Skydiving: tricksantiks

tricksantiks

Skydiving

Sep 02, 2005 14:39

After signing 4 or 5 pieces of paper that all included the words "waive the right to sue" "death" "dying" "misc typos" and "I sign this of my own free will"...we got to skydive.

I will never again be able to be in an airplane without thinking "I could TOTALLY jump out of that door right now! Why not?!!? I've done it before!!!"

I would say the scariest part WAS being in the airplane. I can honestly say I've never been in a small plane before...and although I wasn't afraid of death or dying due to crashing (I was strapped to a parachute, after all), I just felt very non-grounded. It's the same uneasy feeling one would get in a small boat in the middle of the ocean...you can feel every movement under the floor of your feet.

In the plane I started to get very nervous. My tandem "jumpmaster" (what a title.) was being chatty and pointing out St Helens and Portland (ant buildings). I couldn't move and see Jonny behind me (coincidentally we got to go in the same group)...so even though I was strapped to him I felt very alone.

At 13,000 feet, the door slid open...my thoughts ceased except for "oh god oh god oh god". I don't remember much about what happened next, except for I know I was the second person to jump out. The next thing I know I can see the square land plots below and they look like they're coming up to meet me. My ears hurt from the pressure, and at first I could not breathe at all....but my tandem partner (Darin) kept bringing my chin up and then it was better. Two seconds later tho I'd be lookin back at the ground...it's kind of uncontrollable. 30-40 seconds is eternity.

once the parachute opened it was spectacular. Since I had contacts in, Darin wanted to keep my goggles on, but I took them off and was fine. He did lots of loops and stuff, and I couldn't talk at all. I was just giddy with astonishment. At one point he stalled the parachute so we seemed to be absolutely still and silent in the air...that was the best part, I think. I got nauseous a little bit when I looked down at the ground while he was doing circles...but I weathered it through. Apparently Jonny and the other 4 were not far away, but I never saw anyone else while in the air. In fact...I could have been above Canada for all I knew. I had absolutely no bearings while up there. When we circled in to land, I was like "oh holy crap! we're really close!"

Landing was scary too...the ground comes up REALLY fast. But, it was a lot softer than it seemed like it was going to be.

Yes..I shall do this again. Probably in a few months.

Zee Plane.

That's Jonny's boss at Trader Joe's to his left in the tie dye...the whole trip was his idea.

I guess being happy in pictures makes for bad ones?? heh..I dont care. It's cute.

The plane started up...I started to worry about peeing myself...

Darin couldn't get my cap thingy on snug enough...we were the last to enter the plane.

jfusion is taking the pics. His turn unfortunately wasn't until much later. Actually....We were first up and I was second out of the plane....and Joe was last up and last out of the plane...wierd.

All anyone can see from the ground when people jump out of the plane is teeny tiny white specks....The camera didn't get any of it. But here are some when we're closer...

Okay...I'm pretty sure that I'm the one below.