And out they go!
The heat really seems to be able to make people do crazy stuff.
During a week in July, we had a pretty good heat wave in the Northeast. Though I’m sure it went longer than a week, there was one particular day it really stood out to me.
Two of us were doing a full day of geocaching as we did a bunch in New York, crossed into Vermont and then into Massachusetts, where were heading for a mega (more than 500 people) event. We knew it was hot because we were crossing certain caches off our list for the day — ones where we’d need to hike a bit.
How hot was it, you may ask?
This is one way to beat the heat!
It was to the point where when you were out of the car for a few minutes, you started sweating. We left the vehicle running at cache stops because we wanted to get back into an ice box.
A side thing, too — ever notice in the middle of a hot summer, we want to be cold? Yet, in a cold winter, we’re looking for heat. Go figure.
Anyway, I digress.
We arrived at one covered bridge, where a geocache was hidden. With a parking area close, the car was once again left on. A few minutes later, another car showed up. Two kids — probably in their late teens — showed up. They parked and walked past me and headed to the bridge. I didn’t think anything of it.
Until I heard a splash. And then another.
What the hell?
I started peeking around, got into the bridge and looked out the windows and, sure enough, those kids had gone jumping. Turns out they climbed out one of the windows. From there, they either jumped straight down or climbed on the little roof over the window and jumped from there.
There didn’t seem to be any scouting, either. You know, to see how deep things were etc. I’m sure this isn’t the first time they did it, but still … it had been awful hot. What if some of the depth had gone away?
We watched one more time and started talking to them some. It seems they enjoyed the adrenaline of it all (though one seemed a little more risk-taking than the other) and liked jumping in the water from higher heights. I took some photos and a couple of videos. They even humored me by switching sides, as the light was better.
Of course they did some recon on that one and checked the depth before jumping. Check out some video footage (sorry that there’s some shake in he footage):
These guys were daredevils. I’ve never been much of a person who is willing to do crazy things like that. I know there are adrenaline junkies out there, but it still amazes me when I see these things.
This wasn’t the only place we saw this. Over the course of the day, we visited eight covered bridges. I’d say we saw jumpers and no fewer than three of those bridges. One of them, people were climbing out the window and going to the roof of the bridge and then jumping down below.
Nuts!
Maybe I’m missing something in life not taking some risks like this. I imagine it’s quite exhilarating when you splash down on something like this. Or when bungee jumping or something along those lines.
The craziest thing I’ve done is para-sailing, which took some prodding for me to do. But I felt secure and it turned out to be quite a fun experience.
So, for those reading today — tell me, would you go bridge jumping? Or have you done things like this? And what’s the craziest thing you’ve done? I’m interested to see what others say.
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