Day 72 - Life and Death Part 3

My nerves had been driving me nuts all day. The only thing I could think of, of course, was the stupid bungee jumping! It was so bad that I couldn’t concentrate at all today, and I was super honery the night before bed. The ARV drugs haven’t helped the situation at all either.

Church was good today, but long. Church in Africa is a little harder because it’s hard to understand exactly what they are teaching. Sometimes their english is a little hard to understand and it makes it incredibly hard to pay attention. We made our way to Ginger on the Nile restaurant to grab a bite to eat before we went to Nile High. I didn’t turn out to be very hungry as I wasn’t feeling very good. I ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel with a side of fries and a Coke. It was really good food but was unable to finish! I was unhappy about it because I normally finish all my food. Tori G finished off my bagel for me.

Finally it was off to do the most feared thing of all. By this time I had been doing some serious mind control to keep my nerves under control. It worked really well until I was in the seat on the platform getting strapped in. I remember thinking, “What in the heck am I doing?! Am I really going through with this!?” Nobody really understands the feeling unless they’ve been there themselves. Being 154 feet above a large body of water knowing that you are going over the edge really isn’t a good feeling. We got finished getting roped in and we stood up. My heart began pounding and I felt like my head was going to explode because my blood pressure was through the roof. We ducked under the safety ropes and inched our way to the edge of the platform until our toes were hanging off the edge. By this time I was considering pulling back but the words couldn’t escape my lips. We dropped our arms from holding the metal bar above our heads and embraced each other in the strongest bear hug that ever was; I’m pretty sure I squeezed Amber so hard that I cracked her back. “And 3...2....1....” the guy announced and all of the sudden I was weightless and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. But only one second after falling I was having the time of my life. Amber and I started screaming, laughing, and hugging each other as we bounced up and down on the bungee cord. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever done in my life as far as scary things go. I was so proud of myself for such a huge accomplishment. The funny thing was that when we rafted the Nile over a month ago I told myself there was no way I would ever be doing the bungee jumping thrill. I have always told myself I would never do any type of bungee jumping or sky diving because was radically too scary and I felt like the risk of dying was a little high. In reality, both have a very low mortality rates and I shouldn’t really worry about it... but I do.

I decided that the first jump was so cool that it was necessary to buy another and get one free, for a total of 3 jumps! I made my way back up the stairs to jump again. Being strapped in I made my way to the edge again, the same as before. Only this time I was alone and I had to actually jump off myself. Again, I didn’t have a choice of whether to jump or not as soon as I heard, “And 3....2....1....” I did my best and jumped as much as my nervous body would along, I went flying, the rush was amazing and I watched the whole way down! Not a second did I close my eyes, it was much to expensive of a jump to do that! My third jump was even better. I did a much better swan dive the third time. So good that I heard later that people below including the professional jumpers said that I had good form!! I was really excited to hear that, it gave me a bit of a rise.

Well, I’m very happy about my decision to “jump to my death” 3 times, probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life and I would definitely consider doing it again in the future at some other location in the US. I keep thinking how cool it would be to have my family here and take them jumping tandem, they would absolutely freak out!