free bungy at the hostel's Altitude bar, so after a lazy, damp Queenstown afternoon of tea and sushi, we headed down.

The bar was a lot more lively than the night before, what with a crowd from the Kiwi Experience bus tour stopping in town. We had a few drinks, and Dave managed to find a girl from Missouri and form one of only half a dozen teams of two allowed in the competition. The A.J. Hackett guys were running the contest, where one team member was strapped into a bungy and had to run down the length of the bar, grab a pre-poured drink, and bring it back for their partner to chug. The fastest time in the horizontal bungy wins, the main difficulty being a little thing known as tension.

Oh, and because this is party town, teams got time taken off depending on how much clothes they took off. Dave won his bungy and a girl showed her boobs, both of which were pretty groovy and something that only happens in an American Pie spinoff sequel. Speaking of things that only happen in movies, did you know that Coyote Ugly-style dancing on bartops also happens in real life? It only looks like my morals are debauched and hell bound – I was under a lot of pressure, remember?

Let the final judgement begin. I was awake before my alarm went off, grabbed a breakfast I thought I might end up throwing up, peed about seventeen times, and walked down the street to the bungy dispatch office. The first thing they do is empty your pockets and weigh you (twice, because close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades), and mark your jump number on your hand. Then, it's onto a bus, driving outside of Queenstown, first to the Kawarau River Bridge, 47 m and the world's first bungy. After a short drop-off, it's another twenty minutes, up a dirt road and onto farmland, to the gorge cut by the Nevis River.

Up a hill we climb, and the platform comes into view. It's not just a little building on the edge of a sheer cliff – it's a little building held on tight cables in the middle of the valley. The first thing we had to do was slip our legs through a harness, a jumble of cords and clips that all presumably do something life-saving. Try to stand on one foot and guide the other through a harness loop. Jaysus. Once all the straps were tightened, we were weighed again, and that number got scrawled on the other hand.

For the debrief, there were only two guidelines: the first was to spread your arms and jump headfirst. The second was to pull a release on your foot after the first two bounces of the bungy cord, so that you could sit up and be more comfortable rather than inverted and feeling the blood rush to the same head that's frantically trying to figure out why you're still alive after pulling that ridiculously stupid stunt. With that, it was into the brisk morning air, strapped into a little box guided by a pulley to the jump station that felt like it was miles away. And of course there would only be a grate floor, so that you could have a scenic view in all directions as you went over to the point of no return.

I won't say that I wasn't nervous, because I was scared out of my wits. But I wasn't as scared out of my wits as I thought I was supposed to be. Actually, I was pretty stoked to be out in the open air in the middle of the gorge, ready to leap – interrupted every so often by a lurch of the stomach when I saw someone else jump.

The enclosed, suspended platform was a squat spot that could only hold about two dozen people. A waiting area lined the sides, while the front wall was missing, save for a tiny metal platform big enough for two feet. Two bungy guides were busy in here, gearing up a jumper by attaching the heavy bungy to loops on the feet, bringing them to the edge, and working all the switches and levers to bring them back to solid ground again in one piece. The tiny cart that connected the platform to the hillside was always moving too, bringing people back and forth and keeping everything moving pretty quickly.

I don't know how to describe the atmosphere in that little room, but let me try. It was the bated breath of anticipation fuelled by adrenaline and terror. Not terror for life or safety (I don't think it ever crossed my mind that something would go wrong), but rather terror for a bodily sensation that is overwhelming in its sudden novelty. If you haven't bungy jumped before, then no other experience is even remotely similar to this one, and you know that and know how it works but have no idea how you're going to handle it.

There's not much worse than waiting, after one jumper comes back up, to see if you're going to be next or if you're going to have another few minutes of grace. The only thing worse, in fact, comes after you've been called, after getting the bungy attached to your feet (and having small talk with the executioner kind employee, kind of like when your dentist asks you about school while drilling into your mouth), and after you shuffle over to the platform that sticks out into the sky. That's where you realize that, sure enough, you're going to have to do this. Now.

3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

I really was able to hold my hand out a few moments before getting called forward and keep it still. I really did get to the ledge and have a stirring feeling in the pit of my stomach that there really was no way I was going to back to do this. I'd be relatively fine once I started the fall, but how could I possibly make that leap? Go from safety into the nothingness just past the open door. It was the truest fear I think I've ever experienced, and maybe that's why you only have a few seconds in this position, so that the enormity of the situation never really sets in.

Somehow, I just did it. I didn't realize a guy could scream and bawl out that loud.

The fall was unlike anything else. The world shoots past you faster than I would have ever imagined, a jumble of colours and blurs and headrush. The first second was the worst, a sudden feeling of being completely detached. And that makes sense – when else are you suspended in midair like this? I don't like admitting defeat, but words on a page can't adequately summon up what this experience was. Let's just say that it was, all at once, a stark realization of mortality, and a belief in absolute immortality.

Down in 8.5 seconds, bounce, a smaller descent and bounce, trying to get my bearings long enough to pull the foot cord and sit upright. It must have only taken two minutes before they were dropping a counterweight to pull me back to the loading dock, but it felt like time outside of time in a way that I've never felt before or even believed possible. The video they give you (well, sell at ridiculous markup, but you need your proof) is a good reminder, but the jump that I did wasn't a visual experience – it was every sense and maybe even a few other that you don't think about, and so watching it is something altogether different from doing it.

When I got back to Queenstown, I treated myself to a Fergburger, a signature meal in the city – the restaurant was packed to the rafters, which I'll take to be a good sign. I picked up a Sweet Bambi – wild Fiordland deer, lettuce, Thai plum chutney, red onion, and aioli. What part of the deer did they use? I think all of it, judging by the size of this thing. The side of fries was a bad idea.

Sufficiently full on venison and adrenaline, I unexpectedly ran into Rory from Invercargill before I met up with Alan from Arrowtown, my Queenstown tiki tour guide who offered me a bed back here for a few nights. There's snow in the forecast, but hopefully we'll get out for another look around over the weekend, to see a few more sights in the area before I head over the Crown Ranges to Wanaka.

First thing though, I want a solid sleep tonight, reassuring myself every so often that, when I put my feet down, there's solid ground beneath them. I don't want to go and do it again right away, but I will always have the awareness that I am capable of jumping off the edge. From here on, no matter what happens, there will never come a time that I didn't do this. And that's obvious, but it still only really makes sense now that I've actually done it and felt it myself.

I love it when things like that happen.

Cheers,
rb