z

Young Writers Society


If Your Friend Jumped Off A Bridge, Would You Too?



User avatar
425 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 11417
Reviews: 425
Sun Nov 04, 2007 7:29 pm
View Likes
Nate says...



From the Washington Post:

Heather Loughlin had spent the last few months preparing for the possibility of dying here. Now, she worried instead about pain. The 36-year-old real estate developer from Vermont pressed her chest against the railing of the second-highest bridge in the United States, leaned forward and peered down. Almost 900 feet separated her from the bottom of the New River Gorge, where everything looked like a potential stage for disaster.

Whitewater rushed through the bottom of the chasm, sweeping over rocks and fallen oaks and maples. Boulders -- or, wait a second, were those boats? -- cluttered the shoreline. A canopy of red and yellow leaves obscured Loughlin's view of the designated landing area, a patch of uneven dirt on the west bank of the river. Eight medics waited there with headboards to carry the injured into nearby ambulances.

"Oh my God," Loughlin said, turning away from the bridge. "There's like a thousand ways to get mangled down there."

Loughlin stood about 20th in a line that dead-ended into still, Appalachian mountain air. When she reached the front, Loughlin was supposed to buckle her helmet and jump off the bridge, her life tethered to a rented parachute. It would be her first BASE jump, and she considered it the biggest risk of her life. Veterans of BASE jumping -- an acronym that stands for parachute free falls from buildings, antennae, spans or earth -- call their sport the most dangerous in the world, with only 1,200 experienced jumpers and at least 115 fatalities.


Read the whole thing, and watch a cool video slideshow.
  





User avatar
2058 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 32885
Reviews: 2058
Sun Nov 04, 2007 7:57 pm
Emerson says...



BASE jumping: a normal persons way to feel what it is like to write a novel.
“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
  





User avatar
506 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 9907
Reviews: 506
Sun Nov 04, 2007 7:58 pm
Sureal says...



BASE jumping is on my 'to do' list.

If anyone's watched the nature show Planet Earth, I'd love to do it in the same place it's done in one of those episodes (I think it was the episode on caves).

(EDIT: It's in this clip (just after the penguins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z64fvVlrvO4 Although I demand to know why they replaced the excellent David Attenborough with the bored-sounding Sigourney Weaver for American broadcast. Seriously, why?)

(EDIT 2: *twitches* Now I really wanna buy Planet Earth on Blu-ray, but it's £35 [$70]. :( I guess that'll be going on my Christmas list...)
I wrote the above just for you.
  





User avatar
694 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 3654
Reviews: 694
Sun Nov 04, 2007 9:24 pm
Via says...



I go there every year. The bridge is beautiful! They used to do base jumps year round, now it's only once a year that they are 'legally' allowed to jump. It's great in the morning, being on that bridge. It's so foggy, yet it's in the mountains so it's obnoxiously beautiful.
My Literary and Arts Blog

"I think I'd miss you even if we'd never met." -The Wedding Date
  





User avatar
62 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 890
Reviews: 62
Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:35 pm
jonny911 says...



I'd love to BASE jump. I chuckle in the face of danger
"Son, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"A felon!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yah! This kid at school says they get all the girls!"
"I should try that..."
  





User avatar
99 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 890
Reviews: 99
Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:57 pm
alleycat13 says...



If someone asked me to skydive, I'd definitely say yes, and if they asked me to BASE jump, I'd say yes too.
Calvin : You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes : What mood is that?
Calvin : Last-minute panic.

Got YWS?
  





User avatar
602 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 1609
Reviews: 602
Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:06 pm
Wolf says...



I've always wanted to jump off a cliff, airplane or building- I love the adrenaline, and I like dangerous things.
Unfortunately, the hightest point I've ever jumped off is a rock at my friend's cottage...and that rock is only about 15 feet off the ground. But, anyways, I'd definitely say yes if someone asked me to skydive and base jump.
everything i loved
became everything i lost.


Would you like a review?
http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic73903.html
  





User avatar
3821 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 3891
Reviews: 3821
Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:42 am
Snoink says...



I'm deathly afraid of heights... :P
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach

Moth and Myth <- My comic! :D
  





User avatar
694 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 3654
Reviews: 694
Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:52 am
Via says...



I jumped off a cliff about 45-50 ft into a river.....I screamed the entire way down. It wasn't at New River Gorge though, it was somewhere else. The people at the bridge though are the coolest people I think I've ever met in my life ;)
My Literary and Arts Blog

"I think I'd miss you even if we'd never met." -The Wedding Date
  








A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.
— Orson Welles