TOM AIELLO: Many years ago I went to jump the cave
in Mexico it's a place called Sótano
de las Golondrinas my Spanish
pronunciation is terrible it's the Cave
of the Swallows and it's in southern
Mexico near a city called Tampico and
it's illegal to jump now but at the time
it was legal and there were expeditions
going there you could sign up for a trip
but there was an American guy named Mark
Lichtle doing trips there were some
Norwegian guys doing trips I think
Den Livchenski did some trips
anyway kind I think Jay Epstein in
Colorado did some trips and they would
organize this expedition where they
would you would pay them and they would
you know rent the cars and organize and
get all the hotel rooms and stuff and
that was no small feat because it was it
was primitive third-world southern
Mexico so it was probably worth paying
them and different people had different
costs so I went on a trip that the
Norwegians had organized and there were
it was a really good trip in lots of
senses because the cast of characters on
that trip the jumpers would come were
particularly good there were these
Norwegians who had a ton of jumping
experience one of whom was you know
essentially the guy who had opened up
Kjerag to the world not he was in the
first jumper off the cliff but he's a
guy organized like boats and trains and
stuffs and vans and stuff so that
everybody could jump it regularly and
then there was a friend of mine a guy
named Christopher McDougall we like to
think of as Mr. McDougal maybe to
listen to this and laugh now everyone in
the world knows who the guy is Douggs
because Australians can't use any one's
proper name and he is today one of the
world's leading based members and he was
on that trip my friend
Iiro who was a Finnish BASE jumper
who's Finland BASE1 was on the trip
and then Rick and Randy Harrison who are
like at this point the the godfathers of
old-school BASE jumping they started
BASE jumping in like in the late 70s and
you know remember I said BASE jumpers have
numbers
LBW: Yeah
TOM AIELLO: You finish all 40 well Rick
is the guy who actually gives the
numbers out right and and Rick is a very
smart and on paper very respectable guy
he's that he spent most of his career
working for the government he was a US
Attorney so he's a lawyer and he has
argued and won cases at the US Supreme
Court which for a lawyer is like winning
the Super Bowl
like he's a he's a rockstar lawyer and
so we had this this cast of characters
of these people who just had this huge
breadth of experience or really
interesting to hang out with and I
remember we finished jumping one day and
we're down at the bottom of the cave and
you know you've had this great day
you've had this experience jumping into
what was probably the best object I've
ever jumped off of like it's a big
visuals are incredible it's unlike any
other object anywhere in the world
because you're falling down shaft and
there's just stuff all around you at all
sides there's no open sky anywhere you
just everywhere you look there's walls
going by right and your at the
bottom this cave and you're waiting get
hoisted out and what's happening is you
jump during the day in the cave because
at night there's thousands maybe
hundreds of thousands I mean of birds
swallows that live on the walls of the
cave and you don't jump when they're
there because it disturbs them and
during the day they fly out into the
jungle to you know eat and do the forage
and do their bird thing right and at
night they fly back into the cave into
their nests of this walls of this cave
and so you jump after they leave and
then when they come back you stop
jumping and the last load of the day as
you're getting hoisted out all these
birds are flying back and it's like it I
mean it's like a boiling mass of birds
it's like a sea of birds surging around
you looks solid
it's crazy I mean just picture a hundred
thousand birds in the air at the same
time flying into the same narrow space
and you're suspended on a cable being
winched up to the top of this 1200 foot
drop through this just seething boiling
mass of birds right
LBW: Whoa
TOM AIELLO: And
you've just spent all day jumping and so
we're at the bottom and it's you know
our fourth or fifth day and I think
we're there for ten or eleven days and
Rick who's a very respectable lawyer who
works for the US government who has the
equivalent civil service rank of like a
two-star general he's walking around
with the eyedropper of it's a Visine
bottle that's full of LSD and he's like
open your mouth and he's just dropping
LSD on everybody's tongues before you
get winched out and it's kind of
a funny story it's Douggs who has a reputation
in the BASE world as the super wild
loose crazy guy who's always partying
was the straight sober guy for this
experience he was a guy who did not do
the LSD and he stood at the bottom the
winch hooking everybody up to make sure
everybody was safe on the winch out
because you're tripping right and
so he's the guy who makes sure that
you're actually clipped in properly
before you get yanked up for 15 minutes
on this cable through this you know 1200
feet of boiling birds while on acid
after a day of BASE jumping right and the
cable itself it's not 100% stable it's
straight up and down but it's sort of
you're slowly rotating in a 360-degree
circle as you go up
sort of slowly rotating it probably
takes you three or four minutes to
rotate all the way around 360 degrees so
you make three or four rotations before
you get to the topic and just getting
hoisted up and it's you and one other
guy right going up and I was I was last
one out and so Douggs was coming out with
me because he had hooked everybody else
up and I remember him hooking me up and
there's two positions on the cable and
he's like I'm hooking you at the bottom
because if you spew I want you below me
and so we get hoisted out and it was
just this incredible like 15 minutes of
crazy swirling madness after a day of
BASE jumping on LSD and then you hike
back out through this third-world
Mexican village doesn't even power right
you get back to your cars and you
drive back into town and you're in this
little village called Aquismon which
is still very third-world right i and
we're in a Aquismon and Iiro who was my
roommate for this trip I walked back
into the room and he's sitting in the
bathroom staring at the shower and it's
like there's one light one naked bulb
there's water dripping there's you know
it's sort of shadowy because there's
just this one bulb in this room with no
windows and I walk in there and he's
sitting there staring at the shower very
intently I'm like well what are you
doing
he's like I'm watching TV
LBW: Oh my god
TOM AIELLO: Like this is
like watching TV
and then I
sat there with him for probably I don't
know how long it was because you lose
track of time but I sat there with him
just watching the dripping water in the
shower it was yeah those are the kind of
experiences that you have that you
remember even better than all the jumps
on that trip
