Has the thought of skydiving ever crossed your mind? If it has, my suggestion is to DO IT!!! Skydiving is probably one of the most amazing things I've ever done!!
A few months ago I found a Groupon for skydiving at a discounted price. I have always wanted to go skydiving, but I've never had the opportunity to do it. When I saw the Groupon I was all over it. I sent out an email to a few of my friends and told them to bye the Groupon and I'd arrange everything else. A few days later 6 of us had gotten the Groupon and now it was just getting a time when everyone was able to go. I found a date about 2 months away that worked for us and then the waiting game began.
The day came for all of us to jump out of a plane from 13,000 feet and we were ALL stoked! We arrived at Skydive San Diego and sat down to literally sign our lives away. We signed paper work saying if we broke a bone or even died that we couldn't sue the company. After signing about 6 pages of paperwork it was "training" time. When I was told I was going to have to go through training I was expecting a big training about what to do or what not to do. Boy was I wrong! Training for us was "put your arms out, arch your back and put your feet up." It literally took less than 5 minutes for us to learn what we needed to do. Once training was done it was yet another waiting game. They were running behind due to the weather that morning, so we had to wait about 45 minutes until it was our turn to get suited up and meet our jump masters.
When the time came to get suited up, I thought for sure I was going to get nervous. I hadn't been nervous at all so I just knew it was going to come. To my surprise, I never really got too nervous. Not too long after getting suited up I got to meet Andre, who was my amazing jump master! We talked all the way out to the plane, he would check on me and make sure I was ok on our way up, and he made my jump experience awesome!! As Andre and I were getting clipped together and getting ready to jump he explained what I needed to do and then we were off.
I can't even begin to explain how amazing the whole experience was. We did a free fall for 60 seconds and in that 60 seconds we plummeted down 8,000 feet at approximately 120 miles per hour. I'm sure this is going to sound weird, but people who have done this before will totally understand. I was kind of expecting a little bit of the stomach dropping sensation when falling, but I didn't get that at all. It was almost like I was floating and not falling straight to the earth :)
After our free fall Andre pulled the rip cord and we glided down to our landing area. While gliding down Andre said I was the best jump he had had all day (which he said was a true statement and was not something he said to every jumper), I seemed like the kind of girl that once I committed I was in it, and because of my confidence he thinks I would be a great solo jumper....and then he handed me the ropes that controlled the parachute and had me take over. I'm not going to lie, out of the whole experience that was the one thing that I did get a little nervous about, but that lasted all of 2 seconds. He was putting the parachute and both of our lives in MY hands, but he was a great instructor and from that point had even more fun. Andre taught me how to do spins, so I would drop my hand and we would spin so fast one way and then I would put that hand up and drop my other hand and we would spin the opposite way. I know I've already said it, but this experience was seriously amazing!
After everyone in the group landed we all said we would do this again in a heartbeat!! I'm so glad that I was able to check something off my Bucket List!! I'm one down and many more to go!!
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| Everyone that went down together and jumped |
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Getting strapped to Andre. We were a little over half way to 13,000
feet at this point |
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| Right after falling out of the plane |
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He was about to do some spins with me. All it took was the
angle of my hand |
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| The feet of my photographer and us loving the jump |
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| Almost to the point of pulling the rip cord |
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| Coming in for the landing |
