Another victim of spacial segregation

8/8/2006

Imagine the thrill of freefalling several stories with nothing between you and your future as a human pancake but a simple elastic cord.

Imagine the adrenaline rush as you plummet headfirst to the unforgiving earth below.
Imagine your first experience bungee jumping.

Bungee jumping is an activity in which a person jumps from a high place, with one end of an elastic cord attached to their ankles and the other end attached, hopefully, to the jumping-off point.

When a person jumps, the cord stretches to take up the energy of the fall. The jumper, most often screaming at this point, flies upwards as the cord snaps back, and then bounces up and down until the initial energy of the jump is dissipated.

Some people call this fun. Others shake their heads, roll their eyes, and call it suicide practice.

Bungee is not new, and most likely began as an accident when some poor sap picking coconuts fell out of a tree and was saved by tangled vines.

In the 1950s, a BBC film crew captured footage of the "land divers" of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu; young men who jumped from tall wooden platforms with vines tied to their ankles as a test of courage.

The first modern bungee jump was made in 1979, somewhat fittingly, on April Fool’s Day, when four members of the Dangerous Sports Club leaped from the 250ft Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol.

The jumpers were arrested shortly after, but couldn’t shake the rush, and continued with jumps that spread the concept worldwide. By 1982, they were jumping from cranes and hot air balloons.

Last weekend, while whitewater rafting on the Ottawa River with a crew of beer-fueled maniacs, misfits and monsters, I had the opportunity to try bungee jumping. I wanted to try, you see, but they wouldn’t let me—because I am too big and fat.

The rigging is rated for a maximum of 250lbs, which leaves me out in the cold until I lose a few dozen pounds, or an arm, or a leg, or both.

My first reaction was to write a strongly-worded letter of disgust to the bungee people, and let them know the level of discrimination that is running rampant in the anti-fatite world of extreme sports.

I wanted to stick up for everyone else who has suffered from spacism, felt the cruel sting of spacial segregation, or been excluded due to their girth, but decided against it. A letter like that would only increase the ridicule people of size already face.

Instead, I watched a pair of twins, Marcos and Marcelos, who together don’t weigh as much as yours truly, leap from the bright blue sky. Marcos completed his jump without incident, but Marcelos wound up with bright red eyes due to burst blood vessels, and was a full inch taller than his brother.

And I wound up with the last laugh after all.