That's Not in the Handbook

When I tell people I worked at the Park's Bungee Tower, one of their first questions is always, "So, how many people died on that ride?" When I tell them none, and that there were rarely even any injuries on the ride, they are both dubious and, dare I say it? Disappointed.

We would often assure nervous patrons that they were at one of the safest rides in the Park. Which isn't necessarily the most comforting thing they could hear, based on the Park's reputation, but it was the truth.

Over the course of my tenure at the Park, I worked in 6 different departments. The only time I ever received any real training when I worked at the tower. It was certainly the only time I ever received a 20-page manual detailing standard operating and emergency procedures. Everything on the tower was checked and double checked every morning before we opened. Three people checked each patron's harness before they jumped. We kept logs on cord use and retired them promptly. There were rules, and we knew them. Which isn't to say that we always followed them ourselves:

To be fair, the manual didn't specify that you COULDN'T jump from the tower strapped into your snowboard, but it's probably safe to assume that it would have been frowned upon.

This is John.

John was an exchange student. He was known as John-the-Irish-Guy, John-I-Heard-He's-An-Underwear-Model, or, my favorite, Eurotrash. (That was Therese's pet name for him.) John didn't mind any of the nicknames. John didn't mind anything at all really. He was a laid-back guy.

However, one day, as John was jumping down to take his lunch break, he said something that one of the jumpmasters didn't like. I don't know what it was, but she decided to put him in his place. His place was, apparently, in mid-air. At the time I snapped this photo, he'd been hanging there for a little under 10 minutes. Then the radio started squawking; our supervisor was furious. It seems that some guests had noticed that there was this guy just hanging there from the bungee tower and they thought he was really stuck.

So the supervisor flipped out on all of us for making the only safe ride in the Park look dangerous. The jumpmaster reluctantly lowered John to the airbag. His legs were numb and he had missed half his lunch break, but you know what? John didn't mind.

Boredom: A Photo Essay

One day, Brett decided to put on every harness he could find. Roger approved.

He then decided to clip in backwards.

And away he went.

Weebles Wobble But They Don't Jump Down

I recently read that the Dean of Admissions at MIT resigned because she fabricated her academic credentials way back in the 70's. Which reminded me of a bungee supervisor at the Park, who also acheived power through a lie. (dun Dun DUN!!) His name was Bill, but we called him Weeble. Because that's what he looked like. He was red-faced and shiny and round. And while Weebles, with their wobbling and their not falling down, give joy to children, Bill was a total douche. And though Marilee Jones fibbed on her resume, she apparently was very good at her job and was beloved by the MIT community and the world of higher education. Bill was completely incompetent. And he wore lame sunglasses.

Now you may be saying, "Come on, Therese! Are you really equating the dean of one of the most prestigious colleges in the U S of A to a low-level supervisor at an amusement park remembered more for its injury rate than its rides and attractions?" Yes. Yes, I am.

Anyhoo, one of the former bungee supervisors had moved to Colorado and his position needed to be filled. Enter the Weeble. According to his resume, he had been a bungee supervisor someplace in upstate New York. Or maybe it was the Jersey shore. The point is, no one checked his references. He got the job. At first, we just thought he was a dick. But a dick you kind of felt sorry for, because he was the kind of dick who desperately wanted to be popular.

Then we started noticing that, though he would frequently climb the tower to offer the jumpmasters his opinion, he never jumped. He would always walk back down the stairs. Weird. And he was frequently out of his area. He'd be spotted in down in Motorworld, or up at Surf Hill. Once, he even came to check on me at the summit of the Alpine Slide. Which, despite what has been said about Water World, really was the easiest position in the entire Park. You literally just sat there all day because, legally, someone had to be there. There was no contact with patrons, since they got off at a mid-station. You might possibly have to maybe take a cart off, if they missed it at the top of the slide. And someone might call you to ask about the weather, since the spot was at the top of a mountain and thus offered a pretty sweet, and long, view. It was a great place to get a tan, read, smoke the smoke... But I digress.

He would show up for the interdepartmental water polo games (held afterhours in the Wave Pool) not to compete or to cheer on our team, but to leer at his female subordinates in bathing suits. The day after one match, he came up to me at the tower and said, "Therese, I saw another side of you last night. Of your top half, that is." Ew! Inappropriate, and worse, not even funny!

Management caught on to his duty-shirking, sexual-harassing ways pretty quickly. Upon a belated check of his references, it was found that he exaggerated his qualifications. He had worked at another bungee facility, but briefly and not in any sort of supervisory capacity. The Weeble was shown the door.

Several months later, as I was buying a ridiculous pair of white vinyl go-go boots at the Joyce Leslie in the Rockaway Mall, my friend Stacey came tearing up to me with a look of horror-spiked delight on her face. She had spotted Bill and his lady friend at the back of the store shopping for racy underthings. You stay classy, Weeble!

Orange Soda

Double shifts and 60-hour work weeks were common at the Park. It was the only way to rack up enough hours to qualify for an unlimited ski season pass and besides, all your friends were at the Park, so what else were you going to do? Might as well come to work.

One day, my friend Mark* and I were pulling doubles at the top of the Bungee Tower. It was well into the afternoon and neither of us had had a break. Mark got on the radio and tried to get someone to relieve us, but we were short on jump masters that day and it was going to be awhile before anybody would be able to come up. A few minutes later my sister Anne Marie came back from her break. Mark called down for her to come up because he needed an orange soda. Anne Marie put on a harness and made her way up the tower. Mark jumped down and took off towards the Lodge. A few minutes later, we saw him out in the parking lot, walking toward his car. Confused, I yelled out to ask him where he was going. Mark made a vague gesture, got into his VW and drove away. All the way to his mom's house in Florida. For the rest of the season, the orange soda was our rallying cry anytime we felt exploited or unappreciated.

Fast forward 10-plus years. Mark and Jen, his girlfriend, showed up at my last birthday party, said hello and promptly disappeared. I later found out that they left after waiting at the bar for 20 minutes without so much as a nod from the bartender. Jen's all, "We can't leave! We just got here! It's Therese's birthday!" Mark's response, "She knows about the orange soda. She'll understand."

*Mark T, not to be confused with Opposite Song-singing Mark B.

SnOasis, or, What Happens When You Try To Run A Summer Ride In Winter

Unlike this winter, 1996's was a cold one. The Park, in conjunction with a New York City Top 40 Radio Station, decided to PUT ON A SHOW!!!! An outdoor concert to feature, among others, Noel Gallagher from Oasis. To make it more of an Extravaganza, management decided to open the Bungee Tower for the day.

I was living in Boston at the time, but decided to come down for the show. I hadn't been home in awhile, and this seemed as good an excuse to make the trip as any. Plus, it totally made my Brit Pop-loving co-workers in the record store jealous. So I hopped on the bus and high-tailed it down to New Jersey.

My sister and I arrived at the Park the next morning and made our way out to the tower. Our friend Steve was already there, setting up the airbags. The sun was shining. The air was cold. The stage was set up in the parking lot. Music filtered over-- Alanis Morrissette, Garbage, and, of course, Oasis. Wonderwall, to be exact. It's a pretty song. We heard it about 17 times that day.

Steve and I climbed to the top of the tower, where we realized that, in addition to being cold, it was also windy. And icy. So windy, that the steel cables that attached to the top of the rubber bungee cords (which allowed the jumpers to be safely lowered to the ground after their jump) were blowing off the retrieval arms (used to pull the cord back in to the top of the tower, thus allowing the next jumper to be buckled to the end of the cord.) To correct this, Steve or I had to climb up on to a catwalk above the jump platform and manually reposition the wayward cable. There was no ladder to facilitate this. You had to climb on to the railing and hoist yourself up. It was no big deal in the summer, but factor in the cold and the wind and the ice? Danger! Luckily, neither of us plummeted to our death.

Back to the cold. We had been given a space heater. We presumed it was to keep us warm. Not sure how one puny heater was going to keep two people warm in the middle of a howling gale, we hit on an idea-- Let's take everything out of the equipment locker, put the heater in, and sit in it! Genius! We later found out that we had been given the heater not out of concern for our well-being, but for that of the cords. Seems they were only safety tested to work in temperatures above freezing. Whoops!

So we huddled in our box, listened to Wonderwall on an almost constant loop and prayed that no one was crazy enough to want to jump in those conditions. But, unfortunately for us, there's always someone willing to walk up seven stories in ski boots.

Oh, and Noel Gallagher? He showed up right before his scheduled start time, played two songs and then stomped off the stage and into a waiting limo. Guess the poor fella was cold.

The Story of Bouncy and Fish

One day, I decided to visit the Park on my day off. A friend was in town and we had no other plans, so why not? First stop, the bungee tower. We put on our harnesses and climbed to the top. There were two jumpmasters* working at the time, but patrons from three weight classes had been sent to the top.

There were a total of 5 weight classes, each named for the color of elastic used to make the cords: Pink (80-120lbs), Blue (121-140 lbs), Green (141-180 lbs), Orange (181-220), and Black (221-260lbs). Greens and Blues were the most common weight classes, and we would rotate the other three cords based on demand.

Since I had to wait my turn, I thought I'd be helpful and jump the woman waiting for third weight class. Her name was Bouncy. She was an Orange. While setting up the cord, I introduced myself and made small talk with the woman. People tended to get very nervous while waiting to jump, so it was always best to try to be as reassuring as possible. My conversation with Bouncy went something like this:

Bouncy: "Therese, have you done this before?"
Therese: "Sure, I do it every day!"
Bouncy: "Really? Doesn't it hurt your coochie?"
Therese: "No, Bouncy. I can honestly say that it's never hurt my coochie."
Bouncy (yelling to her sister on the ground): "Yo, Fish! Fish! I asked if this was gonna hurt my clit and she said NO!!!"

So over the edge Bouncy went. As she was, er, bouncing, she looked up at me and hollered, "Therese, you were right! It don't hurt the clit at all!!!!"

Sigh. Did I mention it was my day off?


*the top attendant, responsible for sending the patrons over the edge. Literally.

No Fear

Part of the bungee tower mythology was that the guys who wore the "No Fear" t-shirts (second most-hated t-shirt after Big Johnson and Co-ed Naked Anything) had the highest walk-down rate. I don't know if it's true, but we liked to say so.

Working bungee was probably the best gig at the park. (Though my friend Dana was a jungle girl in the Tarzan show and got to wear a boa constrictor. You'd have to ask her about that one. Anyway.) One part I liked was checking out the tattoos. One guy had the names of 12 different women on him. I kept cross-referencing his date's ID with the guy's ink to see how she ranked. (Her name was written in small letters near his wrist, incidentally. I guess she was new.)

But what I loved the most was watching the men psyche each other up for the big jump. Sometimes they did it with manly high-fives and sometimes they did it with playful accusations that the jumper was just a big piece of female genitalia. Boys will be boys.

My favorite exchange went like this:
Jumper #1: Nick.
Jumper #2: Sup.
Jumper #1: Represent, yo.
Jumper #2: No doubt.

I learned that "Represent, yo" almost directly translated to mean, "Jump bravely from this bungee tower, so we can tell the people of Queens, New York of your intrepid act."

Or something like that.