Life in Vermont over the past couple of weeks had been going along swimmingly. Classes are going well, I got a job at the Women's Center, and we've made friends with some apartments down the hall. A couple of weekends ago, they invited us roommates to go cliff jumping with them, so Laura and I decided to put off homework for the afternoon and go for it.
We went to some lake in South Burlington and less than 5 minutes after we pulled into the parking lot, an ambulance and a firetruck pulled in behind us. We were a little confused about what was going on, but we marched on through the woods for about 20 minutes to get to this spot where there are some good cliffs for jumping. There are 3 main cliffs, one at 20 feet, one at 40, and one at 76. The water there is plenty deep, but no matter how deep the water is, it's still going to feel like you're hitting concrete when you land after falling 75 feet. One of my new buddies had jumped it a couple weeks before and was still hurting.
When we got to the cliffs, we saw that one girl had jumped the big behemoth and wasn't doing so hot. She'd swum over to the side and gotten herself up on some rocks, but wasn't moving, although other kids said she was still talking. It took the EMTs quite a while to get down to her, especially with all their gear, and then they weren't able to get her back up the cliff once she was on a backboard, so they had to call in the Coast Gaurd and she was boated away. The whole process took 45+ minutes, so hopefully she didn't have any neurological injuries.
After watching all of this go down, we were all a little shaken up, so we went down to the baby cliff, jumped once and were done :) The water was really clear, but really cold! And while we were swimming around, 2 more dumbos jumped the 76 foot cliff. They first was a really petite girl who we think tore her MCL because she could barely swim and had to be carried back. The other, an athletic guy, jumped and surfaced on his back and didn't move for a couple seconds before he came to. he was convinced he was ok, but his buddy was going to make him go to the hospital to get checked out. And they all took the bus to the cliffs too, so they didn't even have cars to drive to the emergency room. Hopefully everything ended up ok for them.
After we got back, the roommates and I decided to have a Vermont-themed party with lots of flannel, maple syrup, and Vermont-brewed wine :) Things were going swimmingly until we realized that we were locked out of our apartment! So we ended up crashing down the hall and then driving an hour and a half to my roommate Clare's house (where she was for the weekend) to grab her keys. Spending $20 in gas was definitely better than paying a locksmith $100! And we got a mini road trip out of the deal too :)
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