Fancy Yourself as Brave?

Hey guys, I make myself do things that I hate.  

I know, it sounds really pretentious and overwrought and dramatic.  But the truth is this: when you chase your fears, when you force yourself to writhe in struggle, you gain unbelievably clear perspective.

So you know how I've jumped out of a plane twice?  .... and loved it?  (Read about the first jump here, and the second here.)

I have a serious fear of heights.  Don't like them.  You can theorize about physical stature vs. altitude phobias all you like, and I will agree with every point you have to make.  In lieu of this, I had made an informal commitment to facing this fear once a year.  I only have one rule about this:  If I am going to jump out of a (perfectly good) airplane, I want to be seeing mountains and water at the same time.  So no jumping over deserts or wheat fields for me.

As you may also know, I recently spent a month in South Africa, where mountains and ocean are aplenty.  I had made mental note of where I would jump, and got excited about my first international skydive.  But then I got there, and THIS creature intervened:

This is my sister, also known as the Haver of Her Own Ideas.  She had perviously gone on a trip with her study abroad friends to this town on the Garden Route, called Storms River, where they all went bungee jumping off of the tallest bungee bridge in the world.  Gulp.

See, I had never had any aspirations for bungee jumping.  I didn't understand the thrill; why would you want to jump from 800 ft when you could jump from 16,000?  Plus, I had read the health and wellness articles.  Isn't that suuuuuper bad for your back?  But Janni was convinced that I was missing out, and so I somewhat begrudgingly got on board and signed up to jump off of the Bloukrains Bridge.

First of all, this.

Photo

You see that vehicle driving over?  THATS A SEMI.  Over the center of the concrete arch is where you jump from. Later, we drove over this bridge on a bus, on our way out of town.  My palms started sweating, just because it was so high and the bridge was so massive.  Upon first glance at this bridge, however, I felt fine.  Because it was so massive and the canyon was so deep, that my brain processed the thoughts as basically not real life.

But then the second obstacle was this.

In order to get to that section under the bridge to jump, you have to walk approx 800 ft through this mesh tunnel, which merely consists of I-beams screwed up into the underside of the bridge, mesh under your feet, and NETTING.  I wish I could tell you that I simply didn't look down and pranced my way across..... but the truth is that I clutched the beams and gritted my teeth as I crawled through.  My fingers slipped with sweat as I felt the mesh give under me with every step of my flip flopped feet.  My sister hollered that I was moving turtle-ishly slow, but I honestly felt like I was sprinting.  Hyperventilating will do that to you.  After the turmoil of making it across the tunnel of doom, I still had the task of oh, jumping off of the bridge.  

Let me make this clear; the staff at this establishment was the epitome of professional.  I watched everyone else jump, and by the time it was my turn, had regressed to the developmental age of a toddler.  As the guy tied the rope around my ankles and bare feet, I squealed at him to tie it tight; I HAVE SMALL FEET. 

SO then I was basically carried to the ledge, with Janni screaming allegedly inspirational things to me from behind. I was ashen, unable to really even take stimulus in.  The guys started to count down and I went into full panic mode; shaking my hands and head.  no No NO NONONONONONOOOOOOOO.  

Here's what I didn't know before; the fear of bungee jumping lay in the lack of sensation.  You are literally only attached to the bridge by the rope around your ankles, which really feels like absolutely nothing when you're standing on that ledge.  You logically understand that the cord will hold you, but tactilely feel suicidal.  You feel like you're simply jumping off of a bridge.  There is nothing attached to the harness on you; that's to be used to hoist you back up later.  There's no one strapped to your back, letting you do nothing but enjoy the view.  You're alone.  and it's quiet.  and it's breezy.  

So they basically threw me off.  The first second I hated.  But every other after that was complete bliss.  I LOVE free fall.  The upswing I couldn't even feel; except in knowing that my view was changing.  The bridge is very close to the ocean, so in the 3rd swing I arched my back way over and could see the sparkly blue water behind me.  Below was the most beautiful canyon I had ever seen; and that would be impossible to see by any other method.

So yeah, I liked it then, even if I was still crying as I got pulled up.

Wanna watch a heartbreaking video?  Behold my meltdown.