How it went down: the skydiving story.
Four of us went, Aimee, her father, her uncle, and me. Aimee flew us in her Cirrus to Slidell, where we met our waiting instructors. We stepped into the 'Nawlins Skydiving hangar where they instructed us to place our right foot forwards, stick our right hand into the air in front of us, bent at the wrist, and to shake our hips. Congratulations! We had been induced into the collection of gullible divers who fell for "the gay dance". I know I felt safe and secure with the maturity level of this company.
Then the ground rules were laid down.
#1. Do not grab the instructor's hands. They need those to pull the chute. So no handholding.
#2. Do not grab on to anything outside of the airplane. This is how you lose arms.
#3. In order to insure you do not grab anything, cross your arms across your chest when the door opens
#4. When the instructor yells "arch", arch your back, bend your knees, and put your hands by your ears
The entire "instruction period" took about 3 minutes. I'm not gonna lie, I was expecting some sort of safety class, which this definitely was not. We were given this information by an older man with hair down to his shoulders and absolutely no shoes on his feet. I knew immediately that he and Aimee were going to be the best of friends.
I made the executive decision that the two adults would jump first. So they suited up, donned goggles, gloves, and spectacularly funny hats, and hopped into the plane. It takes about 25 minutes for the plane to reach 10,000 feet. Aimee and I sat, waited, and did our best to completely empty our bladders. We then proceeded to suit up. Someone tried to hand Aimee a hat with two pink fuzz balls on either side, but that didn't go over so well with her extreme lack of enthusiasm for the color pink. And thus, somehow, I ended up wearing the most ridiculous hat in the hangar. Really guys? Why would anyone take something as cool as skydiving and design a hat guaranteed to get you stuffed in a trashcan? And don't even get me started on the goggles I ended up with.
Well the adults came back in one piece and Aimee and I boarded the plane with our instructors, who promptly fell asleep. One strange thing, I never got that intense fear feeling. Even when I go on roller coasters my stomach starts doing somersaults and I'm aware of my options for turning back. But not here. I was ready to go.
The door opened up, Aimme put her feet out of the plane, grabbed her shoulders, and rolled out. I scooched over to the door, put my feet on the step, and did the same. Hello world!
If you look closely at this picture, you can see me executing a perfect face plant of a landing. Awkwaaaard. It's not as easy as it looks!
That is insane!!!! Looks like tons of fun :D
ReplyDelete