I'm sure you've heard of this place. It has figured prominently in numerous cinematic features by Toho studios. But in those films it is always portrayed as a desolate island, overrun by monsters.
Take a river. A fast river, one that's cut a nice deep (say, 140 feet) gorge out of the local geography. Build a bridge over it. Tack a platform on one side, big enough for two people, like say a hangman and a prisoner. Maybe a guillotine would be a better analogy.
Now paint an immaculate clear sky overhead, so robin's-egg blue and sunny that it lends the colors of midnight to the chasm and the river, far below. Station about 10 or 15 gawkers along the river's edge, looking up. These days Madame LaFarge records it on videotape instead of knitting it into a shawl, but you get the picture.
Mercifully no one says anything obvious, like, "It's as easy as falling off a log". Instead, the jumpmaster says,
"Three! Two! One!
The cheerful "BUNG-E-E-E!" from the jumpmaster, (the hangman of our little analogy) blends seamlessly with a bloodcurdling "AAAAIIIIIEEEEE!!"
Some times, when you're really shocked, things slow down. Unfortunately, not this time.
There's an indescribable wash of relief, which translate itself a nanosecond later to pure elation -- Man, I'm flying -- backwards ! , getting lighter, the river's going awaaayyy! A quick jacknife, try to initiate a barrel roll (whoops, no rudder pedals)
The Bungy Zone set up shop on the Nanaimo River, just south of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, roughly 5 years ago. Since then, over 52,000 thrill-seekers have jumped, spun, leaped or just toppled off the purpose-built bridge. John Brown, the owner, tells me there has never been an injury, not even a complaint. That's a better safety record than taking a bath. Mind you, taking a bath is considerably less hair-raising.
So what exactly is involved in this? As carefully explained by Glen Drinnan and Kevin Ford, my two jumpmasters, each bungy cord is hand made from about $75 worth of latex stripping, wrapped with what look like strings of the same stretchy stuff. Although it takes a mere hour and a half to construct one, one has to undergo about a year's "apprenticeship" before you can do it right. (I wondered how the first guy learned.) After 500 jumps the cord is discarded. Oh, one more thing. The guy who makes each cord is the first one to jump it.
Judging the right cord for each person's jump is more of an art than a science, as the amount each cord will stretch on a given jump varies not just with the weight, but with the air temperature, whether the latex is wet or dry, the number of times it's been jumped, and even the number of recent jumps on it, since each jump heats the cord up. I must say that my requirements were judged expertly, since after a dive of 140 feet I just dragged my fingers through the river before rebounding - didn't even get my hair wet.
After four or five nice high returns Kevin and Glen estimated I'd had enough fun for one time, and adjusted the slack in the bungy, neatly damping the "boing" to the point that I quickly stabilized, upside down, about 15 feet over the water. A comfortably padded inflatable boat was waiting for me to be lowered down to, from which I stepped easily to shore. The hardest part was climbing back up the several dozens of steps leading out of the valley and back to the parking lot.
For the first time, this year during the summer, night jumping is available too. Publicity shots also show groups of three people jumping, arm in arm, and others show people going off the step backward. I suppose it's only a matter of time until we get the equivalent of the "mile high club" but thankfully, not yet.
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