Death Jump

As you saw in our last post, Brad came to visit. I wanted his time here to be memorable and fun. To lure him in I listed a bunch of fun things we could do, one was bungee jumping. I am not sure why and I am not too sure how serious I was about doing it.

It was a two hour ride to the 'Last Resort' which sits just 10 miles away from the Tibetan border. The drive up there was dangerous with huge rock slides all along the road and a cliff on the other side. When we arrived we saw the bridge. My heart was in my throat. Should I do it????

You can barely see the bridge between the huge gorge. It is blue and to the right of this photo.

We sat and watched people one by one jump from the bridge and all three of us said, 'Um, I don't know if I really want to do this.' But, the minute they opened up the bridge for us, we got the kids and walked across. That alone about killed me! You could see everything and the winds were strong. Almost 600 feet straight down!!! Irresponsible parenting indeed.

Once we got to the main office there was no turning back. We signed all the documents that basically said, "If your dumb enough to do this and you die, we don't care." They weighed each one of us and Axel was very close to the limit which made the experience that much more risky. We stood on the bridge and waited for them to call us by weight.

This picture was taken just before we jumped. Don't let it fool you, we were all crapping a brick!

Axel went first.

He was lucky, he didn't have a whole lot of time to think. Within minutes he was down. He didn't get a video and I regret this greatly. It would have been awesome to show.

Next was Brad...

It was horrible and relieving to see them both grounded. For one, I knew I still had the experience ahead of me and even standing on the bridge alone freaked me out. For two, I saw them grounded, which meant they lived through the whole ordeal. The odds were in my favour.

Then, it was my turn...

For those of you, like me, who don't have video capabilities or the proper speed on your computer to view videos.

I won't lie, it was the scariest thing I have ever experienced in my life. When I made it down to the bottom, I immediately told Brad and Axel that I would have rather given birth to 4 kids at the same time!!! I think the dangling at the end was the worst part because I knew if the rope let out on me I would be toast. All three of us had a pounding headache at the end and we had a 30 minute climb--straight up--to get back to the kids. Oh, and did I mention I had a loss of sight for two days???

Despite the fear and terror of the whole ordeal, it was AWESOME. First, that I actually did it. Second, that I did it at the second highest bungee jump in the world. Third, I did it in NEPAL. It is not an ordinary experience when you see that your spectators look like this:

I can't say I would run and do it again any day too soon, but the experience was exhilarating and exciting. Ironically, I never felt more alive than I did when I stood on the edge of that platform.

Life is full of risks. Simply driving to the jump was a risk enough. In fact, on our third date Axel took me to go skydiving. I suppose that set a precedence for the rest of our lives. I feel that if you don't take these risks, life isn't worth living. And thank goodness, I am living.