As the disclaimer in the video or ad will often say......”Don't try this at home”. I started cliff diving in upstate Pennsylvania at about 16 years old. It was a place that we would camp many weekends in our youth that we called Slumber Valley, but was known locally at Potts Falls or simply the Gorge. Meshoppen was just a little hick town and we got to know many of the locals that would frequent the gorge. At first it was just jumping from the 35' cliffs into was that was at least 20' deep. No one actually wanted to try to touch bottom as the water got cold and murky the farther down you went. At that age I wasn't too bad on a diving board despite having never taken lessons. Back in those days many of the local pools had 3 meter boards, about 10' high. So I started doing swan dives from the gorge. As time went on I needed a bigger thrill and started attempting one and a half flips and eventually full gainers. We would also jump at night sometimes which was really crazy not knowing when you would hit the water. Over the years I would look for other places to dive and found some good spots in Mexico and the west end of Jamaica. As I got older I stepped it down a bit and no longer do any “tricks”. At the local pool I can still do a one and a half and a gainer on the one meter board. In fact Rick's is way too high for me now. So I limit myself to about 20' or so and the wife isn't even happy about that. She is the one that gets the photos and she knowd that if she doesn't get a good shot I'll only do it again. I have had my Nikon Coolpix s9600 for a number of years but had forgotten about the “sports” mode. It takes 3 or 4 photos in rapid succession. So....still diving at age 72.
Regards,
Bob
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