While we were jump­ing, Dan told us some great sto­ries about bungee jump­ing and just his inter­est­ing life.

Turns out, he first got into bungee jump­ing by way of mountaineering/​climbing/​rappelling. He ran into the Kock­el­man Broth­ers, who were pio­neers of bungee jump­ing. (And John, the older brother, was an engi­neer­ing stu­dent at UCD!) How­ever, he had dif­fer­ences of opin­ion with them about jump styles and equip­ment, so he went off on his own and made Icarus.

He also told us about how dan­ger­ous the area around this bridge could be. Hum­boldt County is famous for their meth labs and pot farms, so you want to be very care­ful where you go. And then there’s the dan­gers of nature as well. Dan likes to camp near the bridge the night before. How­ever, there is no recep­tion in the area, so one night, he started fol­low­ing the riverbed back towards town to make a call. About a quarter-​mile down the river, he noticed that there was a bear shad­ow­ing him on the other bank. The water was only about six inches high, so the bear could have eas­ily charged across the river to attack him. He only had a hand­gun on him for pro­tec­tion, and told him­self that he was never com­ing back out here with­out a rifle.

So after we all jumped, Dan showed us both the pis­tol and rifle he had in the Jeep. The rifle was a MAS-​49/​56 that he had got­ten sur­plus for $125 (it now goes for around $800). He also mod­i­fied from 7.5mm French ammo to the more com­monly found .308. And he let us all fire it.

He then fired off the rest of the rounds in that mag­a­zine. (He hadn’t fin­ished con­vert­ing the mag­a­zines yet, and the shorter .308 ammo doesn’t sit quite right.)

Tim C and him hit it off quite well after that, as you can imag­ine. Turns out, Dan, being a com­bat engi­neer and all, is really into guns, and also mod­i­fy­ing and machin­ing his own. He has the same .50 cal­iber gun as Tim C, and has made a sec­ond one. He also told tim C about a 1,000 yard range in the area where he can fire it.

We (well, mostly the two of them) kept talk­ing for a while after we were done jump­ing. Then a black SUV with a yel­low light rack came to one end of the bridge and just stayed there for a while, so we felt it was a good idea to pack up and move on. Turns out, it was just a mail truck, but still.

So yeah, Dan’s a really cool guy, and I look for­ward to our next adven­ture with him… bungee jump­ing or otherwise.