So, as most everyone that knows me probably is already aware, I went skydiving this past Saturday. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I will admit I was a bit nervous going into it. I didn't sleep much the night before. I kept thinking things along the lines of I'm jumping out of an airplane tomorrow! I wasn't sure what it would be like and the only reference I had to pseudo free-fall was The Rocket ride at Lagoon, and the Golden Tower ride at Tivoli in Copenhagen (which are essentially the same thing but I had to mention both of them just to throw in a reference to the fact that I used to live in Copenhagen, and I'm going to go back and live there this summer and I'll probably get a season pass to Tivoli so I can go all the time...). I like those rides and I like rollercoasters so I was pretty sure I would like skydiving. Skydiving is absolutely nothing like those rides. I still liked it.
I won't go into too much detail because then no one will read this, so I'll just give the highlights.
We met at the church at 6:30 am on Saturday (let me point out here that it took more willpower to get out of bed at 5:30 than it took to jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet). Little did I know that would be the last day the church would survive though, but that's another post entirely.
We caravaned to Pepperel and arrived at 8:15 where after some general disorganization and a lot of the people there expressing surprise at such a large group, we eventually all managed to pay, sign a waiver that stated we wouldn't sue for any reason including death, and watch a video telling us of all the things that could possibly go wrong and kill us. Yay. They only put 4 tandem jumpers in each load, so it ended up taking 5 loads to get though our entire group. Bishop Hafen jumped with a lot of the loads, but he wasn't with mine unfortunately.
I was in Group 3. After the first group had gone up, I heard someone calling my name, and came over to meet Russ--the person that I would be strapped to for the big jump. He was nice. He got me a jumpsuit, gave me a few brief instructions about how to hold out my arms, and then left to jump with group 2.
Finally it was time for my group, and I was lucky enough to be jumping with my roommate Katie, who is awesome. We got in the plane and as we started to reach altitute, everyone shifted around so the newbies like us could get clipped to our tandem jumpers. Russ was stinking hilarious and kept saying things like "[turns to another skydiver] now I can never remember, is it right clips to right, or right clips to left?" and "oh man, the strap broke, does anyone have any duct tape?!?" and "don't worry, you'll be fine, I only get paid if you survive, and I really need the money, I haven't gotten paid in a while!" Yeah, he was funny.
We were the last tandem jumpers to leave the plane, so we walked over to the door and Russ told me what we were going to do. I wasn't scared at all, which was surprising. At that point, jumping out of a moving plane that high above the ground seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. I did feel rather secure due to that fact that at that point I was now tightly strapped to a professional who knew what he was doing. He told me one more time how to pull the ripcord (yes, he let me pull my own ripcord) and then we were at the door, and then we were out of the plane.
Now you may think that free falling from 10,000 feet would be scary, but the fact is, it's not. Once you're out of the plane, there's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing to hold on to and nothing to grab. When you're up that high you may be afraid of falling, but once you're already falling that fear is rather moot. You can't fall off of falling. Besides that, you don't feel a falling sensation at all. The only thing you really feel is wind. It is so peaceful and relaxing to just be falling through space, looking down at the fields and trees and grass and tiny buildings below you.
When we hit about 3700 feet Russ signaled to me to pull the ripcord, so I did, and the parachute worked, and our descent slowed to a crawl, and we slowly floated back to the ground. We were in free fall for 40 seconds (which was longer than everyone else which is awesome... we were the last ones to jump but the first to land), and then gliding down for a couple minutes more. After the parachute was deployed, there was less wind (still no falling sensation) and so we could take off the goggles and chat. At that point I realized Russ had never instructed me in the fine art of landing, so he gave me a quick tutorial. I think we did okay.
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