No build up, no pre-talk, no strategy meeting and no waiver. You check in, they weigh you, ask a couple of questions about your health and where you're from and the next thing you know you're out on the bridge being strapped into a harness. It's 4:30 p.m. when I do this. There's no one else in line, just me. Green Day blares from the speakers. The jump masters look bored and burnt out — not exactly confidence inspiring. They mindlessly chatter as they put the harness on and then bind my feet with a towel and strapping which then goes through my legs, through the harness and then to the bungy line.
"Come out on the ledge and put your toes right up to the edge," says my jumpmaster who mentions he's been to Toronto and used to disembark the train at the Spadina subway station.
I waddle out to the edge and look down. Blue water, some rocks to the side and a yellow rubber dinghy. I have no idea why the dinghy there.
"Wave to the camera," says the jumpmaster. Idiotically, I comply.
"Now wave to the audience." I look over at the viewing platform and pick Jenny out, waving back at me amongst the sea of Japanese tourists thrusting their cameras out. She has our camera out too.
"3-2-1 GO!"
"Wait, wait!" I turn around and look at my guide. "Don't you want to double check everything is strapped on..."
"Awww, c'mon, mate. Here we go now — 3-2-1, GO!"
What the hell. I turn back and take the leap.
At first, it feels like any dive into the lake off the dock, but then I pick up terrific speed and have the sense, for a second or three, what it is like to hurtle towards earth — the very meaning of 'plummet.'
Blood rushes to my head, making it very heavy. My head is my whole body at this point — everything else is gone.
And just as I release into the fall, I feel the bungy begin to catch, counter my weight. My feet are yanked, the bungy line goes taut and I feel myself slowing. I reach out for the water below me and get dunked up to my head and shoulders. Water goes straight up my nose.
I spring up like a yoyo. My voice returns and finally I can shout.
Someone below in the yellow dinghy is holding out a stick. Am I supposed to grab hold of it? I dangle for a bit, enjoying the sensation of being upside down over the water, trying to process the sensations of the past five seconds. I hear someone say, "You need to grab on to the stick, mate."
I swing past and miss. The next time I get it. They haul me in and lay me flat in the boat. I'm feeling helpless at that point. Thirty seconds before I was Superman and now I am completely helpless, bound and gagged in the bottom of a dinghy while two bored men release my bungy cord.
"I want to do that again," I babble, which I'm sure every other person says after their first time. My captors are undoing my bound feet. "We could probably arrange something," one grins.
The captors boat me over to the shore and send me up a walkway all by myself. Jenn is waiting to check me over for injuries, mental and physical. I quickly discover there is a discounted fee for repeat jumpers.
"Want to go again?" asks the photo girl displaying my pictorial spread taken from every possible angle which is waiting for me when I arrive, laid out in a slick booklet.
"What happens if you don't want the photos?" asks Jenn.
"We just recycle it," says the girl cheerfully. But, we realize that's not a problem. People buy the packages, including us.
"Want to go again?"
"Nope." My head still feels heavy and my mind is replaying those three seconds of very present free fall.
"I did it. Got the T-shirt!"
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