Not many people know this, but a bunch of us Scottish jumpers were determined
that it was going to be called SABRE jumping, only we couldn't agree among
ourselves on what the R should stand for. I'm thinking here of John Norman
(who later had an illustrious BASE career in Australia and New Zealand),
but more of Ken ("no, it's _my_ name") Dalgleish, Phillip McCann and myself.
Well, maybe mostly of myself.
The most durable, and in many ways, most plausible candidate for
an "R" discipline was "railways", only we couldn't decide whether that
simply meant jumping off a railway bridge (which John and I maintained
were obviously covered off under S) or actually off
a moving railway carriage. The latter was problematic
in that none of us actually thought that we could do a moving train.
But then Ken pointed out that, at that time, southbound British Rail
trains could be relied on to come to a dead stop in the middle of the
Forth Bridge approximately one journey out of three, which left us
with the opposite problem that it would be too easy.
At this point, the "railway bridges" vs. "railway carriages" debate
reopened, and threatened to become a major rift, which we called "The Rift".
The only thing on which we had consensus was that if "R" did wind up
standing for "railways", that it would also include Range Rovers.
After a few months, we decided that, as there were only four of us,
splitting into two factions would leave us short of jumping partners
and, more importantly, of drinking partners. There was a silver lining,
though, as The Rift suggested that "R" could stand instead for "Rift
Valleys", only we weren't sure if there were any jumpable rift valleys
anywhere, and if there were we figured they would just look like any other E.
For at least a year, Phil, who did a lot of mushrooms in those days, was
insistent that "R" should stand for "rainbows", but, despite long and
boisterous arguments, he couldn't convert anyone to his cause, so this
was less divisive than it might have been.
At this point Ken and I decided that "R" should stand for "random",
meaning any object which obviously didn't count as a B, A, S or E.
But this gave John and Phil the idea that it shouldn't stand for anything
at all, and merely be used as a way of winding up the non-initiates.
Although this had some appeal, we doubted we could sell it to the American
group favouring "BASE", so to avert another rift, we settled on "random"
and tried to think of that what that might mean. The only thing
I could come up with was that there was this giant sculpture of a leprechaun
on an estate in Dumfries, but, first of all, at a bit less than 80 feet high
it wasn't jumpable, and, secondly, whenever I brought it up Phil got back
onto the whole "rainbows" thing.
By this time, the term "BASE jumping" was starting to take hold, so
we pretty much gave up. And that, boys and girls, is why today you have
never heard of "SABRE jumping". Like a thunderbolt, he falls.
