I suck at essays, but I'll give this one a try.
This story begins when I went to visit one of my team mates from team FX, Anthony, in our nations capital Ottawa. I went to make a few jumps from some of the dozens of A's in his playground, all of which are 300ft or lower. After a night of raping some of his favorites, we went downtown to see the "sites"! While walking around the city with the usual "did it, did it, did it, along with the holy shit so and so totally got away with almost......! We were doing what all base jumpers do when walking the streets, looking for a way to get off THAT one. We had formulated a plan to do one of the hotels not far from the parliament building. We were just walking around and looking at some of the ones that were un-penetratable. The nicest one was also the tallest building in Ottawa allowed by the by-laws. It also happened to be the XXXXX Canada building, which is our version of the American FAA. The police of all aviation in Canada. Anthony explained to me that he had once tried to get in and was accosted by security at the first door asking who he had an appointment with, and was told that the building was NOT open to the public. While playing the lost tourist, he chatted up the guard and tried to get a feel for the place. He noted that every person coming in had their ID checked, and that there was more than one security check point to go through, JUST to get to the elevator. Also from where he stood he could see there was a operator in the elevator. Anthony is a VERY smooth talker, and got quite a bit of info from the security guard on the level of security in the building and found out that it was one of the most secure buildings in Ottawa. He was going through this story while we were walking along the building face. All of a sudden I noticed something strange out of the corner of my eye. It was a window washing unit that was cordoned off, BUT at ground level! I motioned to Anthony at what I saw. He didn't get it, so I took a quick look around, and hoped over the barricade. I jumped into the basket, haven never seen one of these things operate before, I looked for some sort of control. HMMMM... this looks like something. JACKPOT!!! Not only did I find it, but the power had been left on!! This was Saturday around 7PM so I figured the guys MUST be done for the day, if not for the weekend. Scramble back over the barricade before anyone sees me! The next few hours we giggled like school girls at our AMAZING luck! Plans obviously changed! The thought of flicking the governing body of aviation building was like a dream come true, the ultimate IN YOUR FACE! Ground crew organized, we come back at 3AM. After a quick survey of the area, we hope into our chariot! Neither one of us knows what we're doing, but figure it out quick enough. For those who don't know, there is two controls, one for each side, and you need to co-ordinate the upward motion of each side. After we start, and get about 10-15ft off the ground, I notice that the power cord is hanging down, and could be easily grabbed on, and un-plugged, by anyone who spots us. I pull the power cable up, and coil it into the center of the basket, we also start to coil up the safety ropes for the workers in the basket. More giggling at our cleverness, now they won't be able to stop us from the ground, and we figure by the time they get to the roof we'll be high enough to jump anyway! WRONG!! The speed at which those things move is incredibly SLOW! After 15-20 min. we weren't even half the 300ft to the top. At about the 200ft mark my coil of rope over filled the basket, and spilled out unwinding itself to the end. Turned out fairly good for me, very little noise and now it was beyond anyones reach. I chuckled at the fact I no longer had to bother with it, and told Anthony he should do the same. He declined so we just carried on. Another 20ft or so and THUD!, followed by the whirling sound of the power cable now doing the same as my rope! At least 250ft of 1in. power cable now freefalling out of the basket! My mind was racing, the noise! Then it occurred to me, when it hit the end. HOLD ON!! It was tied off to the basket! A split second later it hit the end. The force it had generated was incredible. It tipped the basket at least 60 degrees. The force also bent the railing it was tied to, like a bow-tie! The basket bounced off the glass several times as well as the cable spanking the side of the building. The noise was deafening to us. Someone would be coming any second, and we were only a little higher than 200ft, and smack dab in the middle of the wall, not on the corner. A flaw we had over looked in our excitement earlier. We raced as fast as the basket could take us up, expecting to find a guard at the top waiting for us. Along the way we noticed the basket was having trouble moving now. All the smashing around must have jarred something. Every 20ft or so the cable would slip on the one spool, and the whole basket would shake, and drop down on one side a bit. As we approached the top the whole thing started to shake violently, we had to scramble and climb the last 5ft up the cable. Amazing when we got to the top no-one was waiting for us. Knees knocking like never before. Anthony was anxious to get off before anyone came bursting out the roof door, but I needed a few minutes to scrape the crap off my legs. The jump was the MOST anti-climax jumps I've ever done. We both had perfect jumps, landing right in the center of the strip club parking lot across the street. We howled at the thought of the guys returning to work on Monday to find their basket at the top, and scratching their heads trying to figure out how it got up there!
Holy shit this thing is way too long!
I should ban myself for 14 days NEVER GIVE UP!
