Al Weston pioneered bungee jumping with a 1970s stunt off the Golden Gate Bridge on Columbus Day. He and a friend escaped arrest by sliding down a secondary rope onto a speedboat, switching to a white Cadillac, and fleeing to the airport while hearing themselves described as wanted criminals on the radio.
we jumped off the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge during rush hour on Columbus Day. So it's Columbus Day, it's a national holiday, so it wasn't that busy, but it was very different to the first jump on, on April Fools' on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Clifton Suspension Bridge is very light traffic and maybe even no traffic. It's most, mostly it's a footbridge. So we had lots of help when we jumped off the Golden Gate. Every person, every man and woman had to take care of themselves. And so, so we had to attach our bungee ropes to the bridge and then throw them over the side and then jump off wearing a tuxedo. I, I wasn't wearing a tuxedo. Uh, a few people did. I think Kurt did and Peter Carew did. But no, I, I, I wasn't wearing a, um, a tuxedo. I did come up with an escape method working with a friend of mine. I was going to Virginia Tech at the time, and a friend of mine at Blacksburg, that's where Virginia Tech is, ran a climbing shop. And so he came up with a scheme where we could slide down on a ring after the bungee had stopped bouncing. And so we had a second line on our shirts and we did that. Two of us, Simon Keelan and I, got away. It was a bit tricky getting your weight shifted from the bungee onto the second line, and nobody else wanted to practice, but Simon and I did. And so we figured out how to do that and slid down the the rope onto a speedboat that was waiting for us, that then took us to the north side of the bridge, got into a waiting Cadillac limousine, a white Cadillac limousine that took us back across the bridge, back to San Francisco Airport where we were gonna jump on the first plane and escape. But it turned out the police who came, they weren't that, that upset. They, they arrested everybody there. But as we were driving to the airport, we did listen to news of this and listened to people saying, well, there's this thing called bungee jumping. I wonder what this is all about on the radio while you're in the car. While we're in the car, I was listening to news reports, and also there was a report that two people had escaped. That was us. And that the police were after us. And I thought, yes, finally I'm a wanted criminal being chased by the law. But
