Climbing the Bridge
Trip Start
Dec 31, 2008
1
24
40
Trip End
Mar 27, 2009
Sydney,
New South Wales,
Australia
Friday, February 20, 2009
We got some bad news when we arrived at the Bridge Climb- no cameras were allowed to be brought up the bridge. In fact, absolutely nothing could be brought up. They make you wear this blue/gray long-sleeved/long-legged jumper that is specially made for your equipment for the climb. You aren't allowed to bring anything up because they can't have anything falling down onto the road below, which could obviously cause trouble for the motorists on the busiest road in Australia. It also allows them to sell you photos at exorbitant prices when you are done. So they have you strip down into your underwear (since it was cold this day) and put on this jumper thing, and make you go through metal detectors to make sure you don't have any contraband. They allow only glasses or sunglasses, which they give you straps for. They provide hats, a radio so you can hear your guide, and some sort of rag thing for wiping sweat/blowing your nose if necessary.
You get some pretty cool equipment when doing the Bridge Climb, but by far the most interesting (and most comforting) is this metal ball thing that is attached at one end to your belt and by the other end to a thick cable that runs the entire length of the climb and presumably will save your life should you fall off the bridge. Worth noting here is that it would be virtually impossible to fall from the bridge unless you really tried to, and after our climb, I asked Romeo (our guide for the day) how many times the belt/ball/cable thing had saved someone from falling off the bridge, and he said they've never had anyone come close to needing it. Most of the climb, you are walking on a 10 foot wide platform that has rails from the edges surrounding you making it virtually impossible to fall.
We had a group of about 15 of us go up together, and ironically, the first guy we met was from Cincinnati, and had a daughter that had attended the University of Dayton, which is where Courtney went (and she happened to be wearing a UD t-shirt). Small world. We also had a pair of Swedish girls, a few other Americans, a guy from Spain, and a few Aussies. The whole climb took about 2.5 hours, with another hour in there for training, changing and trying to sell us photos made possible because of their camera confiscating racket. Of course, we submitted to their picture monopoly and bought a couple of digital photos. All in all, the Bridge Climb was a great experience. It isn't really that tough either, although they told us you climb over 1,400 stairs to get to the top. You get some spectacular views you can't get anywhere else, you learn a lot about the bridge, and you definitely get some sort of feeling of accomplishment. It's a really weird feeling to look up at the bridge later and think that you were just standing up there on top of it.
After we returned home from the bridge climb (and a walk around downtown Sydney and Darling Harbout), we had a somewhat not-so-successful night out. Ryan and the three of us grabbed dinner at Trinity Bar in Surry Hills, then went and had a few drinks at the Clock Hotel (which included Courtney scamming some older Australian guys to buy her a $13 Red Bull/Vodka, much to our amusement), and then went to meet Lenny and Dale at Darling Harbour. After trying three places there with limited success, we decided to go to the Cross once again, but couldn't find too much action anywhere other than World Bar. So back we went, after trying out about 5 more places. We finally returned home around 3 or so after a long day.
