In most cities, they build enough hotel rooms to handle guests who come for business or to see attractions like Disneyland. But in Las Vegas, the hotels are the attractions, and "The Strip" is one huge theme park. They keep adding more rooms, and more guests keep coming to fill them. It's like a perverse twist on Kevin Costner's line inField of Dreams: "If you build it, they will come." Vegas built it, and the people are still coming.

Hotels are cheap, buffets are cheap, and if you're gambling, drinks are on the house. But even with all its charms, Vegas is not really my kind of place. I'm neither rich nor lucky enough to be a gambling regular, and I don't get into expensive glitzy shows. So last summer, when I had to go to Vegas on business, I found something else to do.

Vegas has several thrill rides. There's the roller-coaster at the top of Stratosphere, the human slingshot at the MGM Grand Hotel, the skydiving just outside of town and the small plane trips into the Grand Canyon. Just outside town are the only legalized brothels in the nation, which count as a thrill ride of sorts.

And then there is the bungy jump.

It's the A.J. Hackett Bungy Jumping Center, to be exact. An enterprising thrillseeker from New Zealand decided to make money off his favorite hobby, and his towers, bridges and platforms can now be found in six sites around the world. The Vegas location features a 175-foot tower, an extensive selection of bungy-related clothing and souvenirs and a juice bar to quench your post-jump thirst.

I'd wanted to try bungy jumping ever since my old roommate tried it in Washington state one summer while working for Microsoft. It was my firm belief that eons of human evolution and 27 years or life experience had firmly seated some basic rules in the primitive parts of my brain: eat, sleep, breathe and don't jump off tall objects.

If I could defy my instincts, learned behavior and common sense and jump off that tower while sober, it would be a supreme act of free will, proving once and for all that I was my own person. If I could do this, I truly could do anything.

The friendly woman behind the counter assured me bungy jumping was very safe. The cords were much stronger than necessary and they retired them hundreds of jumps before their rated life. The sign boasted about how many safe and successful jumps had been made at A.J. Hackett sites around the world. Noticeably absent, of course, were statistics on how many accidents, injuries or fatalities had occurred.

One jump cost about $65, plus $20 for a videotape of the experience. "Why so expensive?" I asked. "Because of high insurance premiums," the woman answered. No added comfort there. The required waiver wasn't very reassuring either. I was accepting full responsibility for anything that might happen, and indemnifying A.J. Hackett against any liability, even if the company proved negligent. Essentially, the employees could hit me over the head and toss me off the tower without a bungy and my family would be powerless to sue.

This required more thought. I went outside and sat on a chair by a swimming pool to watch the jumpers. A bunch of kids were up top, and a woman who appeared to be their mother was on the ground cheering them on. "Jump!" she shouted at them. I doubt they could hear, but still, I wasn't sure I would want one of my parents encouraging me to leap from a 16-story tower.

I went back to the counter. "What if I change my mind at the top?" I asked the nice woman.

"We won't push you, but no refunds," she said, pointing to a sign on the wall.

I decided to go ahead with it. I paid and weighed myself. They wrote my weight on the back of my hand and snapped a blue band around my wrist, indicating I was in the heaviest allowable weight class and should have the strongest and shortest cord. I joined two instructors, two jumpers and two observers. They placed us in seat harnesses, weighed us again and took us to the elevator.

"It's too windy to jump from the platform above the pool, so we're jumping on the other side," an instructor announced. The other platform was further from the tower and used shorter cords to minimize the possibility of the wind banging us into the tower. On this side, the bungy would be tied to our waists instead of our ankles, and we would be hauled back up after the jump, not lowered to the ground.

Now, instead of jumping above a pool, we would be jumping directly above the building. The bungy would stretch to just 80 feet instead of 155, so there was no chance of hitting the roof--unless, of course, the bungy was to break.