They say that with age comes experience and self knowledge. Well it may have taken me awhile but I have finally learned something about myself. Over the years and in the last few weeks particularly I have found myself in various adrenalin fueled situations that involve some crazy act of leaping / jumping / being pushed from some great height. I keep signing myself up for them and then struggling with the actual leaping / jumping thing. Turns out that at that crucial last second some subconscious part of my brain kicks in and says ‘Are you crazy, you can’t jump off of this perfectly good / safe bridge, platform etc!’. This has been the case with the bungy jump (I was only 17!), the Supaman comet line and just jumping from a rock into a rubber ring in the water.
So it was with this newfound (at long last) self knowledge that I chose my method of swing for the Shotover Canyon Swing (think bungy but without the pinging up bit!). There were ten styles to chose from but the ‘Cutaway’ was only one pant on the pant scale of scariness and best of all it didn’t involve me having to propell myself off the ledge. I would be placed in a harness and sit in a swing like position and someone would then push the button that would make me go. Too easy!? How wrong can you be. It may only be a one panter but it was an adventure too far for me. Of course the crazy Kiwis running the show were a bunch of jokers and seemed to take far too much pleasure in scaring me even more than I already was. They pushed me off the ledge, left me dangling there for a while and then dropped me unexpectedly mid-sentence. It was 109m high with 60m of freefall which trust me is a long time when you are plummeting towards the rocks at the bottom of the canyon. There was a brief moment at the bottom when I braved an eye opening to experience the fun of swinging at the bottom (why we chose this and not one of the five available bungies) and then I was hoisted up and the whole thing was thankfully over. Or so I thought.
I actually found it more traumatic watching Si and Cat do their jumps than I did doing it myself, especially since both of them did it Pin Drop style (a whopping 5 pants on the pantometer!) which involved them stepping of the ledge of their own free will. Crazy dudes. Si (a.k.a Slyman) then continued to age me even further by doing a second jump, this time in ‘the chair’ (a mere three panter!). For this he was tied to a garden chair which he then swung backwards of the ledge to back flip his way to the bottom.
Several hours later the whole ordeal was over and could be forgotten about. Oh, if only it were that easy. The constant reliving it will give me nightmares for days and as for the dvds… (You can check them out for yourselves on the links to the right, look out for Si’s legs in the Pin Drop and the expression on his face as his chair leans back that final time, which is also on the blog photo) I have to point out that in Cat’s dvd that is my scream that can be heard, she was as cool as a cucumber!