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.