Bridge Jumping

A couple local groups coordinated to host a Bridge jumping event yesterday. The Vrbas river travels through town. It's really fast, but shallow and wide (the part through the town at least). To make a suitable place to dive, a bunch of people had to go in the water and build a massive dam of rocks. This took a couple of days, when we saw it the other day, it did not look safe enough to dive into. When we showed up yesterday, the river was packed with people. Easily over a thousand people where there, I was amazed.

Check out this picture, This is a lot of people for a town that isn't that big in the first place. The only time I saw more people here was when the graduating students had to parade down the street, everyone was out for that. A couple months ago, there was also some type of pilgrimage to a cemetery. I don't know what was going on there, thousands of people were just walking down the street. The point of me saying this is that big gatherings don't happen all that often, and this was a rare event.


The competition was about diving, and the winner got a 100 KM prize. Needless to say, this guy was pulling out all the stops. I didn't get a good look at the water until after the event, but I was still uncertain about how deep it was. Also a bunch of people kept prodding me to join the competition. I pointed out to them that they were likewise not wearing a bathing suit. I also didn't want to spend the rest of my summer on a spinal board.



Some guys, like Rock Star here in the orange trunks were really giving it. This is a city without a swimming pool or anywhere to practice diving, so I commend these guys for making it out of the water alive, and making decent dives. For most activities in life, courage is transpose able with talent.

This is a game of spot the Canadians, and amature photo editor. I can't really imagine this kind of event in Cambridge drawing this many people, and Cambridge is 50x larger (which of course, might be the problem).

In other news, we might be going mountain climbing this weekend. It's a journey of at least two days, which means we have to sleep in some mountain cabin. It should be an adventure, I've never climbed a mountain before, so I don't know what to expect.