Up to a point
I was at the crematorium again today, saying goodbye to another great friend, an individual in the truest sense of the word and a genuine loss to everyone, whether they knew him or not.
At one point, as friends were recounting tales and anecdotes, it all got a little too much for me so I had to resort to a psychological trick to get me through the worst… I tried to think about something I didn’t know much about or had never done.
All I can offer you today then, is the contents of my desperate mind at the time:
I’ve never bungee jumped… I’ll admit it, I’m not really one for adrenaline sports of any kind.
I would ask one of my friends what it’s like, to hurtle towards the ground like that, but they’re like me – we fear our lives are too similar to a jump to want to replicate it… even with the addition of an elastic cord to save us.
So, I can only imagine a successful bungee jump feels a bit like:
Stage 1 – thinking you’re going to die
Stage 2 – hoping you’re not going to die
Stage 3 – finding out if you’re going to die
Stage 4 – not dying
Stage 5 – an odd sense of resurrection
Stage 6 – relief and perspective
Is that even close?
justine on 
You basically got the feeling down.
I think this is my favorite strip in some time. It just sums things up so well.
Like you, I don’t have any personal experience with bungee jumping, nor do I particularly want to.
Thanks Mr Hewitt… As a young man, maybe I would have attempted something like a bungee jump if the opportunity arose, but I have too many other people to live for now and they probably wouldn’t be that happy with me flinging myself off things.
Happy (belated) birthday by the way – not jumping off stuff helps you see more of those, right?
Anyway, how’s tricks with you and Mrs Joseph?
Thanks! Things are going very well for us. Eunsuk’s morning sickness is almost gone and she just got an award/promotion from her company. I had a nice short trip back to Canada, and my new first year high school students are so good that I initially suspected that they were all robots. On the minus side, all that good stuff was somewhat balanced by a completely unnecessary overnight stay at the hospital, both of us catching the flu, and the fact that my best co-teacher got transferred to a different school. Still, on balance, I’d say that life is pretty good.
That’s really good to hear.
I hope that the morning sickeness was not the reason for the promotion… wielding the propsect of puke as a threat to your superiors is an abuse of power.
And the ‘flu is just unecessary in itself – Especially as it makes everything taste so rotten, that’s just kicking a guy when he’s down.
But I’m glad you’re better, and that you’ve got a fresh new batch of earger minds at your disposal.
Bungee jumping was THE scariest (physical) thing I’ve ever done. Footage of the jump shows me exiting the pod strung up over a canyon in New Zealand and seconds later the other ten people in the pod all coughing and gagging and one of the manly jump-attendants chuckling "Now that’s the smell of fear".
The photo they take of you as you’re mid-air shows me all scrunched up because at that moment, even though I had jumped, I had decided that I wasn’t quite ready and wanted to stand back up straight on the diving board again.
Eight seconds of freefall.
It was beautiful and unforgettable. If you’re into experience, I highly recommend it.
Ahh, New Zealand, the cradle of craziness… almost every adrenaline based sport of the last 100 years has originated there.
Glad you survived, and all the more brave, I think, for doing it despite the terror.
I have never bungee jumped, but I have done some adrenaline stimulating stuff.
The fine line thing is pretty much like that.
I jumped out of an airplane once… there wasn’t really any death feelings, but that might be because it was a partnered jump, and you release the parachute long before you’re in danger of going SMASHsplatt.
I think in life we all take the leap, sometime.
I am so sorry for the loss of your friend!!!
Thanks. As I say, it was everyone’s loss really, and mine was small in comparison to that of his family.
That’s two completely avoidable and unnecessary deaths in as many months in my community… not good really and eveyone is a bit down at the moment.
But, as they say, life goes on… just not for the dead.
But, as they say, life goes on… just not for the dead
That is terrible
At work today, we had to check out a structure that is about 30mtrs high.
We need to shoot some points on it to know where we are going to build from.
The points happen to be outside the structure.
Being the mining industry, we had to do a SLAM, JSA and TARP, at which point we decided that it just wasn’t gonna happen.
I was so excited about the prospect of crawling around on a thin bit of steel.
Some times life takes all the fun outta of living.
SLAM, JSA and TARP… you’re going to have to explain yourself there.
Are these safety proceedures of something.
SLAM - Stop Look Assess Manage. Primarily a immediate use risk assessment tool for minor actions.
JSA - Job Safety Analysis. Major inspection of task to be performed, assessing all steps and hazards, identify risks and putting in place measures to prevent incedents occurring.
TARP - Trigger Action Response Plan. A trigger action would be an incedent identify via the JSA. The response plan would be the most effective way of immediately dealing with it.
SOP - Standard Operating Procedure. Stanard procedure for operating or carrying out a given task. The JSA must be completed prior to making a SOP.
I only really understood all this today, when I was given the task of making a SOP for measuring CH4 pressure levels in drainage pipes.
Explosive fun if it gets messed up, so I decided that I wasn’t the man to write that particular SOP.
We did that job today, I had no fun doing it:(
When i went bungee jumping, i wasnt really scared. The only thought that went through my head was that 3.8 meters per second squared is a lot faster than i had realized.
This also reminded me of a joke, “there is a fine line between fishing and standing near water looking like a dumbass.”
The only thing that went through my mind was “I suppose this is the part where I should be screaming” I wasn’t bored, I just didn’t feel compelled to scream. The best part of it was the release after tipping over the edge, I no longer worried about dying, because I had no control over wether I would, I simply enjoyed the fall. So I’d say my experience was almost the antithesis of what you’ve speculated.
I think you must be one of those rare sort of people that can display true composure in a crisis… acceptance that something is going to happen whther you scream or not is a real skill.
That or the fact that you’re just hard as nails.
Maybe, but I don’t think I really thought of it as a crisis. I was eager to do it, and I had faith in the coil of elastic bands that had been velcro’d around my ankles (seriously, the cord looks like a whole bunch of elastic bands all wound up, and the connection was a large velcro shackle). I think I may have done it at the same place franzy did it, Taupo bungee in New Zealand. I’m from Canada, but I went traveling there when I was 15, my youth may have contributed to my almost naive carelessness.
Exactly – I can’t imagine any circumstance, elastic band or not, where I would consider throwing myself from a bridge as ‘not a crisis’.
I think that’s true though… I’m way passed being a teenager now, and I imagine that I would have at least considered it back then (let’s face it I did a whole bunch of stuff that is far more dangerous than any bungee jump), but these days I can’t even consider the possibility.