Skydiving
Last month I finally got around to do something I’ve been interested in for many years: skydiving. I went with my friend Maritza. We decided to go on a Saturday night, and Sunday morning we were traveling across the bay to Bay Area Skydiving.
While we were signing up and getting ready, I was trying not to think about the logistics of it all. I just wanted to jump out of a plane and see how it felt to be surrounded by nothing but air (and a man strapped to your back). Our jumpers kept joking around with us as they put the gear on, I think they do that to break the ice for nervous people. I guess my biggest concern was getting motion sick. Fortunately it was not a problem.
As we left the plane I had to look up and back, he gently rocked us out and suddenly we were floating through the air. I just remember looking around and trying to take it all in so that I would remember it forever. We fell for about 2 minutes. During that time the camera guy came over to us. I blew him a kiss and he held my hands.
Then he pulled the parachute. And everything slowed down drastically. He showed me how to steer the chute, spinning us in circles really fast and then switching to the other direction. That’s when I started to feel sick. He stopped just in time and gave me the controls. It was really hard to steer, you had to pull on the ropes very hard. I didn’t turn us much. I mostly just looked around at the horizon, unobstructed by dirty glass, it was beautiful.
About 10 minutes or so later we landed on the ground. We had a pretty good landing. And I was so happy and excited about the whole thing. I would definitely do that again some day.