Skydiving

This is one of the first adventurous experiences that I have had in life and also the one that stands out the most in my memory.

Summer 2005
It was the summer after my freshmen year at college. As my summer job I was working in a factory inspecting various pieces of materials for dust and dirt. These pieces were going to be used at hospitals. I know this sounds very random but it was a job that had to be done and I was lucky to have it. It was actually really difficult. At times we had to cut the fabric into hundreds of little pieces into different shapes and then inspect them. Anyway, I was working long hours and making about $300 a week doing that.

At the time, skydiving cost $200 and it cost $100 for someone else to jump at the same time as me and record a video and take pictures. But I was going to be jumping out of plane, I HAD to have documentation of that.

I got onto a very small plane with 8 other people who were jumping that afternoon, all of us with our instructor of course. I was going to be the first one to jump so I was right by the open door of the plane and could see us getting higher and higher. Right before it was my turn to take the leap everyone in the plane started yelling "Don't do it, don't do it" haha.

Boom! My instructor counted 1, 2, and then we were out the door. What happened to 3??? For the first 10 seconds that I was in the air I could not breathe. It felt like an eternity, I thought minutes were going by and that I wasn't going to make it out alive. I honestly thought that I wasn't going to be able to breathe for the entire fall and that the instructor would land and that I would just be lying there. Luckily, this was not the case.

10 seconds after we were out of the plane, I was breathing again. I was enjoying the view, enjoying the intense wind against my face and arms, enjoying the thrill of falling at an unmeasurable speed. I was waving at the camera, blowing kisses, smiling, all was great.

Then my instructor pulled open the parachute, once again without even warning, and I got swooped up into the sky. My facial reaction in the video recording is priceless. After that we slowly glided down to earth. My instructor told me that because I was so light it would take us a little longer to land. So he spun me along as we drifted in the air and he pointed out various locations in the distance. Unfortunately all of those spins were making me dizzy. We landed and I went straight to the bathroom for I feared I would throw up. Luckily I did not, but the instructors still made fun of me for getting queasy.

It was an amazing experience I will never forget. It was exhilarating and out of this world. Again I thought to myself, who does that?!?!?! Apparently I do.