Contents copyright © 2012 by Steve Hoffenberg. All rights reserved.
Eternal Moment of Falling
by Steve Hoffenberg
I am standing on the Pipeline Bridge near Queenstown, New Zealand, looking down the canyon walls at the milky blue waters of the Shotover River more than 300 feet below. The rock and scrub brush of the canyon wall on the left bank is deep in shade. By comparison the wall on the right appears blazing in the full sunlight, except for the long thin shadow of the narrow footbridge, creating a dark line extending all the way from the terrace down to the river. It is an imposing abyss into which I contemplate falling.
I am waiting for more people to arrive by shuttle bus from town before the action can begin. Those folks have been delayed half an hour while the site operators were deciding whether or not the weather conditions were too windy to proceed. I have arrived here by mountain bike with five other riders and two guides from an outfitter called Gravity Action. We have ridden down from nearby Coronet Peak, descending about 2000 feet on steep single track trail and the treacherous Skipper’s Canyon dirt road hacked into the upper portion of the cliff wall. We mountain bikers are all waiting, but I am the only one now standing on the bridge. The others are leaving me alone with my thoughts at this point, because I am the only one of that group who plans to jump off the bridge.
***
I am 10 years old. My friend Fred and I are playing outside near his house. We are climbing trees along the narrow strip of grass between the road and the sidewalk on the quiet street in suburban Hamden, Connecticut. We have successfully scaled a couple of mid-sized trees, pulling ourselves up onto successive branches, daring to climb 10 or 12 feet above the ground. We approach a larger tree along the grass strip, but discover that its lowest branch is too high for either of us to reach. I am an inch or two taller than Fred, and I can touch the branch if I jump, but I can’t reach up high enough to grab onto it. I remove the leather belt from my pants, and I swing an end over the branch. Leaning against the trunk of the tree, up on my tippy toes, I bring the two ends of the belt together to form a handhold that is secure enough to pull myself up. I snake my legs up the tree trunk until I am able to haul first my torso then my legs onto the branch. Standing on the perch, I look down triumphantly, then I turn back up and keep on climbing, easily grabbing the higher branches which are spaced more closely together. When I am 15 or 20 feet off the ground, I look across at the nearby houses, level with their second story windows. I look back down at Fred, still standing on the ground. “I’ll be down in a second to show you how I did it,” I yell. I move my right foot down onto a branch about a foot lower than the one on which I am standing. The instant I put my weight onto the lower branch, it snaps off cleanly, and before I can think a single thought, I am free-falling backwards off the tree into space.
That brief moment, during which I am falling from the tree but before I lose consciousness, is forever burned into my memory in a form of hyper-consciousness, such that I still remember it clearly now, decades later, as though it happened just a moment ago. So intensely is this the case, that I sometimes wonder if it is a premonition of the moment of my death, a mental bridge from that instant in my past to the instant of the termination of my future.
I black out long before I hit the ground. Fred later tells me that I landed almost exactly flat on my back, with a small bounce, smack on the strip of grass between the asphalt roadway and the cement sidewalk.
I awaken on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, the EMT asking me how many fingers he is holding up, when’s my birthday, and who is President. Considering the snide little twit I am at that age, I immediately suspect that I must be brain damaged because I have given him truthful answers rather than fabricating ones just to cause a scare among the grownups staring in through the back door of the ambulance. But despite the loss of consciousness, or perhaps because of it, I am miraculously uninjured in the fall. No broken bones, no cuts, no bruises, nada.
***
Alison, one of the mountain bikers whom I have only met that afternoon, approaches me on the Pipeline Bridge. She is slight of build, with dark brown hair and a small face that has rounded features. She’s about half my age, and she’s brimming with youthful spunk. On the downhill single track, she was the only one riding ahead of my pace, although I’m certain that either of the guides could have dusted us both blindfolded. Alison says she has bungy jumped three times, but never at the Pipeline. She lives in Queenstown near the base of the gondola that leads 1400 feet up Bob’s Peak to the Skyline complex, an attraction with shops, restaurants, and activities which include a bungy jump called The Ledge. She says that at her home, she can hear the screams of the bungy jumpers.
Alison works for one of the tour operators in Skipper’s Canyon, driving around a big-ass four wheel drive truck on the dirt roads, pointing out the sights to the tourists bumping along inside. She is on her day off. “Busman’s holiday,” I had commented to her earlier, although the term was apparently lost on one of her generation.
“How you feeling?” she asks with her charming Kiwi accent, the subtleties of which after two weeks here I am just beginning to distinguish from the Aussie variety. With the accent, her words sound approximately thus: “Hah yuh failing?” The implications of the last word are not lost on me.
“A little nervous,” I reply.
“Yeah,” she says, “I can hear it in your voice.”
The Pipeline Bridge is the longest single span suspension bridge in the Southern Hemisphere, but it is narrow enough that I can touch both its side railings at the same time. It was originally constructed back in the 1860’s, encompassing an actual pipeline to pump water across the canyon for gold sluicing operations. Over its useful life as a gold mining area, Skipper’s Canyon produced the second most gold of any area in the world, short only of the Yukon in Canada. The New Zealand government has long since banned further gold mining in the canyon, to preserve what remains of its natural beauty, with the side benefit of enhancing its use as an adventure sports mecca.
The Pipeline Bridge was renovated in 1994 to host New Zealand’s highest commercial bungy jumping operation from a fixed structure. To call the Pipeline Bridge a “fixed structure,” however, is being magnanimous. It undulates noticeably from the weight of even a single person walking on it, despite the seemingly sturdy construction of its steel cables. As I stand on it, the entire bridge is swaying in the gusty winds. I am thinking about the wind, remembering.
***
I am 20 years old. It is a Saturday afternoon, and I am in a room on the second floor of a non-descript building at a tiny airport in Duanesburg, NY, 20 miles outside of Albany. About 50 people are seated about the room, mostly on the floor. Five of us from the University of Vermont (UVM) have driven three plus hours from Burlington that day to be here. We are about to receive several hours of instruction prior to our planned skydives the next morning. The head instructor is giving his introductory remarks, and at one point he asks, “Has anyone here never been in an airplane?”
I reluctantly raise my hand, as do two others in the room. During the pregnant pause I wonder whether the instructor might not allow us groundlubbers to make the skydives.
Then the instructor says, “After you’ve done this, you guys will have the distinction of having taken off in an airplane, but never having landed in one.” People laugh, and the atmosphere relaxes. But I don’t.
***
Looking down from the Pipeline Bridge, I am pondering the fact that I have never seen anyone jump from this bridge, and I will be the first to go when the others arrive. I hawk a loogie over the side and watch it drop toward the river, but I lose sight of the blob long before it reaches the bottom of the canyon. Imagining the fall of a human body through the space below, factoring in the acceleration rate from stationary and the drop speed which will be shy of terminal velocity, I estimate I will experience about two seconds of free fall before the pull of the bungy cord kicks in, assuming the cord doesn’t break.
***
It is 3:00am on Sunday morning in Duanesburg. I am lying in my sleeping bag indoors, in a room with all the other wannabee jumpers similarly sprawled about the floor. I should be sleeping like the others, but I am shaking uncontrollably. Our skydives slated for the coming dawn are to be from 3,000 feet, and I have never before fallen a distance greater than from the tree. These skydives are to be static line jumps. (This is years before the now-common practice of tandem jumps for first timers.)
The instructors have warned us of various mishaps that can occur, the most frequent of which are poor landings resulting in broken ankles and the like. I am not worried at all about such possibilities, despite the fact that I have rolled my ankles several times in the previous year playing Ultimate Frisbee. I am particularly worried about the rare situation the instructors refer to as a streamer. If the static line successfully pulls out the parachute but the canopy does not pop open to catch the air, the chute will simply flail around uselessly, like the narrow strips of decorative ribbons on the handlebar ends of a children’s bicycle. As the skydiver plummets towards the ground, he or she will have about six seconds to manually throw out the reserve chute before it is too late. I am worried because I am haunted by the memory of the tree incident, and I do not know if I will black out when I jump from the airplane. Even if I do not black out, I do not know if I will have the wherewithal to properly deploy the reserve chute. Therefore, if my main chute becomes a streamer, I will die. Or worse yet, I will become severely mangled and live out a painful existence for a very long time. I am scared shitless.
***
A man walks out past me on the Pipeline Bridge to check on the equipment in the jumping platform area in the middle of the bridge. He is dressed in a well worn T-shirt and blue jeans, and looks to be in his late 50’s. He is the Jump Master. He’s a little old for this business, I think, then I realize I’m no spring chicken myself.
Alison wanders over to talk to Jump Master, and a minute later, I wander over to listen in. He is describing how the various pieces of equipment are all rated for this many or that many jumps. In addition to their jump ratings, the bungy cords themselves are rated for a maximum number of hours of sunlight exposure. (Ever pulled on a household rubber band that has been baking in the summer sun day after day?) Two thick bungy cords are clipped to the metal bridge railing with locking carabiners. These are the ends that will be hitched to the jumpers. The cords hang straight from the railing, loop far down, then back up under the bridge, out of my sight, and through some means unfathomable to me are secured to a massive metal blocking device suspended at chest height behind the jumping platform by numerous wires, ropes, and cables. Jump Master tells us that the thinner of the two bungy cords is for jumpers weighing up to 12-1/2 stones. The thicker of the cords is for jumpers from 11 to 16 stones. Elsewhere are cords for even heavier jumpers. During the entire time I have been in New Zealand, this is the only instance I have heard the use of the unit stone, which I vaguely recall being about 15 pounds. The term seems oddly appropriate for measuring something that will plummet like a rock toward the river below.
I look down at the number scrawled on the back of my right hand in black marker during the weigh-in at the log cabin near one end of the bridge: 12-1/4. I hold up the back of my hand, and I ask, “Which cord will I jump on?”
Jump Master points to the thinner cord. “Probably that one,” he says, “It hasn’t been used for a few hours, so it’s recovered enough that it can handle your weight no problem.”
I gulp, hard.
Adjacent to the jumping platform on the bridge is an old dentist’s chair, like the ones in use when I was a kid in the 1960’s, back when our family dentist drilled without Novocain. I know without asking that the dentist’s chair on the bridge will be used not for how it positions the occupant’s head, but for how it positions the legs. I sit down in the dentist’s chair, and I can feel my breathing growing more tense.
“Relax,” says Jump Master, “it’ll be about another 10 minutes.”
He and Alison walk away off the bridge. I run my tongue along the inside edge of my teeth, along the lower right second molar. The previous day I had cracked off a sizable chunk of that tooth while chewing on granola during breakfast. I was feeling no pain whatsoever from the tooth, just the jagged edge of the recently exposed enamel against the soft side of the tongue. The tooth immediately in front of that one had succumbed to a similar mishap about a year earlier, requiring extensive drilling culminating in the installation of a porcelain crown. I knew that this newly cracked tooth would probably require the same treatment. That very morning, I had called my current dentist’s office in Massachusetts for an appointment on the first morning I would be back in town the following week. I jump to my feet. I cannot possibly relax in the dentist’s chair on the bridge.
***
It is 7:00am on Sunday morning in Duanesburg. I am standing under the clear blue sky with a small group about 100 yards from the runway. I am wearing the white skydiving jumpsuit, a purposely baggy type of coverall that makes me appear to be The Young Elvis in The Old Elvis’s clothing. The packed parachute is down at my feet, waiting to be put on. The first planeload of skydivers has already departed and jumped. The second planeload has recently taken off. I am scheduled to be in the next planeload. I am still scared to death, and my stomach feels as though I will throw up any second even though I haven’t eaten anything in the last 12 hours. Nevertheless, I believe that I will go ahead with the skydive because the embarrassment of backing out now would be the only thing worse than the terror of following through.
One of the UVM gang, a guy named Richard whom I had only met the previous day, was in the first group to go. He has just returned to the airport terminal in the recovery vehicle from the drop zone. He has a shit-eating-grin on his face. Someone asks him how it went, and he gushes superlatives. A few minutes later, the plane lands back on the runway. The door opens, and to our surprise, the second group of skydivers steps back out of the plane onto the tarmac, carrying their parachute packs.
“It’s gotten too windy,” one of them says when they approach, “They won’t let us jump right now.”
We had heard during the previous day’s instructions that the round canopies of our static line parachutes were only considered safe in winds under 10 knots, at least in the hands of us virgins. The rectangular chutes used by the experienced skydivers could be safely handled in winds about double that. Wind constraints are one of the reasons that skydives, like hot air balloon launches, often occur at dawn and dusk when the air tends to be at its most calm of the day. The report from the tower is that the winds aloft are now 20 to 30 knots.
We take off our jumpsuits and hang around the dinky airport playing cards and twiddling our thumbs, waiting to see if the winds will abate. Around noon, the instructors advise us that the latest forecast calls for the winds to calm late in the day, around sunset. Those of us from UVM huddle and decide to depart on our long drive home rather than hang around another six or seven hours on the chance we might be able to skydive. Because we have already paid for our jumps, we are entitled to come back another day at no additional charge, but I already know it is unlikely that I will return. I am about 2% disappointed that I won’t get to skydive, and 98% relieved that divine intervention has spared me from further confronting my own fear of falling.
***
Standing on the Pipeline Bridge swaying in the wind gusts, I wonder if by a strange twist of fate, my bungy jump will be cancelled, as was the skydive, on the count of wind. This time, however, I am determined to stick it out. If need be, I will tell the other mountain bikers to go on without me. I am prepared to stay here until the jump operators drag me away as the last glimmers of twilight fade. And, I have another entire day at my disposal before I leave town. If need be, I can return to the scene to try again tomorrow.
While I’m waiting, I compare and contrast the likely phenomenological experiences of skydiving vs. bungy jumping, and I note two differences. First, with bungy jumping, once the participant jumps, he or she does not have to take any further action, even if something goes wrong. If the bungy cord fails catastrophically above the shallow water of the Shotover River, I won’t need to worry about deploying a reserve chute. I’ll be a dead man no matter what I do.
Second, bungy jumping produces the intense effect, described as ground rush, wherein the jumper sees the high speed approach of the ground surface in a close up way that no skydiver would ever see unless he or she will not live to tell about it.
I retreat to the log cabin to use the toilet for the second time. When I plunge earthward, the last thing I want to do is pee in my pants.
***
I am at the tail end of my trip in New Zealand. The bulk of my time here has been spent on a Pedaltours organized road bicycling tour of the South Island, starting in Christchurch and finishing in Queenstown. On the eve of my scheduled bungy jump, I am standing with the rest of the group from the road bike tour on the observation deck outside the Skyline complex at the top of the gondola ride on Bob’s Peak, overlooking downtown Queenstown. This is to be our last time together as a group. As the sun is setting, we look out at the full moon rising over The Remarkables mountain range, the shimmering Lake Wakatipu, and the city lights just twinkling to life. With wisps of pink clouds and the twilight on the mountains, the scene is indeed sublime.
We are also looking down at the bungy jump site called The Ledge, about 100 feet below us. The jumping platform is in a hut built on a metal support frame cantilevered out from the cliff rocks. The bungy drop distance here is listed as 47 meters (154 feet). A woman has just been strapped into a body harness and hitched to the bungy cord. She literally runs off the open end of the platform out into space above Queenstown. She screams as she falls, then bounces three quarters of the way back up, then falls again and bounces again. She screams, and she SCREAMS! Then they haul her back up into the hut. It is the first time I have ever witnessed a bungy jump in person. With the body harness, I note, she remains upright for most of the trip. I know that an ankle tie up, which they do at The Pipeline, results in a head first fall.
One of the guides on the road bike tour, Peter, has a few more years on him than I have on me, and a few less gray hairs. He has the sinewy physique and tanned skin of a lifelong outdoorsman, and among the ten folks on the road bike tour, he is the only one who can clearly outride me. Previously, he had worked as a bungy jump operator. He says he has personally done more than 60 jumps. He relates to us two stories from his bungy repertoire. The first is of a woman who stood out on the platform, terrified, for a full 17 minutes before finally proceeding to jump. God, I think, don’t let me do that. The second story is of a jump operator performing a personal jump. The man had strapped himself into a sit harness similar to those used by rock climbers, but had failed to have another operator check that it was properly fitted and securely tightened. When he jumped, he bounced once, then twice, then bounced out of the harness. He spent some quality time in hospital with a broken pelvis among numerous other injuries. God,don’t let me do that either.
***
The morning of my scheduled bungy jump, I am sitting at the coin-operated internet terminal (NZ$2 for 10 minutes) in the lobby of my hotel in Queenstown. I am searching the web for bungy jumping accident statistics. One site tells me that roughly 10 million people worldwide have done commercial bungy jumps. Another site tells me that the death rate for bungy jumping is about two deaths per million jumps. So, for about 20 people, the swan dive of a bungy jump was their swan song.
I have tacked on a couple of extra days in Queenstown at the end of my trip for the expressed purpose of the bungy jump. I could even reasonably say that it was the bike tour that was tacked onto the front of my bungy jumping trip to New Zealand. The jump is something I have been thinking about doing for years. Yet I have passed on several opportunities to bungy jump back in the States, most notably during business trips to trade shows in Las Vegas. I have steadfastly maintained that I would only bungy jump in New Zealand, the birthplace of it as a commercial activity. Perhaps this is because the people I know who have bungy jumped have all done it in New Zealand, including my younger sister, Robin. Perhaps it is because I didn’t think that I would ever really get here, and therefore I could forever leave the bungy jump as an unfulfilled possibility, something which I could think about or even talk about, but never actually have to do.
***
At last the shuttle bus arrives at the Pipeline Bridge, and a couple dozen people appear at the log cabin, most of them young and Japanese. The levels of both physical and vocal activity rise exponentially. Jump Master announces that before the bungy jumping will begin, two people are going to ride the Flying Fox, a thick steel cable strung taut across the canyon at bridge height. One of them is Alison, who is being strapped into a body
harness. While it does not restrain the arms (or the legs), the harness is eerily reminiscent of a strait jacket, with its heavy canvas body and the straps and buckles at the back side. “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” I mumble, smirking at how incredibly appropriate the title of Ken Kesey’s 1960’s novel is for the entire scene in which I am currently immersed.
Alison glides past me at eye level, smiling as she dangles from the steel cable less than 20 feet in front of the bridge. She is lying flat out in the body position of the ride’s namesake, wriggling her arms and legs. I flash her a thumbs up. She returns the gesture as she slides away across the canyon.
Jump Master motions for me to join him back in the middle of the bridge. People are now milling about on the bridge and in the viewing area at the end of the bridge. Jump Master ropes off the jumping area to keep a clear space. I take a seat in the dentist’s chair. He hands me a long red nylon sling and tells me to hold it as he attends to some of the rigging. Another operator, Ankle Man, appears. Folding up a large purple towel, he leans down to my legs in the chair. He wraps the towel around and between my ankles. He takes the red sling from my hand and wraps it over the towel, around and between and under and around and over. He pulls the knot uncomfortably tight, then wraps a wide Velcro strap around the whole affair. I am oddly comforted by the discomfort of the tightness of this affair because I know there is no way I am possibly going to slip out of this knot. Another operator, Bungy Man appears. He unclips the bungy cord from the railing then attaches it to a protruding loop of the sling at my ankles using two locking carabiners with their gates in opposing positions. I am secure in the knowledge that there is no way that both the carabiners could possibly fail.
Ankle Man motions for me to stand up. He gives me brief instructions for how I am to jump, diving out, away from the bridge. I know from past conversations about bungy jumping that diving away is important for two reasons. First, it reduces the chance of becoming entangled in the cord, particularly on the bounce back up. Second, diving away creates a proper arc so that the jumper does not plummet feet first. With the ankle tie up, merely hopping off the platform feet first would result in a full length body whiplash when the bungy cord catches at the bottom of the fall, which I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about.
I take a deep breath, and I notice that I am now extraordinarily calm. All the recent anticipatory anxiety that I have harbored over the prospect of this jump, and all the years of mental baggage from the tree fall and the incomplete skydiving excursion have totally vanished.
I must make my way about four feet from the dentist’s chair out onto the platform, but my legs are bound together so tightly that I can barely move them. I waddle a few inches at a time. “The bungy shuffle,” Jump Master calls it. He is clipped to the railing in a climber’s sit harness on the far side of the railing, standing out on the jump platform, which only protrudes a couple a feet from the rest of the bridge decking. The gate is open, exposing the side of the bridge to the open air, but I must still duck under the waist high fixed railing, which is no small feat the way I am bound. I bend low and reach under the railing with one arm to grab it from the far side. I am exceedingly careful that I do not fall off accidentally while climbing onto the platform, so that I can subsequently jump off intentionally. Once I’m standing on the far side of the railing, I feel rock steady.
Bungy Man is also clipped in securely to the bridge via a sit harness, still inside the railing. He crouches down and reaches out to position the bungy cord properly between my feet.“You’ll feel the pull down on your legs now,” he says, “That’s the weight of the bungy cord.”
I am facing outward, precariously positioned holding onto the railing with both arms to the sides and behind me. Jump Master positions one of his feet with his toes hanging a couple of inches off the edge of the platform to show me where my feet should go. I inch the toes of my shoes over the edge. I look out at the canyon walls, and at the river far below, ready to throw myself into the hands of fate.
Jump Master tells me to look up at the camera, which is overhead on an extended arm. “Smile,” he says, and a flash fires. “Wave to the other jumpers,” he says, pointing to the Japanese delegation to my right on the bridge. “And wave to the spectators,” he says, pointing to the viewing area further away at the end of the bridge.
Everyone is now waving, clapping, and cheering me on, which I find surprising. Considering that a man is about to hurl himself to possible death or disfigurement, I had expected them to be solemn, or at least respectfully quiet, like the gallery surrounding the final green of a PGA tournament. I release the railing with one hand and acknowledge the crowd.
Jump Master reminds me to dive out as far forward as I can, away from the bridge. Mark Spitz, I think, not
Greg Louganis.
Jump Master then begins the countdown. “Five,” he shouts.
“Four,” Ankle Man and Bungy Man join the count.
“Three,” the jumpers-to-be on the bridge add their voices.
“Two,” the spectators chime in.
“One,” everyone yells.
“GO!”
I let go of the railing, I bend at the knees, I rear back, and I lunge forward with gusto, reaching for handfuls of air way out in front of me.
I am lying prone in a Superman flying pose, frozen in both space and time. The silence is profound. The moment is etched into my memory engrams, and I have barely broken the plane of the jumping platform. Then, gravity takes hold, and time suddenly flips from slow motion to fast forward. I am hurtling down head first with tunnel vision perception straight towards the rapidly approaching, very rapidly approaching, extremely rapidly approaching blue water of the river below. I am waiting to feel the tug of the bungy cord at my ankles. I am waiting. And I am still waiting.
I am waiting for more people to arrive by shuttle bus from town before the action can begin. Those folks have been delayed half an hour while the site operators were deciding whether or not the weather conditions were too windy to proceed. I have arrived here by mountain bike with five other riders and two guides from an outfitter called Gravity Action. We have ridden down from nearby Coronet Peak, descending about 2000 feet on steep single track trail and the treacherous Skipper’s Canyon dirt road hacked into the upper portion of the cliff wall. We mountain bikers are all waiting, but I am the only one now standing on the bridge. The others are leaving me alone with my thoughts at this point, because I am the only one of that group who plans to jump off the bridge.
***
I am 10 years old. My friend Fred and I are playing outside near his house. We are climbing trees along the narrow strip of grass between the road and the sidewalk on the quiet street in suburban Hamden, Connecticut. We have successfully scaled a couple of mid-sized trees, pulling ourselves up onto successive branches, daring to climb 10 or 12 feet above the ground. We approach a larger tree along the grass strip, but discover that its lowest branch is too high for either of us to reach. I am an inch or two taller than Fred, and I can touch the branch if I jump, but I can’t reach up high enough to grab onto it. I remove the leather belt from my pants, and I swing an end over the branch. Leaning against the trunk of the tree, up on my tippy toes, I bring the two ends of the belt together to form a handhold that is secure enough to pull myself up. I snake my legs up the tree trunk until I am able to haul first my torso then my legs onto the branch. Standing on the perch, I look down triumphantly, then I turn back up and keep on climbing, easily grabbing the higher branches which are spaced more closely together. When I am 15 or 20 feet off the ground, I look across at the nearby houses, level with their second story windows. I look back down at Fred, still standing on the ground. “I’ll be down in a second to show you how I did it,” I yell. I move my right foot down onto a branch about a foot lower than the one on which I am standing. The instant I put my weight onto the lower branch, it snaps off cleanly, and before I can think a single thought, I am free-falling backwards off the tree into space.
That brief moment, during which I am falling from the tree but before I lose consciousness, is forever burned into my memory in a form of hyper-consciousness, such that I still remember it clearly now, decades later, as though it happened just a moment ago. So intensely is this the case, that I sometimes wonder if it is a premonition of the moment of my death, a mental bridge from that instant in my past to the instant of the termination of my future.
I black out long before I hit the ground. Fred later tells me that I landed almost exactly flat on my back, with a small bounce, smack on the strip of grass between the asphalt roadway and the cement sidewalk.
I awaken on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, the EMT asking me how many fingers he is holding up, when’s my birthday, and who is President. Considering the snide little twit I am at that age, I immediately suspect that I must be brain damaged because I have given him truthful answers rather than fabricating ones just to cause a scare among the grownups staring in through the back door of the ambulance. But despite the loss of consciousness, or perhaps because of it, I am miraculously uninjured in the fall. No broken bones, no cuts, no bruises, nada.
***
Alison, one of the mountain bikers whom I have only met that afternoon, approaches me on the Pipeline Bridge. She is slight of build, with dark brown hair and a small face that has rounded features. She’s about half my age, and she’s brimming with youthful spunk. On the downhill single track, she was the only one riding ahead of my pace, although I’m certain that either of the guides could have dusted us both blindfolded. Alison says she has bungy jumped three times, but never at the Pipeline. She lives in Queenstown near the base of the gondola that leads 1400 feet up Bob’s Peak to the Skyline complex, an attraction with shops, restaurants, and activities which include a bungy jump called The Ledge. She says that at her home, she can hear the screams of the bungy jumpers.
Alison works for one of the tour operators in Skipper’s Canyon, driving around a big-ass four wheel drive truck on the dirt roads, pointing out the sights to the tourists bumping along inside. She is on her day off. “Busman’s holiday,” I had commented to her earlier, although the term was apparently lost on one of her generation.
“How you feeling?” she asks with her charming Kiwi accent, the subtleties of which after two weeks here I am just beginning to distinguish from the Aussie variety. With the accent, her words sound approximately thus: “Hah yuh failing?” The implications of the last word are not lost on me.
“A little nervous,” I reply.
“Yeah,” she says, “I can hear it in your voice.”
The Pipeline Bridge is the longest single span suspension bridge in the Southern Hemisphere, but it is narrow enough that I can touch both its side railings at the same time. It was originally constructed back in the 1860’s, encompassing an actual pipeline to pump water across the canyon for gold sluicing operations. Over its useful life as a gold mining area, Skipper’s Canyon produced the second most gold of any area in the world, short only of the Yukon in Canada. The New Zealand government has long since banned further gold mining in the canyon, to preserve what remains of its natural beauty, with the side benefit of enhancing its use as an adventure sports mecca.
The Pipeline Bridge was renovated in 1994 to host New Zealand’s highest commercial bungy jumping operation from a fixed structure. To call the Pipeline Bridge a “fixed structure,” however, is being magnanimous. It undulates noticeably from the weight of even a single person walking on it, despite the seemingly sturdy construction of its steel cables. As I stand on it, the entire bridge is swaying in the gusty winds. I am thinking about the wind, remembering.
***
I am 20 years old. It is a Saturday afternoon, and I am in a room on the second floor of a non-descript building at a tiny airport in Duanesburg, NY, 20 miles outside of Albany. About 50 people are seated about the room, mostly on the floor. Five of us from the University of Vermont (UVM) have driven three plus hours from Burlington that day to be here. We are about to receive several hours of instruction prior to our planned skydives the next morning. The head instructor is giving his introductory remarks, and at one point he asks, “Has anyone here never been in an airplane?”
I reluctantly raise my hand, as do two others in the room. During the pregnant pause I wonder whether the instructor might not allow us groundlubbers to make the skydives.
Then the instructor says, “After you’ve done this, you guys will have the distinction of having taken off in an airplane, but never having landed in one.” People laugh, and the atmosphere relaxes. But I don’t.
***
Looking down from the Pipeline Bridge, I am pondering the fact that I have never seen anyone jump from this bridge, and I will be the first to go when the others arrive. I hawk a loogie over the side and watch it drop toward the river, but I lose sight of the blob long before it reaches the bottom of the canyon. Imagining the fall of a human body through the space below, factoring in the acceleration rate from stationary and the drop speed which will be shy of terminal velocity, I estimate I will experience about two seconds of free fall before the pull of the bungy cord kicks in, assuming the cord doesn’t break.
***
It is 3:00am on Sunday morning in Duanesburg. I am lying in my sleeping bag indoors, in a room with all the other wannabee jumpers similarly sprawled about the floor. I should be sleeping like the others, but I am shaking uncontrollably. Our skydives slated for the coming dawn are to be from 3,000 feet, and I have never before fallen a distance greater than from the tree. These skydives are to be static line jumps. (This is years before the now-common practice of tandem jumps for first timers.)
The instructors have warned us of various mishaps that can occur, the most frequent of which are poor landings resulting in broken ankles and the like. I am not worried at all about such possibilities, despite the fact that I have rolled my ankles several times in the previous year playing Ultimate Frisbee. I am particularly worried about the rare situation the instructors refer to as a streamer. If the static line successfully pulls out the parachute but the canopy does not pop open to catch the air, the chute will simply flail around uselessly, like the narrow strips of decorative ribbons on the handlebar ends of a children’s bicycle. As the skydiver plummets towards the ground, he or she will have about six seconds to manually throw out the reserve chute before it is too late. I am worried because I am haunted by the memory of the tree incident, and I do not know if I will black out when I jump from the airplane. Even if I do not black out, I do not know if I will have the wherewithal to properly deploy the reserve chute. Therefore, if my main chute becomes a streamer, I will die. Or worse yet, I will become severely mangled and live out a painful existence for a very long time. I am scared shitless.
***
A man walks out past me on the Pipeline Bridge to check on the equipment in the jumping platform area in the middle of the bridge. He is dressed in a well worn T-shirt and blue jeans, and looks to be in his late 50’s. He is the Jump Master. He’s a little old for this business, I think, then I realize I’m no spring chicken myself.
Alison wanders over to talk to Jump Master, and a minute later, I wander over to listen in. He is describing how the various pieces of equipment are all rated for this many or that many jumps. In addition to their jump ratings, the bungy cords themselves are rated for a maximum number of hours of sunlight exposure. (Ever pulled on a household rubber band that has been baking in the summer sun day after day?) Two thick bungy cords are clipped to the metal bridge railing with locking carabiners. These are the ends that will be hitched to the jumpers. The cords hang straight from the railing, loop far down, then back up under the bridge, out of my sight, and through some means unfathomable to me are secured to a massive metal blocking device suspended at chest height behind the jumping platform by numerous wires, ropes, and cables. Jump Master tells us that the thinner of the two bungy cords is for jumpers weighing up to 12-1/2 stones. The thicker of the cords is for jumpers from 11 to 16 stones. Elsewhere are cords for even heavier jumpers. During the entire time I have been in New Zealand, this is the only instance I have heard the use of the unit stone, which I vaguely recall being about 15 pounds. The term seems oddly appropriate for measuring something that will plummet like a rock toward the river below.
I look down at the number scrawled on the back of my right hand in black marker during the weigh-in at the log cabin near one end of the bridge: 12-1/4. I hold up the back of my hand, and I ask, “Which cord will I jump on?”
Jump Master points to the thinner cord. “Probably that one,” he says, “It hasn’t been used for a few hours, so it’s recovered enough that it can handle your weight no problem.”
I gulp, hard.
Adjacent to the jumping platform on the bridge is an old dentist’s chair, like the ones in use when I was a kid in the 1960’s, back when our family dentist drilled without Novocain. I know without asking that the dentist’s chair on the bridge will be used not for how it positions the occupant’s head, but for how it positions the legs. I sit down in the dentist’s chair, and I can feel my breathing growing more tense.
“Relax,” says Jump Master, “it’ll be about another 10 minutes.”
He and Alison walk away off the bridge. I run my tongue along the inside edge of my teeth, along the lower right second molar. The previous day I had cracked off a sizable chunk of that tooth while chewing on granola during breakfast. I was feeling no pain whatsoever from the tooth, just the jagged edge of the recently exposed enamel against the soft side of the tongue. The tooth immediately in front of that one had succumbed to a similar mishap about a year earlier, requiring extensive drilling culminating in the installation of a porcelain crown. I knew that this newly cracked tooth would probably require the same treatment. That very morning, I had called my current dentist’s office in Massachusetts for an appointment on the first morning I would be back in town the following week. I jump to my feet. I cannot possibly relax in the dentist’s chair on the bridge.
***
It is 7:00am on Sunday morning in Duanesburg. I am standing under the clear blue sky with a small group about 100 yards from the runway. I am wearing the white skydiving jumpsuit, a purposely baggy type of coverall that makes me appear to be The Young Elvis in The Old Elvis’s clothing. The packed parachute is down at my feet, waiting to be put on. The first planeload of skydivers has already departed and jumped. The second planeload has recently taken off. I am scheduled to be in the next planeload. I am still scared to death, and my stomach feels as though I will throw up any second even though I haven’t eaten anything in the last 12 hours. Nevertheless, I believe that I will go ahead with the skydive because the embarrassment of backing out now would be the only thing worse than the terror of following through.
One of the UVM gang, a guy named Richard whom I had only met the previous day, was in the first group to go. He has just returned to the airport terminal in the recovery vehicle from the drop zone. He has a shit-eating-grin on his face. Someone asks him how it went, and he gushes superlatives. A few minutes later, the plane lands back on the runway. The door opens, and to our surprise, the second group of skydivers steps back out of the plane onto the tarmac, carrying their parachute packs.
“It’s gotten too windy,” one of them says when they approach, “They won’t let us jump right now.”
We had heard during the previous day’s instructions that the round canopies of our static line parachutes were only considered safe in winds under 10 knots, at least in the hands of us virgins. The rectangular chutes used by the experienced skydivers could be safely handled in winds about double that. Wind constraints are one of the reasons that skydives, like hot air balloon launches, often occur at dawn and dusk when the air tends to be at its most calm of the day. The report from the tower is that the winds aloft are now 20 to 30 knots.
We take off our jumpsuits and hang around the dinky airport playing cards and twiddling our thumbs, waiting to see if the winds will abate. Around noon, the instructors advise us that the latest forecast calls for the winds to calm late in the day, around sunset. Those of us from UVM huddle and decide to depart on our long drive home rather than hang around another six or seven hours on the chance we might be able to skydive. Because we have already paid for our jumps, we are entitled to come back another day at no additional charge, but I already know it is unlikely that I will return. I am about 2% disappointed that I won’t get to skydive, and 98% relieved that divine intervention has spared me from further confronting my own fear of falling.
***
Standing on the Pipeline Bridge swaying in the wind gusts, I wonder if by a strange twist of fate, my bungy jump will be cancelled, as was the skydive, on the count of wind. This time, however, I am determined to stick it out. If need be, I will tell the other mountain bikers to go on without me. I am prepared to stay here until the jump operators drag me away as the last glimmers of twilight fade. And, I have another entire day at my disposal before I leave town. If need be, I can return to the scene to try again tomorrow.
While I’m waiting, I compare and contrast the likely phenomenological experiences of skydiving vs. bungy jumping, and I note two differences. First, with bungy jumping, once the participant jumps, he or she does not have to take any further action, even if something goes wrong. If the bungy cord fails catastrophically above the shallow water of the Shotover River, I won’t need to worry about deploying a reserve chute. I’ll be a dead man no matter what I do.
Second, bungy jumping produces the intense effect, described as ground rush, wherein the jumper sees the high speed approach of the ground surface in a close up way that no skydiver would ever see unless he or she will not live to tell about it.
I retreat to the log cabin to use the toilet for the second time. When I plunge earthward, the last thing I want to do is pee in my pants.
***
I am at the tail end of my trip in New Zealand. The bulk of my time here has been spent on a Pedaltours organized road bicycling tour of the South Island, starting in Christchurch and finishing in Queenstown. On the eve of my scheduled bungy jump, I am standing with the rest of the group from the road bike tour on the observation deck outside the Skyline complex at the top of the gondola ride on Bob’s Peak, overlooking downtown Queenstown. This is to be our last time together as a group. As the sun is setting, we look out at the full moon rising over The Remarkables mountain range, the shimmering Lake Wakatipu, and the city lights just twinkling to life. With wisps of pink clouds and the twilight on the mountains, the scene is indeed sublime.
We are also looking down at the bungy jump site called The Ledge, about 100 feet below us. The jumping platform is in a hut built on a metal support frame cantilevered out from the cliff rocks. The bungy drop distance here is listed as 47 meters (154 feet). A woman has just been strapped into a body harness and hitched to the bungy cord. She literally runs off the open end of the platform out into space above Queenstown. She screams as she falls, then bounces three quarters of the way back up, then falls again and bounces again. She screams, and she SCREAMS! Then they haul her back up into the hut. It is the first time I have ever witnessed a bungy jump in person. With the body harness, I note, she remains upright for most of the trip. I know that an ankle tie up, which they do at The Pipeline, results in a head first fall.
One of the guides on the road bike tour, Peter, has a few more years on him than I have on me, and a few less gray hairs. He has the sinewy physique and tanned skin of a lifelong outdoorsman, and among the ten folks on the road bike tour, he is the only one who can clearly outride me. Previously, he had worked as a bungy jump operator. He says he has personally done more than 60 jumps. He relates to us two stories from his bungy repertoire. The first is of a woman who stood out on the platform, terrified, for a full 17 minutes before finally proceeding to jump. God, I think, don’t let me do that. The second story is of a jump operator performing a personal jump. The man had strapped himself into a sit harness similar to those used by rock climbers, but had failed to have another operator check that it was properly fitted and securely tightened. When he jumped, he bounced once, then twice, then bounced out of the harness. He spent some quality time in hospital with a broken pelvis among numerous other injuries. God,don’t let me do that either.
***
The morning of my scheduled bungy jump, I am sitting at the coin-operated internet terminal (NZ$2 for 10 minutes) in the lobby of my hotel in Queenstown. I am searching the web for bungy jumping accident statistics. One site tells me that roughly 10 million people worldwide have done commercial bungy jumps. Another site tells me that the death rate for bungy jumping is about two deaths per million jumps. So, for about 20 people, the swan dive of a bungy jump was their swan song.
I have tacked on a couple of extra days in Queenstown at the end of my trip for the expressed purpose of the bungy jump. I could even reasonably say that it was the bike tour that was tacked onto the front of my bungy jumping trip to New Zealand. The jump is something I have been thinking about doing for years. Yet I have passed on several opportunities to bungy jump back in the States, most notably during business trips to trade shows in Las Vegas. I have steadfastly maintained that I would only bungy jump in New Zealand, the birthplace of it as a commercial activity. Perhaps this is because the people I know who have bungy jumped have all done it in New Zealand, including my younger sister, Robin. Perhaps it is because I didn’t think that I would ever really get here, and therefore I could forever leave the bungy jump as an unfulfilled possibility, something which I could think about or even talk about, but never actually have to do.
***
At last the shuttle bus arrives at the Pipeline Bridge, and a couple dozen people appear at the log cabin, most of them young and Japanese. The levels of both physical and vocal activity rise exponentially. Jump Master announces that before the bungy jumping will begin, two people are going to ride the Flying Fox, a thick steel cable strung taut across the canyon at bridge height. One of them is Alison, who is being strapped into a body
harness. While it does not restrain the arms (or the legs), the harness is eerily reminiscent of a strait jacket, with its heavy canvas body and the straps and buckles at the back side. “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” I mumble, smirking at how incredibly appropriate the title of Ken Kesey’s 1960’s novel is for the entire scene in which I am currently immersed.
Alison glides past me at eye level, smiling as she dangles from the steel cable less than 20 feet in front of the bridge. She is lying flat out in the body position of the ride’s namesake, wriggling her arms and legs. I flash her a thumbs up. She returns the gesture as she slides away across the canyon.
Jump Master motions for me to join him back in the middle of the bridge. People are now milling about on the bridge and in the viewing area at the end of the bridge. Jump Master ropes off the jumping area to keep a clear space. I take a seat in the dentist’s chair. He hands me a long red nylon sling and tells me to hold it as he attends to some of the rigging. Another operator, Ankle Man, appears. Folding up a large purple towel, he leans down to my legs in the chair. He wraps the towel around and between my ankles. He takes the red sling from my hand and wraps it over the towel, around and between and under and around and over. He pulls the knot uncomfortably tight, then wraps a wide Velcro strap around the whole affair. I am oddly comforted by the discomfort of the tightness of this affair because I know there is no way I am possibly going to slip out of this knot. Another operator, Bungy Man appears. He unclips the bungy cord from the railing then attaches it to a protruding loop of the sling at my ankles using two locking carabiners with their gates in opposing positions. I am secure in the knowledge that there is no way that both the carabiners could possibly fail.
Ankle Man motions for me to stand up. He gives me brief instructions for how I am to jump, diving out, away from the bridge. I know from past conversations about bungy jumping that diving away is important for two reasons. First, it reduces the chance of becoming entangled in the cord, particularly on the bounce back up. Second, diving away creates a proper arc so that the jumper does not plummet feet first. With the ankle tie up, merely hopping off the platform feet first would result in a full length body whiplash when the bungy cord catches at the bottom of the fall, which I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about.
I take a deep breath, and I notice that I am now extraordinarily calm. All the recent anticipatory anxiety that I have harbored over the prospect of this jump, and all the years of mental baggage from the tree fall and the incomplete skydiving excursion have totally vanished.
I must make my way about four feet from the dentist’s chair out onto the platform, but my legs are bound together so tightly that I can barely move them. I waddle a few inches at a time. “The bungy shuffle,” Jump Master calls it. He is clipped to the railing in a climber’s sit harness on the far side of the railing, standing out on the jump platform, which only protrudes a couple a feet from the rest of the bridge decking. The gate is open, exposing the side of the bridge to the open air, but I must still duck under the waist high fixed railing, which is no small feat the way I am bound. I bend low and reach under the railing with one arm to grab it from the far side. I am exceedingly careful that I do not fall off accidentally while climbing onto the platform, so that I can subsequently jump off intentionally. Once I’m standing on the far side of the railing, I feel rock steady.
Bungy Man is also clipped in securely to the bridge via a sit harness, still inside the railing. He crouches down and reaches out to position the bungy cord properly between my feet.“You’ll feel the pull down on your legs now,” he says, “That’s the weight of the bungy cord.”
I am facing outward, precariously positioned holding onto the railing with both arms to the sides and behind me. Jump Master positions one of his feet with his toes hanging a couple of inches off the edge of the platform to show me where my feet should go. I inch the toes of my shoes over the edge. I look out at the canyon walls, and at the river far below, ready to throw myself into the hands of fate.
Jump Master tells me to look up at the camera, which is overhead on an extended arm. “Smile,” he says, and a flash fires. “Wave to the other jumpers,” he says, pointing to the Japanese delegation to my right on the bridge. “And wave to the spectators,” he says, pointing to the viewing area further away at the end of the bridge.
Everyone is now waving, clapping, and cheering me on, which I find surprising. Considering that a man is about to hurl himself to possible death or disfigurement, I had expected them to be solemn, or at least respectfully quiet, like the gallery surrounding the final green of a PGA tournament. I release the railing with one hand and acknowledge the crowd.
Jump Master reminds me to dive out as far forward as I can, away from the bridge. Mark Spitz, I think, not
Greg Louganis.
Jump Master then begins the countdown. “Five,” he shouts.
“Four,” Ankle Man and Bungy Man join the count.
“Three,” the jumpers-to-be on the bridge add their voices.
“Two,” the spectators chime in.
“One,” everyone yells.
“GO!”
I let go of the railing, I bend at the knees, I rear back, and I lunge forward with gusto, reaching for handfuls of air way out in front of me.
I am lying prone in a Superman flying pose, frozen in both space and time. The silence is profound. The moment is etched into my memory engrams, and I have barely broken the plane of the jumping platform. Then, gravity takes hold, and time suddenly flips from slow motion to fast forward. I am hurtling down head first with tunnel vision perception straight towards the rapidly approaching, very rapidly approaching, extremely rapidly approaching blue water of the river below. I am waiting to feel the tug of the bungy cord at my ankles. I am waiting. And I am still waiting.
Below is a photo of me taking the plunge, which occurred in March 2002.
The Pipeline bungy jump has since been purchased by another bungy operator, and it is now closed in favor of another jump site closer to town with an even higher drop.
