Lake-water enema

Here in our pretty little corner of the Pacific Northwest, the sun inexplicably continues to bear its bright face on a daily basis. Temperatures are inching into the seventies, which shuts down all portions of my brain not immediately concerned with lounging. I plugged in a good two hours at the office, then decided that I’d suffered enough for one day and hiked to the quad to catch a few rays and pass a few minutes in chitchat. Then Kelly showed up, so we picked up Dillon and Courtney and headed to the arboretum on Lake Washington for some quasi-legal entertainment.

I refer, of course, to bridge jumping, for which the abandoned 520 overpass offers an irresistible launching point. Kelly and Courtney bore all the peer pressure that Dillon and I could muster with stoic resolve, so we had to jump on our own, but we had a small squad of cheerleaders to make up for it. They sat on the lush lawn, squinting in the sunshine and waiting for us to hurl ourselves into the void. We assumed cheers would be forthcoming.

This spring marks the third that I’ve taken it upon myself to jump off of tall objects into water for an eager crowd’s amusement, and every year I get afraid all over again. Perched on the concrete lip over the water, peering down towards certain doom, the forty-foot drop seemed at least twice that. The water rippled far below, dark and ominous. Every nerve ending in that primitive little knot at the top of my spinal cord told me that it was in my best interest to back slowly away, maybe crying a bit so people could tell I meant it. Instead I took a running start, launched high into the air, windmilled my arms for what seemed like an eternity, and splashed with a reverberating clap into the murky lake. So much of my energy was dedicated to not thinking, I’d forgotten how to take the fall and landed in a sitting position smack on my ass. Yes, it hurts to sit.

Moments after surfacing, I watched Dillon grab his ankles and pull them all the way backwards as he descended gracefully toward his landing spot a few yards from mine. Kelly and Courtney were suitably impressed, but we felt we could do better. At the top again, Dillon crossed that fine line between genius and insanity. “Let’s jump naked,” he said, a grin lighting his face. “Naked?” I asked. “Yeah. In tandem,” he confirmed. “I don’t know how I feel about my nuts being exposed as I hit the water at 35 mph, and -” I started. “No! We’re going naked! Now come on!” With that, he stepped into the girls’ line of sight and signaled that we were about to leap. We stepped back out of view, yanked off our trunks, and ran full speed to the edge in lock step.

Sadly, I landed in the same position as the jump prior, and felt a decidedly unwholesome amount of lake water rush between my unmentionables. We were both laughing too hard for me to make a big deal out of it though, and the girls were in hysterics. “OK,” Kelly said, “we did not see that one coming.” Given the distance and our impressive velocity, they couldn’t have made out anything naughtier than our absence of pants, so no harm was done.

Not until we trudged up the onramp for an encore did I mention my dilemma to Dillon. “I think… I think water went up my ass,” I said grimly, and then we both burst into laughter. It sounded fairly ridiculous spoken aloud.

We had to hurry to our destination; moments after out last jump, a canoe with a guy and two girls pulled up, and now sat parked a respectful distance away from our landing zone, waiting for us. Once we arrived at the graffiti stick figure that marks the jumping spot, Dillon and I just looked at each other and smiled. Words were unnecessary.

Needless to say, the canoers were more than a little surprised to see two pale, naked streaks zoom past their vision into the water. Let the record show that I said something clever to them as I struggled back into my shorts, but I don’t recall what it was.