Most People Find It Normal To Breathe*

There was no fear. There was no doubt. There were no second thoughts whatsoever. When I found out that my friend Jen was thinking of going skydiving four months ago, I asked if I could join her and never looked back. We were thinking of going sometime in May, but planning was tricky and it got put off until three days ago. Three days ago I jumped out of a plane.

Saturday morning found me awake earlier than normal for a weekend and sipping a caffienated drink in the backseat of a new friend's car en route to Skydive Burnaby, Southern Ontario's premier skydiving facility. I wore sweat pants in public for the first time in a long time and I was pumped pumped pumped full of adrenaline. There was no stopping me or my motor mouth or my energy or my photo taking or my laughter or my jittery excitement as I signed the waiver forms that made me promise not to sue them if I died. I didn't care - I was going skydiving.


The Skydive Gang: Pre-jump. Mark, Chris, moi, Ashley, Jen. Chris is a veteran (13 jumps under his belt) who was nice enough to drive Jen and I up there and wait around with us all day.

The wait was long - gloomy Saturdays are popular with folks who want to jump out of planes. My friends and I sat around trying to entertain ourselves and evntually gave in to taking pictures of our bored faces and making movies about being bored. Mark and I confessed that we had an acute fear of heights. Ashley and Jen were calm. Chris chatted with his skydiving buddies and took care of his own training paperwork. Four hours later, we got our call to gear up and never, ever, EVER have I been more in love with a bright blue and orange jumpsuit. If they didn't cost $400 USD, I'd buy one. We all got dressed, met our tandem masters (it was a tandem jump - where you get strapped to someone else who actually knows what they're doing - I got PeeDee) and strapped on our gear.


PeeDee and I in my wicked jumpsuit. Isn't it just totally superawesome?

We met our videographers (we all ordered DVDs to be made, capturing our first jump - mine was Brento), were taught the proper body position so that we could descend like feathers, praticed exiting aka jumping out of the plane's backdoor and before I knew it, I was walking to the Twin Otter, the plane that would take us up up up but come back down without us.


Praticing my somersault exit with PeeDee while Brento films.

No fear. Only excitement. Loads of excitement.

During the ascent, all I could do was ask questions, yell HI to my friends who were sitting down along the bench and goof around with Peedee and Brento and the other masters and videographers and even the co-pilot. Skydivers are the coolest people ever. I got strapped tightly to PeeDee, watched two of my friends tumble out the back door and then we waddled up for our turn. I must say that the nost nerve racking part of the experience was getting closer to that door knowing that I would soon be launching out of it. But on the count of three, I did it.

And suddenly, there are no words. I can't describe to you what happened next and do justice to the experience. I'm wrestling with the English language right now and no matter how I try to beat it up or sweet talk it, the words just won't fit. But I try anyway.

When we jumped, we somersaulted out the back door, flipped a couple times and then...it wasn't like falling, it was like floating. The wind rushed past us and inflated my cheeks. It was raining up in the clouds and we were free falling so quickly that the rain drops felt like mini daggers that were coming at us from underneath. I was so taken by everything, the surroundings, what I was doing, that I forgot to bend my legs at the right angle and forgot to look at Brento as he was filming. Since PeeDee and I were smaller people, our free fall lasted longer and when we finally deployed the parachute, our descent was so slow that Jen (who jumped after me) landed first. I got to 'steer' the parachute and we did a couple 360s so that I could see the entire area. I learned that to be a skydiver, you need to have lots of upper body strength and I also learned that I don't have a lot of upper body strength. Thank goodness PeeDee was there. When we neared the landing area, I yelled down to everyone, "HEY EVERYONE! I'M FLYING!! I'M FREAKING FLYING!! DID YOU KNOW IT'S RAINING UP THERE? IT IS!! IT'S NOT RAINING DOWN HERE BUT UP THERE IT IS!! I'M FLYING!!" The land came at us quickly and I used every ounce of strength to pull the cords so we could land properly and it was so soft that it felt like we had never left the ground at all.

Conclusion? It was worth it. It was worth everything, every. single. thing. It was worth me getting up that early, it was worth the long car ride, the four hour wait, it was worth every single one of my 36,654 pennies. Everything.


To the Skydive Gang, I am so glad that of all the people that I got to jump out of a plane at 13,000 feet (2.5 vertical miles!) with, that it was with every single one of you.

And yeah, I'm totally doing it again.

*A line from the training video we watched - just in case we got so excited while free falling that we forgot to breathe. I was the only one who found it funny.

**I finally cracked and gave in and made myself a Flickr account. My skydiving photos can be seen HERE.
8:45 pm