Monday February 24, 2014

We did it.  Ralf and I jumped of the Sky Tower in Auckland New Zealand.  The Sky Tower is 328 metres (over 1,076 feet).  We jumped from 194 metres (636 feet).  Absolutely awesome.

We had talked about jumping off the Sky Tower ever since we had done the Edge Walk in Toronto and found out that Auckland New Zealand had an Edge walk and a jump.  The Sky Jump is a very safe jump from 636 feet.

Well here we are in Auckland and now is the time to do it.  We had gone into the Downtown City of Auckland last week, but there was a lot of things happening (the Nines Rugby league competition, the lantern festival), there were a lot of people wanting to do the jump so we couldn\’t schedule our jump.

We decided we would do it today.  We got up early and caught the bus by 9:15.  We still had to wait an hour before we could jump – 11:00 am was our scheduled time.

They suited us up and checked our harness, weighed us and wrote how much we weighed on our wrists.  My weight in kilos was the year I was born.  That doesn\’t make me a little porker, it was the weight of the harness etc!! then up we went to the Sky Deck.

Lovely outfits again, at least they weren\’t orange like the outfits we wore for the Edge walk.  I decided I wanted to be first out of our group of three to jump.   I went on to the platform first, had a few photos taken, had my harness checked out again and 1, 2, 3 of I went – 11 seconds and I was on the ground.

It takes about 5 minutes to get the rigging back up to the Sky Deck and then Ralf was on his way down.

As I said when we did the Edge walk,

\”Life is not measured by the number of breaths that we take, but by the moments that take our breath away\”

Did you know the Sky Tower:

• Took 2 years and 9 months to build and cost NZ 85 million to construct;
• Weighs a massive 21 million kilograms or the weight of approximately 6,000 elephants;
• Is 328 metres high or around 37 buses standing end to end;
• Is primarily constructed from 15,000 cubic metres of concrete, 2,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel and 260 panes of glass;
• Has 1,267 stairs leading from the base of the Sky Tower to Sky Deck;

and the most important fact. . .

• Should remain standing in the unlikely event of a magnitude 8.0 (Richter scale) earthquake occurring within 20 kilometres of the Sky Tower.

Should remain standing . . .

We are heading to Australia on Thursday.  I wonder what exciting things we can do there.  Surviving the wildlife should be the first priority I think.