Can we smoke in here?

My alarm went off at 5am yesterday.

I usually get home from the bar at 5am on Saturday mornings. After three (very strong) gin-tonics and two hours of sleep, my body was NOT pleased with me for setting that alarm.

“Fuck it,” I thought. “I just won’t go. It can’t be that great.” And I closed my eyes.

But then I thought, sprawled naked and half asleep, “Are you really going to tell people that you missed white water rafting and bungee jumping because you slept through it? GET UP YOU PUSSY!”

Thus scolded, I dragged my body to the side of the bed and deposited it gracefully on the floor.

My friend and I made it to the bus and, finding ourselves first and so alone on the bus, sank gratefully into our seats for a 2 hour nap. My eyes closed and I was dozing immediately. It was wonderful. It was glorious! And then someone turned on the cd player, and it started blasting “Living on a Prayer” straight into my sleeping, relaxed, far too surprised ear drums.

Living on a Prayer. At 6:30 in the morning. I couldn’t make this shit up.

When we finally got to the river, a very sleepless 2 hours later, we discovered that ‘white water’ was definitely a euphemism. The river was very, very low. Five minutes into the trip, one of the women on my boat said, quite astutely, “I think this’ll be more work than fear”. Hardcore rapids? The bus ride was more hardcore – I puked on the bus (and managed to aim pretty well, if I do say so myself, into my little plastic baggie). We meandered beautifully, stopping every five minutes to allow the other boats to get ahead. A few times we hit some rapids, but instead of the expected adrenaline rush, we found ourselves unmistakeably stuck. We all sighed and rolled our eyes as, yet again, our guides got out of the boats to stand calf-deep on the rocks and push us on our way.

For this we wore lifejackets with leg straps that seemed intent on crawling straight up into my intestines.

Bungee jumping feels a lot like stepping out on stage. We stood at the top of the steps, looking out at the platform, for more than an hour, waiting our turn. We did our warm-ups. We checked out the audience. We looked out to the platform, only to retreat to the safety of the green room and forget, for a few more minutes, what it was exactly that we were about to do. We joked and laughed, our jokes hiding our real fear.

I tried to figure out how to tell people how I’d hurt myself if things went wrong. How I would answer “Hey! What’s up with the crutches/neckbrace/wheelchair?” without sounding like a colossal idiot.

We shuffled up. We got strapped in, shackled up. The straps on someone else’s ankles came undone when he took a step. Twice. We commented and tried to joke about the fact that we were jumping 53 metres with only velcro around our ankles. We all know how often velcro shoes have to be done up again. We all know how well that works for kindergarteners.

Eventually, I was tied to the rope, between my ankles so that I shuffled to the edge of the platform like a prisoner, a criminal about to plunge to my death. Fitting image, really, as I stared down at the water and the instructor forcibly took my hand off the railing.

“Will I die?” I asked.
“No die.” He said. “No die. Jump!”
“Pinky swear?”
“Are you ready?”
“No.”
“Yes you are. Jump!”

I did.I swear I jumped. I swear I closed my eyes, crouched, pushed off, held my breath.

But when I opened my eyes, I was still on the platform, and the instructor was looking at me with thinly-veiled impatience. “Get to the edge of the platform,” he said.

“I am at the edge!” He gave me a push, and I felt the edge with my toes. “Oh, shit.” I said.

When I finally jumped, I didn’t have the nerve to dive. This is bad. I was attached by my feet, and gravity won – flipping me over with all the force it could muster, twisting my back in the process. I didn’t think my spine could whip back and forth that quickly but, surprise! it can. When I was finally (finally = 2 minutes later) in the boat at the bottom, flat on my back, legs in the air as i was unhooked, I asked the operator if I was still alive. “Sit up,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Erm, I can’t quite do that yet. I can’t really feel my back.”

He looked at me blankly. Of course. He’s Korean. I’m possibly paralyzed, and he doesn’t speak English. Awesome.

Later, we got beer and sat watching the other bungee jumpers. “Oh shit, I did THAT?” I gasped. What I saw them doing and what I remembered feeling in the air did not match up. “No wonder my whole body hurts.” I still feel nauseous whenever I watch the video.

The next day, I slept until noon. When I tried to sit up, I only got half way before my stomach muscles violently protested. “Fuck it,” I thought, and I fell back down. “Upright can wait until later.”