Best day ever!


Jump out of a perfectly good plane? Why yes I did and I have never felt more alive.

Oh baby!! I went skydiving on Friday and it was one of the best experiences of my life. It was so sweet that it is almost indescribable with words. Scary, thrilling, and amazing all at the same time. After it was over I felt invincible.

My friend Dave and I went and Bob (Dave's brother) took pictures. We went to Skydive Twin Cities (ironically in Wisconsin) about 30 minutes from my house. It was our first jump so we went tandem with experts strapped to our backs that have thousands of jumps logged.

We arrived at noon signed our lives away about 4 times, watched a video, had some brief instruction, and got suited up. When we got out to the plane we were given some last minute instructions before hoping in. The plane taxied to the end of the grass runway, turned around and throttled up. We slowly climbed up to 13,000 feet in a little Cessna.

The details are a little fuzzy from this point until the jump master pulled the chute because the whole experience was pretty surreal...

When we hit jump altitude the pilot (who was also wearing a chute...) throttled the plane down a little and we opened the door. The first person stepped out onto a metal bar on the side of the plane, gave a little wave, released, and floated away. Then dave and his jump master crept up to the door. They too stepped out and floated away. Now it was my turn, I was strapped in to my jump master (Kerry) and there was no turning back. We put our right feet out on the bar and I scooted my left knee a foot out of the door so only my left foot was still inside the plane. My jump master counted 1... 2... and then we sort of fell out of the plane and hurled towards the ground.

My mind basically went blank at this point, not because I was scared but because there was so much sensory info coming in that my brain sort of went idle. All of my organs just seemed to be floating inside my chest cavity. It was an amazing feeling. I just sort of looked around. I opened my mouth halfway through the fall just to see if it would flap in the wind. Indeed, it does. We spun around a little and finally after 50 seconds of freefall Kerry pulled the cord.

After the chute deployed we slowed down and started gliding. Kerry handed me the handles so I could drive the chute. Talk about feeling like a bird. I had complete control of where I wanted to go. It was sweet. Kerry told me how to do some acrobatics maneuvers so we did that for awhile. I even mooed at some cows as we past over head. Eventually I gave the handles back so Kerry could land us.

We had a nice touchdown and stuck the landing. After getting unhooked from the chute I felt like I was invincible. There was just so much adrenaline! I highly recommend this to anyone and I would be happy to go with!!

Current Score:
Jeff 6
Death 0

Here is a pic from the gallery:

Posted: Mon - September 20, 2004 at 12:57 PM          

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