Skydiving experience ~

I recently went Skydiving for the first time. It was a new experience that I shared with my two younger sons, who are both in their low twenty s. One of them wanted it for his birthday and he said but you have to go with me.



And then the other one came along also because he wanted to do it. It was quite an experience. We got there at 830 in the morning and after watching a video and getting suited up, we were in the air around 1030 or eleven.



The whole experience was very fast, but it was such an adrenaline surge that it was amazing. Of course, with something as risky as Skydiving, there was last minute questioning. They were both pretty wired about it and concerned, but not terribly so.



I projected an air of confidence, but inside I was questioning my sanity and actually wondering if I would go through with it or back out at the last minute. But then I remembered that I don't back out of things usually, unless it's just unavoidable to back out.



I relaxed into the experience. And really got a lot out of it. Usually with something like this, I would have been uptight and been projecting the future and trying to figure out how it was going to go down and what the risks were and I would have wanted to control everything.



But with my new relaxed attitude and acceptance of a lot more things that didn't happen, I actually enjoyed the whole experience and enjoyed watching the group that jumped before us come floating down to the ground.



I enjoyed the suiting up and the quick instructions that I got from the person that I was strapped to. I told him that I had always worked the other side of this from the control room and that it was going to be interesting being out in the air and seeing what this side of things was all about.



And it was. There were a few things that I learned from this that I figured I'd share after giving me the instructions and how things would go when we were on the airplane and how I'd be strapped to the person that I was jumping in tandem with.



All the guidance that he had for me was quiet and in my ear because I was sitting on his lap. Basically. Once we got on the airplane. We squeezed together all ten of the people in the airplane, and I was right in front of my person that I was jumping in tandem with.



He finished buckling all the straps to me and all the hooks and made sure I was connected to him completely. While he was doing that, he had whispered guidance, and the whispered guidance came the entire jump.



Stand up, then sit down was his first thing. I had to stand up to get closer to him and then sit down, basically on his legs for him to finish clipping us together and to be fully prepared. Part of the instructions that I got from the video and from him when he was suiting me up were to remember to hold on to the straps of my harness at my chest when we were going to go out of the airplane on the jump.



And he would tell me when I could put my arms out. I did that, and he said in my ear, not yet. He ended up putting the goggles in my hands. They were cheap, very plastic goggles with an elastic, and they work great.



But I put them over my eyes at the last minute and we went out of the airplane. I do remember remember at the door of the airplane looking down at my son and seeing him falling through the air, and my brain started to reject the whole thing and said, what are you doing?



But I went ahead and went with it anyways because we were already there and going out the door. Once he pulled the chute and we were floating down, he said to put my goggles around my neck and it was so much better after I did that because I could see clearly and it just was amazing looking out.



The whole experience was amazing. As we were about to touch down on the ground, I followed the instructions that the video and he had given me and raised my legs. Whispered guidance came again just at the last few seconds.



Higher. He wanted me to lift my legs higher and bring my knees up to my chest as much as I could, and I did, and we slid into the ground on the grass, safely, with no tumbling. It was so amazing. It was so fast, but so amazing.



And it made me marvel at the way he and the others had prepared to enable me to be a part of the experience. After the jump, I watched him and the others as they packed their parachutes for the next jump and they were very meticulous about how it was folded and how it all came together and went back into the parachute bag that they strapped to their back.



It was a very good sign of a ritual and doing things the same way so that you get similar results each time. It's, and it was good to see. One of the other jumpers was before the jump, rehearsing his jump.



He looked kind of goofy doing it because he would arch by throwing his head back and throwing his arms back and acting like he was falling through the air, but he was standing on 2ft. And then he would reach down to his golf ball, parachute release, pull and grab it and act like he was pulling it but not pull it.



And it was like he was rehearsing what he was about to do in the air. He did it 20 or 30 times. And it took me a minute to realize that he was doing it to get the muscle memory going, so that when he was in the air and the adrenaline was rushing and the wind was howling past his ears, that his body would know what to do, and he would just have to trigger the motions while we were in the air.



Right after we left the airplane, I couldn't believe how loud it was, the rushing wind, everything was so loud, but it was so cool to look out and see that we were in the air falling, and it was going great.



Once he told me that I could let go of my harness, I put my arms out and curled my feet up behind us like a scorpion tail, and I arched just the way I had watched in the video and like he had told me to.



And it was so cool because it didn't feel like I was flying. But it really felt the way I think it was supposed to feel. Falling through the air, looking around at things, seeing all the sights and looking around, trying to see somebody else.



It was cool. One of the things I'm glad I did was I paid for the video. The video was expensive, over $100, but it was worth all of it. He took video of us as we were walking out to the plane. He took video of the climb out.



He took video as we got to the door and as we jumped. And in the video, he actually got a shot of the airplane above us while we were falling, which is awesome for me. He got video of us falling, and I followed the instructions and looked at the camera so that I could see my face and my big, huge grin as we were doing this.



And then as we fell, it was just so beautiful that I had to say beautiful over and over in the video. Then with the video, I was able to share the excitement with my wife and with the boys and with my other kids.



But it was funny because I don't expect anybody else to do this. It's something that I decided to do, and I had a great experience, and I really don't have expectations of anybody else. But I do hope that others can learn from what I experienced and get something out of it.



I'm not embarrassed by it. I'm learning to not be embarrassed by hardly anything. Although it's hard for me. But it was a great experience and I'm glad to be able to share it with you through this post.