Photo @ AJ Hackett, Cairns, Australia
I was in Cairns - the extreme sports capital of
Australia.
The day before I'd been whitewater rafting.
The day after I did a skydive.
People ask 'which was scarier, skydive or bungee jump?'
Bungee jump by far.
In a skydive it's all so fast and you're up up-in-the-air looking down at the
clouds. It's kind
of surreal.
But the bungee jump felt very real as I climbed the tower, slowly, floor by floor, thinking: 'I'm going to
jump off this bloody thing.'
As I jumped, I saw the blue horizon above the trees in the forest, and the world paused for a moment, like
when
a cartoon coyote runs off a cliff...
Then the ground rushed towards me, my heart pumped, a primal scream came
out of my chest that I don't remember making, and my life literally flashed before my eyes.
...It felt amazing after I'd survived the first bounce.
And I boinged around merrily laughing until they eventually lowered me into the rubber dinghy in the lake
below.
I was so pumped on adrenaline that that evening I got drunk on about half a schooner of beer.
I think I've been boinging around merrily in my head ever since.
I was 19 years old at the time, travelling the world, between school and university, which is what
adventurous British kids do if their parents are doctors, lawyers or accountants.
The idea is you have all
the adventure in that one year and then settle down to a boring office job forever, and give up
on life.
It's not a mentality that I ever much subscribed to. But that's another story...