From the observation deck of the Stratosphere I watched the sunset over the mountains. Everything in Las Vegas has to be something and this is the tallest observation tower in the United States.
I spend my last day quietly watching the city after gorging myself in the $8 all you can eat buffet downstairs. Breakfast was a vegetable omelet, mashed potatoes with gravy and extra butter, bacon, sliced ham, pepperoni pizza, chorizo and egg burritos followed by a cherry cheesecake.
It was all I could eat.
Then I just sat there watching, waiting for the food to settle a little so I could jump. I didn't want to throw up and embarrass myself as I hurled my body off the edge of the building.
I take the elevator back downstairs and sign the waiver for injury and death. Everything I own is locked in a small blue locker.
“Put this on backwards,” she says holding up a SkyJump suit.
I'm not sure if she means to turn around and step backwards or if she already has it facing me backwards and I'm supposed to step forward.
“Sorry, is that a little confusing?” Another girl that works there at the SkyJump asks, “Step into this and then I'll zip up the back,” she says clarifying the instructions.
SkyJump is the worlds highest vertical zipline. New Zealand has one but this one is much taller at 855 feet above the Las Vegas Strip. The idea is to go up to the 108th floor of the Stratosphere observation deck where you will be attached to a cable. This cable is supposed to stop you from slamming into the ground after a free fall where you jump off the edge of the building.
They let you fall to within a short distance of the ground then slow you down to prevent anything as inconvenient as death.
“Right foot here,” she says strapping me into the harness, “left foot there.”
They weigh me and write the weight in kilograms on my left wrist. I wonder if that's so tourists don't have to see how much they weigh? She writes 93 kg and it takes me a minute to figure that's about 200 pounds. You fat fuck.
“That's so if you go splat we know how much to pick up,” she laughs handing me a card to give to the cable operator upstairs then I'm handed off to yet another girl who walks me upstairs. She jumped before as a requirement for working there.
“The first time I jumped it was a slow day,” she tells me. “My boss saw that I hadn't yet jumped and told me I was going up next. He already had the waiver pulled up on the screen.”
She laughs a little at the memory.
“When I got to the ground I started crying. For an hour after that I couldn't stop shaking.”
She hands me off to the guys upstairs who take a couple of pictures.
“That's in case you hit the ground hard. I hate putting puzzles back together without the picture on the box cover,” he says over the wind.
Tourists on the observation deck crowd around the windows to watch me get ready to jump. Some mouth the words “Good Luck”, another gives me the peace sign. I imagine them all gasping as I go over the edge, the way they do whenever someone jumps. But I wont hear that.
I walk out the door onto the short bright blue steel walkway and the wind seems to have stopped. I thought I'd enjoy the view more doing it after dark, the lights of the strip below me. But now I'm looking at the handrails and cables. Watching the edge of the platform, so close, and the fall that comes after it. One little mistake and I'm dead. Just like that. Gravity and asphalt my murder weapons.
The skyline glitters like precious jewels and I try to remember that I am more than my physical body.
“Right hand here, left hand there,” he says and I am facing out into the quiet night. The ground 855 feet below me. A number that now seems to have some real significance. A single step, a few inches and I will fall.
“I am going to count down from three, then you jump,” the voice behind me says. Only now I'm not so sure that is going to happen and they aren't allowed to push you.
Besides, wasn't there something I was supposed to think?
“3..”
Something I was supposed to remind myself?
“2...”
Then there was nothing, no voice in my head, only the subtle fear of heights, the lingering feeling that this could be the end of my vacation. Of my life.
“1...”
I hear him count down and say, “Jump!”
A second passes that feels like an eternity. There is no voice in my head, no internal monologue and I know that despite what seems to be extreme danger I have to jump.
When I try to jump out as far as I could my legs simply did not obey, letting go of the hand rails would have to be enough since I was leaning forward over the edge of the walkway and I more or less stepped off the edge of the platform.
That's all gravity needs.
Inertia kicks in and I'm speeding towards the ground. There are no thoughts, the concrete of the Stratosphere exterior rushes by and I cut through the air heading straight for the ground. I can't take my eyes off the bulls eye target they have painted on the ground rushing up to meet me. I'm not even worried about a mistake that would kill me, it would happen so fast at the end that it didn't seem like it should be a concern.
“Arch your back and land on your feet,” my brain says kicking back into gear.
Then you land and notice that your legs are shaking, the adrenaline is coursing through your veins. The legs, even the rest of the body they are attached to no longer seem to be a part of me. I feel like I'm looking out of another persons eyes.
Here only for the experience.
Like a tourist inside my own body.
That was so quick.
I want to do it again and it's half price if I do it in the next 24 hours.
But I have to catch my flight back to the world. Back to the past to see if maybe I can set some things right before Las Vegas really does become the future.
Before the whole world relies on over consumption as a means of growth.
