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Freeballing

May 16, 2011 Friends / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Stories
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It took us a while to pull Tim C up after his first jump just because Dan gets loqua­cious and we had asked him about his tour in Afghanistan. Tim C just rolled with it, though. After com­ing up, he just tossed the hel­met and hel­met cam onto the bridge and set up for the sec­ond jump:

With­out the hel­met, or even a sweat­shirt, Tim C was def­i­nitely the free-​est of all jumpers. You’ll have to ask him if that was a good thing or not.

Now that I’ve got this checked off my list, I’m get­ting two ques­tions a lot.

The first is if I would go again. I def­i­nitely would. Dan men­tioned that this is his “fall­back” bridge since ho never has prob­lems jump­ing from here, but there are other bridges he likes more. He men­tioned that one of his favorites is Weitch­pec, and if we wanted, we should shoot him a mes­sage and he would let us know when he was going to that loca­tion. Appar­ently it’s a higher bridge in an even more beau­ti­ful area. We also asked him about dif­fer­ence bridge height makes, and he men­tioned that higher jumps obvi­ously give you more freefall time, but shorter jumps give you a stronger bounce at more Gs.

The other ques­tion is what I’m going to do next year. That is a tough one; it will be tough indeed to top the last two years. Andrew P sug­gested naked BASE jump­ing. (Tim C demands that if we do go BASE jump­ing, I need to do the Bat­man cos­tume.) There have also been sug­ges­tions of hang-​gliding. I dunno about that, from my ini­tial research, it looks both more expen­sive and less fun than bungee jump­ing. Per­haps I’ll just have to orga­nize a round of The Most Dan­ger­ous Game. (Either version.)

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Safety First

May 16, 2011 Friends / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Stories / Videos
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Tim C was a bit ner­vous when it was his turn to jump, due to the guy between us get­ting slightly hurt. We had no idea, he was com­pletely silent for the entire jump, but when he pulled him back up, he was quite pale, and calmly stated in a low voice that his balls “really hurt.” Turns out, he had kept his legs together and the cord clipped him. After a bit of cajol­ing from Dan and his friends, he decided to jump again, but back­wards, so there was no chance of get­ting caught on the cord again.

With that in mind, here’s Tim C’s jump!

And the video:

(Down­load)

I swear, when you watch the video, it looks and sounds like Tim C died! How­ever, it was just the hel­met cam com­ing off the hel­met and smack­ing around a lot. Luck­ily, there is a backup strap, à la Wiimote. He also got a bit of rope rash on the thigh, but not nearly as bad as the guy before him.

Thank You Sir May I Have Another?

May 16, 2011 Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Stories / Videos
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I think the sec­ond jump was scarier than the first one!

When you are psych­ing your­self up for the first one, everything’s great! There’s a lot of pos­i­tive energy on the bridge, the instruc­tions were sim­ple and clear, and you’re think­ing to your­self, “This is going to kick ass!”

When you are pulled back up, Dan asks you, “Do you want to jump for­wards or back­wards?” Not jump­ing again isn’t even to be con­sid­ered. But it has to cross your mind. Your heart is start­ing to slow down again, but the adren­a­line is def­i­nitely still flow­ing, and there’s a tiny voice inside say­ing, “Yes, that was awe­some, but you know you should have died, right?”

I def­i­nitely did not jump when the count­down hit one the sec­ond time. But I did jump:

And here’s video!


(Down­load)

Peo­ple have been ask­ing me how it com­pares to sky­div­ing. I think this was more exhil­a­rat­ing! I think there are two main rea­sons for this -

First, you’re doing it on your own. (Yes, I know I could have done sky­div­ing that way, but I can’t com­pare to what I haven’t done.) When we were jump­ing out of the plane, I didn’t even have a chance to freak out before he did. With bungee jump­ing, I had to make a con­scious deci­sion to jump, and there was plenty of time to freak out. (Espe­cially with the sec­ond time!)

The other rea­son is that with sky­div­ing, you are so far up, it’s a bit incom­pre­hen­si­ble. Every­thing below looks like minia­tures, and you ques­tion if it’s real. (Sky­div­ing at an unfa­mil­iar loca­tion prob­a­bly com­pounded this for me.) With bungee jump­ing, things couldn’t be more real. I just drove over the bridge I’m about to jump from. I can see the rip­ples in the water and the grav­elbed underneath.

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