Bungee Video

Hey!
Devon was nice enough to share all this videos he took, so I have uploaded it for you guys. Scroll down to the bungee post, or click here.

BIG UPDATES!! MUST READ!

Hey all, just wanted to say I've made 2 simultaneous posts below (both important) so make sure you read both. The first one (have to scroll down more) is about my trip to Madrid, and the other (above the Madrid post) is about my bungie jump on the highest bungie in the world (Famous from the movie Goldeneye). I'll post pictures and stuff monday or tuesday since the work internet is much faster.

Enjoy and PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS :D

vic

The names Choy, Victor Choy (James Bond jump)

// EDIT!!: VIDEO IS UP!!
It will be up for 7 days or a certain number of downloads. If you can't get it, let me know and I will repost it.

Movie link #1: Click HERE!!

I have uploaded a divx version of the video (much smaller, 8 megs vs 98 megs), so if you want this version, you can get it from one of these places:

Yousendit.org

Yousendit.org mirror

rapidshare.de

for the rapidshare one, once u click on the link, click free, then scroll to the bottom, wait for some countdown to end then click on download.
//end of edit

The names Choy, Victor Choy.

You guys remember the movie "Golden Eye" where James Bond is running across this dam and bungie jumps off it, well, I have offically done the Bond Jump, all 220 metres of it. The dam is called the Verzasca dam and is the worlds highest/longest bungie jump (so I was told). The structure was huge and was just amazing to see.

the dam


But lets start from the beginning.

We (Devon, Shane, Evan, Warren, Tracvis and I) left friday night to catch the free train down but had no place to stay so we just camped inside the city. We walk around till we found a sheltered place and just set up tents, was interesting. Warren and I were too lazy to set one up so we just slept on a sleeping back ontop of hte tent tarp.

where i slept



We woke up pretty early Saturday morning to pack up and good and we were quite lucky since it started raining heavily when we finished (Oh, Switzerland is in like a state of emergency or something with sever flooding in Central Switzerland, because of the flooding, the trains are all messed up and stuff). The first place we went to in the morning was Ponte Brolla. This place is known for cliff diving (I didn't do this though). Devon, Shane and Travis went for a swim and do some jumping. At 12 we started heading over to the dam where we met up with Vance, Bernard, Henry and Tommy. We got all prep'ed up and were ready to go.

The jumping order was:
1. Devon
2. Evan
3. Warren
4. Bernard
5. Me
6. Henry
7. Vance
8. Tommy
9. Shane

Unfortunately Travis didn't go.

The jump was really fun, you just step on to the ledge and they count you down, 3...2....1....You instictively just jump (don't recommend stalling, the more the think the worse it is). The free fall was a good 7 seconds maybe (you lose all sense of time) and was an amazing feeling. You can see the damn ahead and to your left just wizzing by, the ground below you shooting up, very very cool. It's like your flying except your only going down and have no control (so I guess it's just like fall :D). After a couple bounces you have to pull yourself up, hook on a safety buckle, and then grab a hook and hook-in and you get pulled back up to the top.

The whole process takes about 2-3 minutes but it was so fun and amazing. I can now saw I've done the biggest comericial bungie.

Getting strapped on


At the jumping point


off i go


On a side note, i forgot to take out Evan's keys and cash from my hoodie when I jumped, but luckily they didn't fall out :) oops.

So the next time someone asks me:
"If all your friends jumped off a bridge (dam), would you?"

I can say yes proudly.

Video Host 1

Peace out.

Madrid

Hey everyone, sorry about the long delay, but at long last, my Madrid post appears. Madrid was pretty sweet, lots of unique experiences. I read that if you don't speak spanish its very difficult, but i didn't find that to be the case. We ended up going to madrid friday afternoon and our flight was out of Basel, so we had to train it over (took 1 hours). The Basel airport is really neat because it's a Euroairport, meaning it is shared by 3 countries (Germany, France, and Switzerland). The airport itself is pretty small but has a lot of flights. There are no extras things (food court, shopping, arcade) and is pretty quiet.

When we got to Madrid, the first thing we had to do was get to our hostel. Keegan, being the Genius he is, booked 2 beds for 3 people and for 1 night instead of 3. We managed to talk the hostel to let me sleep on the floor (wasn't fun). Afterwards, we wandered around the city to find another hostel for the next two nights. When we found 1, we headed back to the first hostel, and the staff told us about a vodka party, so we went along. All it was was a trip to a bar and a free shot, after a few drinks we headed back for the night.

Arc at Puerta de Alcala


The second day, we went to 2 of the big 3 museums, the Reina Sofia and the Museo del Prado. The Reina Sofia was more modern art so we saw a few pictures of Picaso and Dali. There was a particularly famous painting of Picaso's called the Guernica so we wanted to take a picture of it, but they had guards everywhere and refused to let us so we got craft. We positioned people to block view and I created some interference but getting a guard to explain some random painting to me. Keegan hid the camera in the camera case with just the lens sticking out and snapped about 20 shots of hte painting blind. We ended up with a decent one, so we left happy :) The Building was pretty nice as it had glass elevators so you had a pretty nice view of the city, pretty cool.

Reina Sofia


Guernica


After the museum, we went for lunch and tried one of the Spanish set meals. You basically get 2 dishes, bread, beer and desert so it was a pretty good price. I got Paella (spanish rice) and some kind of fish, a beer, and a chocolate cake. Unfortunately the beer wasn't a spanish beer so I didn't get another chance to try it, i did pick up a bottle of wine though.

Food


After lunch we went to the Prado. This musuem contained more classical art stuff, but I don't know my art history too well so I don't know what was famous.

The next stop was the State Library that had a exhibit on Don Quoite (spelling?) and then went to the archeolegical musuem. Just your typical museum, nothing too special, I was getting pretty sick of museums by then. We went to Real Madrid's football stadium afterwards. The thing was huge, but unfortunately it was closed so I could look inside. O well. We wandered around town after that and ended up in Plaza de Espania which had a pretty nice fountain display. That evening we watched a Flamenco show. It was pretty crazy, was like riverdance to spanish music. The dancers legs moved so fast, and the guitar was very nice as well. It was pretty gross to sit in the front thought since this one dancer was sweeting alot and every time he did a fast spin, all this sweat would fly into the crowd, eww.

State Library


Estadio Santiago Vernabeu


us at the fountain


us in madrid


Flaminco dancer





On Sunday we went to the market. It was massive and had some pretty cool stuff. Unfortuately, Keegan and I had planned to visit the monastary afterwards, so we did not have enough time to look around. Henry had to go to church, so he stuck around the market longer.

The Monastary (Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial) was just massive and was very interesting. The crypt was neat but spooky and the royal burial place was pretty cool. It was neat seeing all these names (Hasburgs) you saw in other countries. The Church inside the monastery was pretty cool as well. The monastary was 1 hour away from the city, so it took quite a lot of time to go to and from there. When we got back to the city, we went to another art museum (Thyssen-Bornemisza). There were some art works from some famous painters, but I don't really remember.

lake


me at monastary


nice door




hallway


ceiling


nice building



The last thing we did was go to a bull fight. This was quite brutal and mean, but was also kind of interesting. Unfortuately the Matadors we saw were pretty bad (explained below). A local tried to explain it too us as best as she could. There are 3 stages to the fight, the first is where the matador puts the bull through a few passes to judge the speed, agility, agressiveness...ect. Then next step they bring in a house and get the bull to ram the horse (the horse is blindfolded and can't see it coming). The rider on the horse then stabs the bull to weaken it. Then 3 runners charge the bull and stab it with 2 streamer/pin things each. The last stage is where the matador tires out the bull and make it submit before killing it. Each bull fight has 3 matador and they fight 2 bulls each.

Plaza de Toros Monumental de Las Ventas




The first guy was by far the worst of the bunch. During the Horse stage, he let the bull flip over the horse and the bull then proceeded to gore the horse a little. I think the horse was ok, but injured. Also, you supposed to kill in in 1 try by stabbing the sword into the heart of the bull. If you miss then you go for the head. This guy missed like 10 times, so you felt really bad for the bull as it was stabbed in the head repeatedly, not good.

The second guy was pretty good. He went on his knees and let the bull charge him and did this cool matrix-ish move to avoid it. His first battle was pretty text book and received 1 ear for it (if it was a good fight, u get 1 of the bulls ears, if it was really good, you get both, if you suck, you get none). For the second bull, towards the end, the bull charged him and threw him in the air. Was pretty freaky but he was uninjured. It was pretty impressive to see them just jump right back into the battle so quickly after almost being killed.

The last guy was pretty good also but also almost got killed by his second bull. He got 1/2 his pants torn off by the bull.

All in all, it was interesting and unique but not something i would watch again.




On the last day, we went to the Palace. This was also very big and very nice. It was pretty much like your typical european palace, but it had an armor exhibit that was pretty sweet. Lots of medevil armors and weapons. After the palace we just walked around the city and checked out the sites. We went to the cities biggest park (Retiro) and they had some nice fountains and structures. One was the crystal Palace which was a glass house, pretty neat. It was closed so we couldn't go in. We visited a famous Arch and (Arc at Puerta de Alcala) and have some really neat shots of us from the medium between traffic.

Plaza Major



Palace Real



Puerta de Toledo


Group shot


Monument to Alfonso XII in Retiro Park


Palacio de Cristal in Retiro Park


Church


Church roof


knights


monument


park


We headed to the airport after that, but our flight was delayed 1.5 hours, so that sucked, When we got back to Switzerland (Basel) we didn't see any trains to Baden, so we decided to go to Zurich and catch a train there. When we got to Zurich we just missed the last train by 10 minutes so we had to camp at the trainstation till 5 in the morning. Luckily we met a univerity student that is like a taxi service at night to earn some extra cash and he drove us home. It was a little more then the train but way cheaper then a taxi and we were able to sleep in our own beds.

All in all, it was a pretty cool trip, did lots of unique spanish stuff so that was good.

wow, the unimaginable has happen....

...I actually read a book! I know, doesn't sound very much like me, but it was pretty good. Read the Da Vinci Code, cool story, althought the really religious (and those who can't accept it as just a story) will not be too happy. Anyways, just wanted to share that little detail, might be another 7 years before I read another book :) Anyways, I'll be off to Madrid in about an hour. Turns out english is almost non-existant, and seeing as my Spanish is non-existant, it's gonna be an interesting trip. Well, I'll tell you all about it tuesday or wednesday, so until then, have a good weekend.

vic

Visitors, Street Parade, and Caonyoning....Oh my!

Hi all,

Hope everything is going well with everyone. I've had a pretty cool weekend. David came to visit on Thursday, and my brother and his girlfriend came on friday so it was quite eventful.

On Friday we just did the usual city tour and all that, nothing to special.

On Saturday, we went to Zurich for the annual Zurich Street Parade. It's the biggest street parade in Europe (since the Berlin Love Parade closed), and is pretty much a massive dance/rave. The whole city has DJ's spinning tracks everywhere, people dressed up in funky/weird costumes, and all these "floats". The floats are pretty much a flatbed semi with people dancing, each with their own DJ and tons of stereo equipment (very loud). It was pretty neat, but since i'm not a raver/clubber and can't dance, wasn't super exciting. There was a lot of people there, so that was a neat little thing to experience.

On Sunday we went canyoning in Locarno. Canyoning is pretty much like extreme hiking. We took a cable car up and mountain and hiked down, but went down waterfalls and stuff. The 3 basic ways to get down a waterfall was sliding down, rapel down and just jump. Connie was pretty scared since she didn't like heights or water, but she toughed it out and got throught it, so that was cool. I just wished that we had a camera to take pictures as the canyon was so pretty. But cameras and water don't really mix, so too bad. The largest rapel we did was 45 meters i think, that one was pretty tricky as we had to go to an intermediate platform then go over the edge blind. Didn't really know where we had to stop and disconnect from the rope. Keegan stopped halfway and disconnected himself, so that was sorta funny. The highest jump was about 13 meters, not too high, but enough. We had lunch in the canyon so that was pretty cool. Definately highly recommend. For the canyoning we got a 3 piece wetsuit, so it was actually pretty warm in the water, very fun. The crappy thing about having contacts was everytime u jumped in the water they would migrate to the top of your eyes and you would think u lost them, but after rubbing your eyes alittle they'd return to the normal position and you could see again. I was suprised i didn't loose them, sweet :D In our group was 2 guys from Litchenstein (that small country beside switzerland). they were pretty crazy doing all these flips and stuff but it was cool. After lunch we joined up with the boss of the canyonning company, his wife and their friends from India and Australia. Was pretty cool, a nicely sized group, unfortuately the latter half of the trip has less jumps and slides, but they did let us do self-repels and the big 45 meter one. Still liked the jumps the most, o well. After the canyoning we went for a beer with our guides, then went to the beach with them. It was pretty cool. The place were we got beer was pretty nice. The roof of the patio was covered with grape vines and you could just pull them out and eat them. Also found a walnut tree (never need young walnut before, would never guess they came from there) as well as chestnut trees).

David left on monday morning and Leslie and Connie left on tuesday, so things are back to normal now.

The only crappy part of the weekend was I had to either sleep on the floor or in a chair (not very comfortable) and I caught a cold (i guess spending a day submerged in mountain water does that) but all good.

I'll posts of pictures later, too lazy to upload right now.

This weekend i'm off to Madrid for a couple days, so that'll be fun. Talk to you guys later.

Budapest

Hi everyone, worry about the long delay for the new write-up, i've been really lazy lately. We the last trip I went to was budapest and it was pretty sweet. Just some general info first. It was actually 2 cities that merged into 1 (Buda and Pest, talk about creative naming). Also 1 of the towns (Buda, i think) means oven, and boy was that a correct name for the place, it was absolutely boiling. I think it was around 36-37 degrees everyday. The city is a little dirty and and the transit system looks a little run down (apparently it has the oldest subway line in continental europe with only London's being older) but you can get around ok. The food is super cheap (at groceries stores for sure) and the resturant food is quite good. Apparently going to their bath houses are the thing to do there, but we didn't know that and skipped it, oops. Also, the roads are a little tricky to navigate as every time it bends a little the name changes, and the maps are hard to read since every steet name is massive. The locals are either really helpful or just hate that your in their country and merchants try to rip off tourist quite a bit (damn tourist traps). The escalators here are also pretty crazy, the are really steap, really long and go pretty fast.

 


Well, we took friday off work to go to Budapest and arrived at around 9am, here's a shot of some mountain range from the air.

 


Once we got to the city, it took us like an hour to find the hostel. The roads were pretty confusing and everyone pointed us in opposite directions (1 girl told us to go across town when the hostel is actually 2 blocks away). The hostel itself was not bad, it was cheap and we had the room to our selves more or less (1 other person every night). It was pretty close to the subways so it was easy to get around. The first place we checked out was the Hungarian National Museum. It was pretty neat and the staff were totally anal about taking pictures, once they saw we had cameras they'd follow us through the whole place. I still managed to take a few but nothing too spectacular.

 


Afterwards, Tim and Preston were tired, so we split off and continued to explore the city. At dinner time we went to try some traditional Hungarian. We had Goulash to start, man was it quite filling. Can't remember about the main course, but the desert was a crepe with cheese, sourcream raisins and sugar, not too bad and was incredibly filling. Ended up costing 10 CHF/per so pretty cheap.

 


 




The next day we decided to check out the local flee market. It was pretty hard to find the place as the bus is not tourist friendly at all, but we managed to get there somehow. The place is huge and has a lot of war memorabilia. I ending up getting a war medal from the period when the USSR occupied Hungary, and got a throwing star as well (just cuz they're cool). Keegan bought a bayonet, a retractable baton, a throwing star and a shirt (lots of weapons).

 


This weekend was also the Hungarian Grand Prix F1 race or something like that, so lots of people came to see that. Some of the cars were scattered around the city, so it was kinda cool to check one out.

 


After some more site seeing and stuff we went to the Terror Museum. It's basically about the horrors of the Nazi and Communist occupation and is housed in the same place the local nazi party (Arrow Cross Party) and the Communists Department of Political Police, State Security Office, and State Security Authority. Wasn't too much new here, but it was very well presented and showcased to horrors that took place under both occupations. I managed to piss off the staff pretty good as they took the "no pictures" policy more seriously then everywhere else. I took a picture of the tank and they ran down to be through a hidden door and started yelling and stuff, made me delete the picture, and remove my memory card. I wanted some one to take a picture of them yelling at me for taking a picture, but no one had there's handy, woulda been a funny picture though.

 


Afterwards we went to check out this park-ish area of the city. In there was Hero's Square, althought I don't know which heros they are honoring. It was pretty nice tho.

 


 


There were many museums in this area so we went to as many as possible. We went to some art museum and a transportation museum, nothing super cool there. The next one was the agriculture museum. It was inside a castle in the park and was pretty neat.

 


As i stated earlier, bathhouses are a big deal here, something we didn't know until we left, but we were in one. We just thought it was too expensive, oops. Here's a fountain inside one of them.

 


The zoo was pretty close, so we went to check it out as well (we bought a Budapest card, so had free museums, and transit for 3 days). It was more or less like a typical zoo, but still cool since I haven't been to the Calgary one in ages.

 


 


After a long day of sightseeing, we went back to the same resturant with Tim and Preston. I had some Hungarian pasta (super filling) and the others had Gypsy Pork and something else. The dinner was more expensive this time as they kinda ripped us off. They charged for side dishes even though they were included and the menu has drink prices in dL units, and a drink was 3 dL. So Tim and Preston has a coke each and when there was 3 cokes on the bill they went to complain. Well, turns out the 3 cokes was for the glass so they promptly added the other drink on the bill to charge us more. Didn't want to complain about the rest of the bill after that.

 


 



On sunday, Preston went to church and the rest of us went to the Jewish museum and Synagogue. It was pretty nice and we had to wear those hat things (don't know the name) in hte synagogue. Pretty cool.

 


The place had some crazy security as I had to go through a metal detector and get searched before I could go in, was weird.

 


 


In the back there was a tree with the name of a Holocaust victim on each leaf.

 


We meet up with Preston and went to check out the caves afterwards. I read on the internet that you could go cave exploring but when i asked all the tourist information centres they had no clue what i was talking about so we decided to just do the tourist cave tours instead. Th first one was the Palvolgy caves. The tour was all in Hungarian, so we just wandered off and took pictures and stuff. We got lost once and ran through before we found the group again. Then We got held back taking pictures and they actually locked us in. It was pretty funny. The staff finally noticed we wree in the caves and let us out , but they were pretty angry, was fun :D. The place also had a foosball table, so got to play again :D. I think the score count in Europe so far is 4 games to 2 for me against keegan.

 


 


We went to another set of caves afterward. These were called the Szemlohegy Caves. This time the tour guide spoke english and was really nice, so we actually learned some stuff. At one point we came up the a big ladder and convinced the guide to let us climb up and explore on our own, as long as we didn't let the hungarians see us. It was pretty cool.

 


 


The nice thing about both caves is that it's a constant 10 degrees in there, so a nice break from hte killer heat outside.

The next stop was Statue Park. This is the place that inspired Statue Park in the N64 goldeneye game (remember with all the soviet statues and having to met Valentin in a shipping create and trying not to be killed ny xena). The game made it look a lot cool then it really is, but the front enterance is pretty similiar to the game. This place was were they put all the soviet monuments and statues after the soviets left so there were some massive ones. Not as many of Lenin as I thought they're be.

 


 


 


 


We went back to town afterwards and decided to check out St. Stephen's Church. It was the biggest in the city and was pretty nice.

 


 


At night we walked up a hill in Buda to take nightshots of hte city. From the bridge from Pest to Buda there were some amazing views of the city so we took a few. It was incredibly windy so it was hard to get a good night shot it, but we somehow did it.

 


 


Along the way we met a guy who biked from Vienna, so he tagged along to take pictures. He took a nice one with the palace in the background.

 


At the top, of the hill is the Citadel. It was more or less the highest point in the city (aside from a ball called the Hungarian Eye) so it was good to take pics there.

 


We met a group of Polish students there and talked for a bit. We started to leave at about 10 and they would come and start talking again. We finally said our goodbye at 1ish, but it was fun. I really want to see Poland now.

 



Monday was our last full day and we started off by going to a History Museum. The actual building was a lot more impressive then the museum display (its in the palace from the above shots). It was massive and took a while to go everywhere.

 


We explored Buda a bit more and found a nice looking church there called "The Church of Our Lady" and a nice look out point.

 


 



At the Szemlohegy Caves, the worker there told me about the real caving I was looking for so we immediately signed up for that. It was the most fun I had all trip. I bet the others in our group were probably annoyed with us as we were cracking jokes left and right and taking a ton of pics and cracking smart-ass comments left and right but it was fun. It think we added entertainment to the tour. Unforuately, by now everyone's cameras were dead but mine, so I was the designated cameraman (no pics of me :( ) but oh well. The caves were really cool, really dark and lots of small small cracks to climb in and out of. Our guide was really experienced but not too good with english (he told us to slide down a steep hole head first on our backs, effectively blinding us of anything infront of us and also gets his lefts and rights mixed up. Tim and I took the wrong path through a steep tunnel becuase of this).

 


 


In the tunnels we met Louise so it was nice to get to know more people.

 


Heres a random pic of Tim.

 


The guys were pretty tired after a couple hours, but we still had a little bit more to go.

 


The last tunnel was the the hardest. It was really narrow and there was a V wedge so you had to Lift your self up in limited space to get over. It then immediately took a 90 degree turn. It was fun to go in, but wouldn't not be a good time to be claustrophobic. Tim, being over 6 feet tall got stuck so that was funny. Here's Preston emerging from the 90 degree turn.

 


There were a few holes that had to slide down superman style (1 arm outstretched like you flying and go straight through a small hole like a pencil, was cool). Definately a very cool experience.

The whole caving thing took about 6-7 hours or something and aftwards, Louise and Aussie and a Swede joined us for dinner (again at the same place). It was nice getting to meet her and I now have a person to take me all around Shanghai and HK so that's always nice. We ended up getting home at about 1ish ready to get up at 4:30 to catch our bus and flight home.


We got the airport and realized our plane leaves at 9:30 and not 8:30 so we coulda slept in another hour, oops. We arrived in Zurich at about 11:50 and would of made it back to Baden for work after 1 as planned, but Keegs losts his passport on the plane and they wouldn't let him back on to look for it (or send someone to look for it) so that was really gay. I ended up getting to work at around 2 so it wasn't too bad in the end.

All in all, it was a really fun place and would definitely recommend checking it out. This week we're gonna go on a hike, and next week David and my Brother (and his GF) are coming, so that'll be exciting. The week after is Madrid and the week after that is Turkey and Greece, so it's gonna be a fun couple of weeks. Well, time to do some work now, later everyone.