Yesterday I fell from a bungee platform, without a bungee rope (or anything) attached and plummeted 100 feet in 2.8 seconds.

Luckily I’m a ninJA

Also they had safety netting.

I hadn’t planned to fall.

I was in Blackpool for the weekend, I hadn’t planned to be there either.

I went to work on Thursday, expecting to be home Thursday night, and stayed out til Sunday… Luckily (as I pretty much live out of my car) I had most of what I needed for a weekend away.

I ended up gate-crashing the Madhouse Dungeonworld meet at the Sutton Park (hotel). I don’t play Dungeonworld, but there was a spare bed, in Blackpool, where they have alcohol.

On Saturday night whilst drunk, I agreed to jump 100 feet off a tower into a safety net. It seemed like a good idea.

On Sunday morning, it didn’t seem like a good idea anymore, but … I’m a ninJA ..

So a group of us went to the pier, me and Thomas (who had also drunkenly agreed) paid our money, and signed the various disclaimers saying we don’t blame the organisers for our deaths.

I went first .. they put me in a harness, and attached me underneath a cage, which was winched to the top of the bungee tower.

When we reached the top, the guy in the cage said “are you ready?”

I said “no”

He smirked and released my harness, and I plummeted 100 feet into the safety netting.

Having proven my ninJAness, I had kept my drunken word. Thomas was next to do it, and after much questioning of his ninJAness, and various of us offering to put in some money to pay for it, Wrongmark had a go too. The foetal position he lay in afterwards was worth the money alone 😀 But due respect to him (and it’s not often you’ll hear me say that), he did it.

And that was that, my ninJAness was proven, I could go and lie down …

Then Martin decided he was going to do the freefall … AND a bungee jump.

My thunking had been that having jumped off without a rope, I didn’t need to do it again with a rope .. I’d outdone that..

..but as Martin was doing both … I couldn’t be outninJA’d … by a non-ninJA.

So I signed up to a bungee jump from the same tower.

It wasn’t quite as quick as that, Neither Thomas nor I wanted to be outdone, and we both thought that maybe we should do the bungee jump … but … when it came to actually agreeing .. my mouth kept trying to say yes, but my brain seemed to be overruling it. I did manage to mumble a yes in the end. And after he’d taken our money, the guy running it was keen to point out that there were no refunds.

Once I’d signed up, I was quite confident … I’d done the freefall thing .. so of course I could actually do it again with a rope attached. Childs play. Until Steve Tierney generously pointed out to me that this time it wasn’t just a case of the guy cutting my harness .. this time I actually had to stand on the edge, and make the conscious decision myself to dive forwards from 200 feet in the air.

So four of us got back into the metal cage, were winched back to the top of the tower, and this time got out, and walked along a narrow ledge.

I was 4th to jump. Right up until the last second, I had serious concerns that I’d get to the edge, and my brain would overpower my limbs again.

I stepped up to the edge, the guy said “three, two, one, bungee”

And I dived forward off the ledge. I hadn’t meant to … my body just reacted to the countdown..

It wasn’t until I’d tipped forward to about 45 degrees that I thought “bollocks, there’s no way back now”

Against all probabilities, I didn’t die, the rope did pull me back up before I hit the ground, and I had proved my ninJAness.

We also went on a reverse bungee (sit in a metal cage, which then catapults you up into the sky .. but that was pretty tame compared with the others).