Oh, look, another blank page. Having spent the last week staring at an unfinished, 10-page literature paper that is due tomorrow, I hope you'll forgive me for being slightly unenthused about looking up to see another unfilled document. Fortuitously, however, this one requires neither citations, nor research, nor reading yet another dry, morbid, depressed critique on yet another societal injustice. Instead, let us consider surfing and skydiving. Random, I know, but roll with it for a moment...
Back in 2008, my life was pretty decent. I had a solid (I thought) job, that I didn't utterly hate and allowed me to put money in the bank to save for those rainy days that came sooner than planned. I had no real ties or commitments to anything, no real debts, and few hassles. As such, I felt that there was no better time than the present to try out a few things that had been on my unwritten bucket list. During the summer, I tried out surfing at a camp in California. While I made a very good friend there, I was still pasty white girl, and the very first day saw me with severe enough sunburn that I was limping the entire week, and decided that surfing was not for me.
After hobbling back home and taking the next month or so to grow new skin, I found that my thirst for adventure had not diminished, and set out to find something else to do. My father had always talked about skydiving, and one day I discovered that there was a fairly inexpensive skydiving school a couple miles up the road from where I worked. An off-hand comment to a co-worker netted me a friend to go along with, and the next thing I know, we have a date set for jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. Funny how these things work... you spend forever thinking about something, or contemplating the possibilities, and one day, it just all falls into place. Gotta love it.
Of course, I'm nothing if not a realist, so after meeting up with my friend and driving over to the school, as we were wading through all the forms and disclosures they make you sign before risking your neck, I had them sign one in return: my will. I figured there was no reason in leaving loose ends, should it come to that, and the shocked look of "are we allowed to do this??" on their faces was enough to put me in a great mood for the insanity of the day.
After waiting around for a bit, and watching a team of professional skydivers practice their formations on the ground, my friend and I were given the orders to suit up and climb into an open wagon hitched to a pickup truck, to be driven out to the airfield. My friend had decided that we needed a video record of our adventure, so the whole way there, we had a camera hanging around, asking us questions, trying to get us pumped up for the video. Since I was still in a very anti-social period of my life, my responses were along the lines of "well, if I become a pancake today, I gotta say, it was all worth it." They left me alone after that, and filmed my friend.
Finally we get going up in the plane. We had opted for the tandem jump (where you're strapped to an instructor) rather than have to go through 3 hours of classes required to jump solo, so once we hit a high enough altitude, we're told to buckle up to the instructors. I noticed my friend looking a little green around the gills, so I threw her a comment that usually a guy has to buy me dinner, at least, before getting this close to me. It was lame, I know, but it did the trick, and she jumped out laughing instead of scared. Sometimes, that's all it takes.
Unfortunately, I had no one to do the same for me. I won't lie, common sense was kicking in as my dive partner and I waddled back to the bay door. I have a bad habit of going gung-ho for something, and not really thinking about that critical moment of truth until it stares me in the face. Sometimes I think it's a safety feature, because otherwise I wouldn't have done half the things I have, but what it means is that all of my adventures have one moment of "Oh crap... I really have to do this now. What the heck was I thinking???" So as we're crouched at the door, and the instructor is telling me to jump, I looked over my shoulder and said, in as calm a voice as I could manage, "I won't stop you if you push us out, but don't expect me to do it." A look of surprise, a shared grin, and we're gone.
I've been on those 180' drop swings. I've been on the bungi-trampolines, I've even fallen out of trees and suchlike. But there is nothing in the world like pushing off of a solid object and realizing that there's nothing between you and the ground but a whole lot of air. Your fascination with the ground and its speed approaching you becomes utterly absorbing (This is why I went tandem jumping!). The air is rushing past you at about 110 mph, so when you remember to breathe again, it feels like you're fighting to breathe, fighting to focus, fighting to absorb everything coming at you... oh, wait... except that, I don't want to absorb the ground! Then the parachute opens, you realize you're not going to die after all, not today, and you look up from the ground...
If you haven't been skydiving, and you're reasonably sure your heart can take the adrenaline, I highly recommend it. Would I go again? Yeah, probably. Would I have the same reactions? Ohhhh yeah. But sometimes, you need those things to remember you're alive. And my opinion still stands: if I die today, oh, it was so worth it. Cheers!
Back in 2008, my life was pretty decent. I had a solid (I thought) job, that I didn't utterly hate and allowed me to put money in the bank to save for those rainy days that came sooner than planned. I had no real ties or commitments to anything, no real debts, and few hassles. As such, I felt that there was no better time than the present to try out a few things that had been on my unwritten bucket list. During the summer, I tried out surfing at a camp in California. While I made a very good friend there, I was still pasty white girl, and the very first day saw me with severe enough sunburn that I was limping the entire week, and decided that surfing was not for me.
 |
| This, but all over. |
After hobbling back home and taking the next month or so to grow new skin, I found that my thirst for adventure had not diminished, and set out to find something else to do. My father had always talked about skydiving, and one day I discovered that there was a fairly inexpensive skydiving school a couple miles up the road from where I worked. An off-hand comment to a co-worker netted me a friend to go along with, and the next thing I know, we have a date set for jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. Funny how these things work... you spend forever thinking about something, or contemplating the possibilities, and one day, it just all falls into place. Gotta love it.
Of course, I'm nothing if not a realist, so after meeting up with my friend and driving over to the school, as we were wading through all the forms and disclosures they make you sign before risking your neck, I had them sign one in return: my will. I figured there was no reason in leaving loose ends, should it come to that, and the shocked look of "are we allowed to do this??" on their faces was enough to put me in a great mood for the insanity of the day.
After waiting around for a bit, and watching a team of professional skydivers practice their formations on the ground, my friend and I were given the orders to suit up and climb into an open wagon hitched to a pickup truck, to be driven out to the airfield. My friend had decided that we needed a video record of our adventure, so the whole way there, we had a camera hanging around, asking us questions, trying to get us pumped up for the video. Since I was still in a very anti-social period of my life, my responses were along the lines of "well, if I become a pancake today, I gotta say, it was all worth it." They left me alone after that, and filmed my friend.
 |
| Yeah, what's it to you? |
Finally we get going up in the plane. We had opted for the tandem jump (where you're strapped to an instructor) rather than have to go through 3 hours of classes required to jump solo, so once we hit a high enough altitude, we're told to buckle up to the instructors. I noticed my friend looking a little green around the gills, so I threw her a comment that usually a guy has to buy me dinner, at least, before getting this close to me. It was lame, I know, but it did the trick, and she jumped out laughing instead of scared. Sometimes, that's all it takes.
Unfortunately, I had no one to do the same for me. I won't lie, common sense was kicking in as my dive partner and I waddled back to the bay door. I have a bad habit of going gung-ho for something, and not really thinking about that critical moment of truth until it stares me in the face. Sometimes I think it's a safety feature, because otherwise I wouldn't have done half the things I have, but what it means is that all of my adventures have one moment of "Oh crap... I really have to do this now. What the heck was I thinking???" So as we're crouched at the door, and the instructor is telling me to jump, I looked over my shoulder and said, in as calm a voice as I could manage, "I won't stop you if you push us out, but don't expect me to do it." A look of surprise, a shared grin, and we're gone.
I've been on those 180' drop swings. I've been on the bungi-trampolines, I've even fallen out of trees and suchlike. But there is nothing in the world like pushing off of a solid object and realizing that there's nothing between you and the ground but a whole lot of air. Your fascination with the ground and its speed approaching you becomes utterly absorbing (This is why I went tandem jumping!). The air is rushing past you at about 110 mph, so when you remember to breathe again, it feels like you're fighting to breathe, fighting to focus, fighting to absorb everything coming at you... oh, wait... except that, I don't want to absorb the ground! Then the parachute opens, you realize you're not going to die after all, not today, and you look up from the ground...
No comments:
Post a Comment