skydiving
I guess kind of a lot of stuff has happened since the last time I wrote. Most remarkably I went skydiving with a good friend of mine on her birthday (November 8).
It was completely mind-blowing. I've never been so scared in all my life as when the plane started the ascent. Since we're noobs we had to do a type of skydiving called "tandem", which means that we were harnessed to experienced "jump masters". Mine was a hot long-haired Korean dude and Monica's was a superfans-looking motherfucker in parachute pants. Haha. Eat that, bitch.
After waiting about an hour in the hangar we got suited up and had about 10 minutes of "ground training" from our respective instructors.
Upon entering the small airplane there are two long benches that jumpers have to straddle whilst strapped to their instructors. I was in the way back on the left-hand side with Monica and her instructor directly in front of me. I ended up jumping last because of our placement. It was really fucking bizarre to watch my friend simply disappear out the door.
And then the time had come for me to jump. Of course I outweighed the aforementioned hot Korean man by about 40 lbs, so when my legs froze and refused to let me get close to the open hatch of the tiny aircraft he had to forcefully duck-walk me across the plane using his thigh muscles. I'm sure it would have been a humorous sight if I'd been physically capable of breathing in the tight harness at such a high altitude whilst being completely fucking TERRIFIED.
When we got to the side hatch of the plane I was consumed by the vastness of the pastoral haze below us. My stomach lurched and threatened to enter a different type of "drop zone" altogether--the type that covers the groin region of highly attractive men in explosive diarrhea.
Before I could protest Lee shifted his body weight and we began plummeting to what my subconscious mind insisted was certain death.
This is the point where skydiving gets weird. We did a couple of flips when we first started falling. I don't know if this is common, but my mind simply had no idea how to respond. As soon as we exited the plane my fear completely disappeared. By the time we landed I'd kind of forgotten the first mind-boggling moments of the freefall. The first thing I recall is how cold it was. After about 30 seconds of falling our speed increased dramatically to about 120 mph. This is the point where my brain faked out my lungs and made me think I couldn't breathe.
Lee had me put my arms out to my sides and told me to scream so I could get some air into my lungs. I happily obliged. My ears went kinda nuts with the rapidly-changing altitude but plugging my nose and blowing helped. After a 90-second freefall the chute deployed, jerking us upward and sending us into 9 minutes of calm floating zen.
It was unbelievable. Monterey Bay is sublimely beautiful.
I've never been as consumed by a feeling of vastness and awareness as I was on the chute ride back to Earth. It was amazing and incomparable. I want to experience it again and again.
As we got closer to the ground Lee started loosening my straps to avoid bruising on impact. I watched Monica land in front of me right before we landed flawlessly on our feet.
Monica was on the ground on her knees with a completely insane Gary Busey look on her face. Her instructor helped her to our feet, removed our gear for us and recovered our goggles. We looked at eachother, hugged and yelled "Again! Again and again!"
I was COMPLETELY dumbfounded. When you're up there you realize just how...embiggened the world is. We're not even specks of corn in the the universe's hefty shits.
We watched another few people glide down, composed ourselves and took the cargo van back to the hangar. I can't wait to go again.
It was completely mind-blowing. I've never been so scared in all my life as when the plane started the ascent. Since we're noobs we had to do a type of skydiving called "tandem", which means that we were harnessed to experienced "jump masters". Mine was a hot long-haired Korean dude and Monica's was a superfans-looking motherfucker in parachute pants. Haha. Eat that, bitch.
After waiting about an hour in the hangar we got suited up and had about 10 minutes of "ground training" from our respective instructors.
Upon entering the small airplane there are two long benches that jumpers have to straddle whilst strapped to their instructors. I was in the way back on the left-hand side with Monica and her instructor directly in front of me. I ended up jumping last because of our placement. It was really fucking bizarre to watch my friend simply disappear out the door.
And then the time had come for me to jump. Of course I outweighed the aforementioned hot Korean man by about 40 lbs, so when my legs froze and refused to let me get close to the open hatch of the tiny aircraft he had to forcefully duck-walk me across the plane using his thigh muscles. I'm sure it would have been a humorous sight if I'd been physically capable of breathing in the tight harness at such a high altitude whilst being completely fucking TERRIFIED.
When we got to the side hatch of the plane I was consumed by the vastness of the pastoral haze below us. My stomach lurched and threatened to enter a different type of "drop zone" altogether--the type that covers the groin region of highly attractive men in explosive diarrhea.
Before I could protest Lee shifted his body weight and we began plummeting to what my subconscious mind insisted was certain death.
This is the point where skydiving gets weird. We did a couple of flips when we first started falling. I don't know if this is common, but my mind simply had no idea how to respond. As soon as we exited the plane my fear completely disappeared. By the time we landed I'd kind of forgotten the first mind-boggling moments of the freefall. The first thing I recall is how cold it was. After about 30 seconds of falling our speed increased dramatically to about 120 mph. This is the point where my brain faked out my lungs and made me think I couldn't breathe.
Lee had me put my arms out to my sides and told me to scream so I could get some air into my lungs. I happily obliged. My ears went kinda nuts with the rapidly-changing altitude but plugging my nose and blowing helped. After a 90-second freefall the chute deployed, jerking us upward and sending us into 9 minutes of calm floating zen.
It was unbelievable. Monterey Bay is sublimely beautiful.
I've never been as consumed by a feeling of vastness and awareness as I was on the chute ride back to Earth. It was amazing and incomparable. I want to experience it again and again.
As we got closer to the ground Lee started loosening my straps to avoid bruising on impact. I watched Monica land in front of me right before we landed flawlessly on our feet.
Monica was on the ground on her knees with a completely insane Gary Busey look on her face. Her instructor helped her to our feet, removed our gear for us and recovered our goggles. We looked at eachother, hugged and yelled "Again! Again and again!"
I was COMPLETELY dumbfounded. When you're up there you realize just how...embiggened the world is. We're not even specks of corn in the the universe's hefty shits.
We watched another few people glide down, composed ourselves and took the cargo van back to the hangar. I can't wait to go again.