Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Moment of Truth



Eleven months ago, I stumbled on a Youtube clip. Fast foward eleven months later and the images that I saw in the video are now all around me. The mountains, the people....and the dam.

The morning of my departure for Switzerland found me not only nervous, but grapling with the reality that something that was in my head is now a reality and I was leaving that day to confront fears, demons and the very real fact that I had to put my money where my mouth was. Had I physically prepared enough..metally prepared enough? I was filled with a sense of foreboding. Not so much that something could happen to me, rather that I would let everyone down..including myself. For those who strive for a goal or compete in anything, you know that is something you carry around with you for the rest of your life, despite what your friends will say to you.

I hate airports, crowds and lineups. So here I am in a lineup at a crowded airport. My nervousness had been climbing all day. I just kept saying to myself over and over again.."get on the plane." The flight was trouble free but I only managed 45 minutes of sleep. The rest of the time was spent reading and watching a couple of movies. Once in Zurich I found my way to the train system and headed for Locarno. In the afternoon I arrived at one of the most picturesque places anyone could imagine. Locarno is in the southern region of Switzerland, near the Italian boarder. The scenery there is a combination of mountains, evergreens as well as tropical vegitation. It is something right out of a computer simulation.

Having sorted myself and taken a walk through the town, it was time to start focusing on 36 hours from then. The plan was that I would take the 20 minute taxi ride up to the dam on Friday and have a look at the area. However, I had only 4 hours sleep Thursday night and my nerves were starting to get tense. It was decided that maybe I should just come up Saturday morning when it was time to jump. That way the sight of the dam for the first time would not have much time to make me even more nervous. So now its Friday night, the night before the jumps, and my nervous tension only let me get 4 hours of sleep. Not to mention the fact that the TV in my room had only 1 Engilsh chanel - CNN. I mean, you can only watch a news loop so many times right?

Saturday morning there was overcast but it was a decent temperature of 18 degrees C. I stood by the taxi stand near my hotel and waited for the ride to Valle Verzasca. The only thought going through my head as I stood there was "this is going to be a FIGHT". It is a drive along some very steep and winding roads going to Verzasca. A while later we made a sweeping right turn and the dam came into view and I saw it for the very first time. Now, all the studying of video footaage and pictures did not prepare me for that moment. To see it in person gives the true perception and understanding of its size and height. It is MASSIVE! From the very pit of my soul came the words, "oh my God..what have I gotten myself into??!! Once there I walked down the short path past some trees and stood on the dam. Yes, you can fit the 70 storey Bank of Montreal tower from Toronto in there. Well, I can't turn back now, besides, the Goldeneye crew is arriving. I finally met jumpmaster Vento Christian Hurliman in person and that made me feel better as he was very reassuring and expressed every confidence in me. We headed down to the platform area and began getting ready. I had to spend some time learning the rigging and harness system there and make sure I knew all the procedures and hand signals. The Goldneye owner Anton Draganits arrived and we were now ready to start.

There were 2 customers to jump before me so I had the chance to see someone jump right before my eyes. Once they were done and I saw they were still alive it was my turn. As I stood on the platform, I thought about what it took to get to this moment. Months of training, planning, frustration, setbacks and disappointments were now behind me and all there was to focus on was the canyon wall across from me. I admit at that point it was hard to fight back the emotions. Once I heard the countdown I was ready and nothing else in my world existed but the 220 meteres under me. the freefall was almost 3 times what I am used to - 7.5 seconds. There is a service entrance at the bottom and you are heading right for its roof. But as always, the bungee cord spared me a meeting with St. Peter and the rebounds were amazing. The trick to doing this many times is to focus on the task at hand. You have to get yourself upright, using the special harness, so they can lower the tow cable down to pull you back up. Its much faster than you would think and the crew have thousands of jumps without any incident. One jump done - 11 to go. Having set the record at Great Canadian Bungee at the end of July gave me a good understanding of how to keep your focus through something like this. Just do one jump at a time. focus on your tasks and don't think about which jump number it is. After 7 jumps, I knew that I had already gone further than any cutsomer ever had and after 8 jumps, was the first customer to reach their daily allowed maximum of jumps in one day. Now I was after the crew member's total of 11 jumps. Then the problem with my ankles started to become an issue. The harness around each ankle is secured as tightly as the crew member's strength can manage. In other words VERY tight. The harness was digging into the muscle and began to hurt very bad. The crew wrapped t-shirts around my ankles before putting the harness back on in order to help a little. At the edge of the platform for the remaining jumps, I would think for a second, " there is one wicked pain coming in about 8 seconds". However, I knew that pain down there meant that the cord was still there and that was just fine with me. After the 11th jump, both thigh muscles cramped and we had to spend 45 minutes working those out. Now I had to focus on keeping my emotions under control because the next jump set the new Goldeneye record..what we had been after for 11 months. There was a momemnt before countdown of fear then when it was time to go I have never felt such relief and joy in my life. I frankly did not care about the pain in my legs. I let out a yell and it was now over. Once back on the platform I was drained and elated at the same time. There were some people on the dam watching and they applauded which felt good. About 20 minutes later, CBC Newsworld called my cellphone and I did a live to air interview for them to tell the good news and thank everyone.

Its funny how you play an event in your head over and over and over, then when it is finished, you are both happy and sad at the same time. What got me though all of this was that some charities were counting on me and I did not want to remember the day for coming up short. I can look back now and think that I took an idea in my head and saw it through to the end, no matter what.

All from stumbling across a Youtube clip.

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