As I was telling you last week, my friends and I used to undertake a lot of covert “missions” while we were growing up. These missions usually consisted of dressing up in military BDU fatigues or black ninja-esque outfits and sneaking into places or onto land where we weren’t supposed to be.
One particular night stands out in my mind because of how silly the whole thing was in hindsight and how it could have cost my cousin Scott his future unborn children!
One Friday night (I am pretty sure it was a Friday because Scott would come to stay at my house almost every Friday evening), we decided we would plan a mission around the highway bridge that was about a half mile from my house. The bridge spanned I-395. The cool thing about this area and the reason we spent a lot of time down there was that the median strip, which is usually just a small strip of land or concrete barriers separating the highway lanes was a sort of bluff 40 feet high and about 75 feet across in this area. The median made for great climbing once you crossed one of the highway lanes. Anyway, we donned whatever clothes we were wearing and Scott grabbed the 100 foot length of climbing rope that I had bought earlier that year. I had no idea what he had planned for it, but I thought it was cool.
We trekked down to the bridge using fields and the woods to stay off the roads. Once we got to the bridge, we moved over towards it. Scott clambered up the side of the bridge (it was a simple climb) and ran out from the edge about 30 feet. Here, he secured (and I use that word loosely!) the rope to the railing and tosed the rest over the side. I sat hunched in the brush at the side of the highway, wondering what he had planned as he hopped the rail and leaped back down to where I was.
“What’s the plan?” I whispered as he came running towards me.
“I learned how to belay this week at school.”
Scott and I didn’t attend the same school, but most of the high schools in my area seemed to have Outward Bound-type courses as part of their curriculum during the 80s. I guess it was part of their character building plan. Regardless of the reason, we were all required to take these courses as part of our phys-ed classes. They consisted of team building activities, ropes courses, problem solving and CPR training. I enjoyed it, but I never remembered the details of the knots and things that we learned to the point where I would have tried this stuff outside of the supervision of our instructors! Apparently, Scott felt compelled to try what he had learned at school.
“We learned to make a rope harness and a simple belay.”
I knew this was going to be ugly as Scott pulled out a length of cotton cord from his pocket and proceeded to tie it around his waist and crotch like the familiar web-sling climbing harnesses we used at our high school. When he finished tying the knots and turned around to show off his work, the sling looked pretty good.
“I’m going to belay down from the top of the bridge.” he said as he gestured over towards the highway. “I need you to stay near me down here in case I need help.”
We both ran over to the bridge. Scott climbed back up the side and I sat with my back to the concrete footing on the side of the highway. Scott had tied the rope about 25 feet from the beginning of the overpass. At that point, the drop to the ground was about 35 feet and he would still be mostly concealed from oncoming highway traffic by the concrete footing. He attached his harness to the climbing rope (I have no idea how he did this – I think you need a carabiner to do this, but I could be wrong!) and hopped over the railing – luckily there was very little traffic on my road so his chances of being seen atop the bridge we pretty low. He stood on the edge of the bridge testing the ropes. Everything seemed tight and he whispered “On belay!” to no one in particular. Technically, this was not belaying because there was no safety rope and he had no spotter actually belaying his fall, but this didn’t appear to bother my cousin.
Scott slowly leaned back and away from the bridge and began moving foot over foot down the side. At the point where the bridge girders ended and open air began, he seemed to hesitate and his descent slowed a little, but all looked good. Stepping off into open air, I heard Scott grunt a little as his homemade harness tightened around his thighs, but the descent continued.
It continued until his combat boots hung about 8 feet from the ground!
Scott, just dangled in mid air. “The harness is getting really tight and the rope won’t slide anymore!” he whispered. I detected some desperation in his voice so I came over from my hiding spot and looked up at him. “Can you loosen it?” I asked.
“I’m trying. You’re going to have to stand under me and let me stand on your shoulders so I can relieve some of the tension on the harness.”
I moved over to stand below Scott’s legs, but they were still about 3 feet above my shoulders. I raised my arms and pushed up on my cousin’s feet to lift him a bit. This didn’t do much because it was hard for Scott to keep his balance in this position.
After about 5 minutes of this, Scott was still unable to continue his descent.
“You’re going to have to cut the harness!” I suggested. I didn’t want my precious climbing rope cut!
Scott pulled out his survival knife and began trying to figure out what rope to cut. He was probably also mentally preparing for the fall. A few seconds later he told me to get out of the way and he made the last few cuts.
He tumbled to the ground, landing in a heap at the edge of the highway. As we both stood, I noticed that Scott was holding his balls and rubbing the insides of his legs.
“That was really tight! I was starting to lose feeling in my feet!”
Needless to say, we never tried anything quite like that again….
Here are some shots of the overpass as it looks today.
[img]http://don.oninohana.com/images/bios/overpass.d.jpg[/img]
[img]http://don.oninohana.com/images/bios/overpass.b.jpg[/img]
[img]http://don.oninohana.com/images/bios/overpass.c.jpg[/img]
