Last weekend I finally got the chance to go skydiving. It was quite the experience… And I, like everyone else, cannot begin to describe how it went. All morning, I was understandably nervous, excited, and anxious. It felt kind of like you’re about to go on stage for a performance, waiting in the wings for the curtain call.
This went on for hours and hours as we filled out paperwork and waited for our turn. At many points your brain is telling your soul that this risk is too great and we should not go through with it. You’ll be out some money, but the brain tells you that you can make more and it’s not worth it. You tell the brain that there were 3 million jumps last year and only 20-30 accidents and only 1 of those was a tandem jump. Your brain tells you bullocks! and says there’s no reason to make it 2 this year!
But the soul is mightier than the body so you stay. My blood pressure was a bit low the entire time so I felt cold and I had a hard time sitting still as I waited… and waited… and waited… It took about three hours from the time we showed up to the time I was in a harness and sitting in a small two person plane. The door had duct tape on it and the pilot was a young lady with a cute smile and a confident way about her.
This, of course was a tandem jump so I didn’t have to do any real work in the jump and I was just putting my body in the hands of a professional who’d show me the way. This takes a significant amount of stress off of you. No worries about losing control, body position, keeping track of the altitude, finding the landing zone, et cetera… just 100% fun!
As we went up in the plane I started to feel shots of adrenaline hitting my system over and over again, but it wasn’t real till he said, “Open the door man!” I tapped the door lightly and “BOOM!” it shot open like a freaking gun! Then I stepped out on to the landing gear step and looked up to get myself into position and in less than a second we were gone!
We did several somersaults as well as some spins until the diver pulled the parachute! During the dive I took a look down and even though you’re falling at an incredible rate the ground looks so far away. Also, there’s no sense of falling, like when you’re standing on a chair and you slip and fall. In that case you’ll feel your balance shift away from you. Skydiving is really more like diving and jumping. At no time do you feel off balance or feel the need to correct your center of balance.
Now the rush from the falling is a super high like not very many others. Kind of like getting shot up and over the Xcellerator at Knotts berry farm, but more intense. Then when the parachute deploys you get to have fun with that. You can do spins and floats and drops and other fun things to have a good time. I’ll admit that pulling down on the ropes and floating the parachute thousands of feet above the earth was one of the more zen like moments I’ve had. All of a sudden it goes real quiet and you feel weightless and floating in the air. The contrast with the jump was remarkable.
Overall it is something that I’d totally do again. It was super expensive which makes it cost prohibitive to do, but if anyone want’s to go, I’m game! 😀
