If you are friends with me on Facebook then you know I went
skydiving a couple of weekends ago. For
those of you who aren’t on Facebook, you can see some of the pictures below,
and for all of you I’m going to try to put my experience into words.
Skydiving. was. amazing.
I’ve been thinking for a while that I wanted to go
skydiving. It was on my “bucket list,”
my list of things to do before I die.
So, when my friend Amanda asked a bunch of friends if we wanted to go
skydiving, I immediately said I wanted to go.
Luckily, I was really busy with my first week of work at
Feed My Starving Children, so I didn’t have too much time during the week
before to think about what I was going to be doing. I wasn’t too nervous about the whole thing
even when I was driving to the airport/skydiving place.
We had a relatively brief orientation led by a pretty funny
man whose job it was to reassure us that what we were about to do really wasn’t
all that dangerous and that we would be fine even if we didn’t do what we were
supposed to. We watched a couple of
short videos. And then I had to sign
away pretty much every right I had to sue anybody and anything if anything at
all went even slightly wrong. I had to
sign my name/initials probably about 40 times.
We waited outside for a while for it to be our turn. While we were waiting, we got to see other
jumpers load up and take off in the plane.
Then a little while later the plane would come overhead and you could
see little tiny dots come out of the plane- people jumping out of the
plane. You could see when they opened
the parachute and then watch them glide down to the ground and land. Our orientation man had told us that 99% of
people make a nice landing on their feet.
Watching people land we found out quickly that either this was a very
off day or he was lying to us. It was
more like 25% of people made a nice landing on their feet. I saw quite a few landings that morning and
there was only one really bad one where a man landed pretty hard. Most people landed pretty softly on their
behinds. It kind of made me wonder in
what other ways the funny orientation man had stretched the truth.
Finally it was my turn.
We started getting all geared up.
Then I met Woody. He and I would
be connected when jumping out of the plane.
Woody made sure that I didn’t die after I jumped out of the plane. So, in other words, Woody is my new best
friend.
Woody explained again to me how this whole thing would
go. Get on the plane. Ride up.
Get hooked together. Jump out of
the plane. I would put my head back and
arch my back. I would hold on to the
straps across my chest until he gave me the signal to put my arms out like I
was flying. Woody would give me the
signal to put the chute at the proper time.
I would pull it. We would glide
down. I would raise up my legs. We would land. I would put down my legs and help make the
landing. A lot of instructions to try to
remember, but pretty simple really. And
that’s basically how it happened.
As we were riding up to 14,000 feet, Woody did a good job of
trying to keep my mind off the fact that I would soon be jumping out of a
perfectly good airplane. He did a pretty
good job. We ended up on the subject of
religion, which is probably a pretty good thing to talk about right before you
jump out of an airplane. Woody told me
that he feels the closest to God when he is skydiving. Skydiving requires a lot of trust in God (and
trust in your equipment). Woody also
said that as he is skydiving and looking down on the earth below him, he can
think of no other way that something so magnificent could have been created
than by God. I found this to be very
true as I was looking down on the earth as I was heading back down to the
ground.
So there we were in the airplane.
The scariest part of the whole experience was when the
airplane door opened and people just started jumping out of the plane. People jumped out of that plane like it was a
completely normal thing to do. Woody and
I moved our way toward the back of the plane and the door as other people
jumped out.
These people jumped right before I did:
Then it was our turn. This all happened pretty quickly. Going through the doorway of the plane is a
little bit of a blur- I’m not really sure how much Woody pushed and how much I
went willingly. Once we got out of the
plane we started falling (obviously). At
120 miles per hour. We did a few summersaults/flips
through the air.
Then somehow (it was
probably Woody’s doing) we ended up like this:
We were in free fall for probably a minute. It really didn’t feel like I was falling- I
didn’t have that sensation in my stomach like when you are going down a big
drop on a roller coaster. Despite the
fact that I was falling toward the ground at 120 miles per hour, I really
wasn’t afraid or worried at all. It was
just an incredible sensation to be so free, to have the air rushing past my
body, to be so aware of all that was around me.
Then Woody gave me the signal that it was time to pull the
parachute. I reached my hand back to
pull the chute, but I didn’t quite get there fast enough, so Woody pulled it
for us. The chute came out, and we slowed
way down.
We got closer and closer to the ground. I could see other jumpers below me landing in the grassy landing area. Then it was Woody and my turn to land. I lifted my legs up, Woody made the landing, and then I almost got my feet onto the ground, but I made a nice soft landing on my behind
 |
| coming in for the landing |
Even thinking back on it now, it’s a little hard to believe
that I actually jumped out of a plane at 14,000 feet. It was such an incredible experience- it
makes me excited just thinking about it.
I would highly recommend skydiving to anyone. And I would highly recommend the Chicagoland Skydiving Center. And I would also highly recommend skydiving
tandem with Woody.
Bottom line: I LOVED
Skydiving. And I'll probably do it again.
