Parachuting

John and I went skydiving on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. Here's a picture of me getting instructions and signing my rights away.

Here's a picture of us getting our jumpsuits on.

This pose represents 15 seconds of the total 1 minutes of instructions I was given. 30 seconds on how to put my foot on the wheel step as we jumped out. and 15 second on how to land on my bum (and that was given to me after the parachute was deployed).

Posing.

This is the plane. It was actually smaller than the picture give justice. If you look at the pilot you'll notice his prostectic leg. I was tempted to ask him how he lost it. Something tells me I didn't want to know. Also, you'll notice my instructure is the one in Jeans and a T-shirt.

After accending for a long time (15 minutes?) they opened up the plane door. John and his instructure leaned out and put their feet on the wheel step. And then they were gone. That's when I really started feeling some anxiety. Within 10 second me and my instructure had crawled to the door. Trying not to think like a logical person, I wiggled myself against the open door frame and put my foot on the wheel step. Then I leaned against my knee. I remember there being what seemed like a 2 second delay where I was standing on the step. And then I look down, with the wind in my face and thought, "I can do thi........" Then with a rollercoaster like force, I was doing flips and spins. Within probably 5-10 seonds we were in the normal face down falling position with legs bent back and the knees and hands out. Then we preceeded to fall for another 20-25 seconds. The best adjective to describe it would be Windy. It was very fast and very scary. Honestly, the free falling was more scary than fun. But it was also very fun. I was surprised at how long we free fell. Long enough for me to calm down, ever so slightly, enough to notice my face felt like it was being pulled back (kind of like watching the olympic sprinter in slow motion). Also, long enough to literally think in my head, "has the parachute already deployed?", "is this how fast I'm going to fall the whole time?" and then, "I hope my parachute works." Then the instucture pulled the shoot. There was a pretty strong pull on my body. Not a jerky pull. More just like a strong pressure. I have the marks to prove it. Then we slowed down. He let me control the shoot for awhile. It was surprisingly easy to manuever. The slow decent was not that scary at all. It was fun. My instructer did this thing where he slowed us down and then let us fall without resistents. It was awesome.

See pictures.

I am the purple dot on the left and John is the white dot in the upper right hand corner.


Here is my landing.

Here's John.

Very fun. I highly recommend it. Very much worth the cost. Thanks for getting the sky diving tickets for Christmas.