Monday, September 9, 2013

My Coolest Freedom Opportunity Yet


This past Saturday (9/7/13) I experienced my latest Freedom Opportunity – SKYDIVIIIING!!!  It was amazing, incredible, super fun and I want to do it again!!  I went with friends Lizzy and Marcia and had a blast!  We used the company Skydive Georgia up near Cedartown.  When the reservations were made, we were told to arrive at 7:30a, which means we all had to get up at 5a to leave at 6a.  What an early start to the day, but I had little trouble waking up!  ;-)
So we arrived a little early and had expected to wait 2-4 hours before our time to board the plane.  Lo and behold, we were harnessed up about 8:30a and somewhere a little after 9a, it was time to board the plane!  Lizzy, Marcia and I were jumping tandem, and the professional skydiver assigned to me was Johan; he was really cool, nice and reassuring.  Thankfully he had several thousand jumps under his belt; also he had skydived in several countries, including Africa - landing near a herd of elephants!  L, M and I bought a video package in which we also had another person assigned to us to video our jump and do mini before and after interviews; with this we also got still photos.  My videographer was Sarah and she was cool too.

The people running the company were really good and let the three of us be apart of the same group of jumpers.  When you buy the tickets, your automatic jump height is just over 10,000 feet; but when the weather is cooperative and nice, you can opt to go to 14,000 feet – 2.67 miles!!  The weather was perfect that day.  We all decided to go big or go home; so we went the 14,000 feet!  This gave us nearly a minute of freefall time before the parachute opened for a ride down of about 5-7 minutes. 
On the ride up to altitude, I was calm – really looking forward to it.  When it was my time to dive, I did have a brief moment of nervousness, but thankfully I did not have any feeling of wanting to turn back.  I knew it would be thrilling.  So with wonderful Johan doing all the work, we JUMPED!  Man, the wind hitting my face at 120 miles an hour was incredibly hard, and I just had to remind myself to breathe during the first 10-15 seconds.  My brain wanted to stop working during freefall.  When Johan pulled the cords for the parachute to open, it was violent and unexpected jerk.  The time when we were soaring was phenomenal!!  Everything on the ground was so small.  While coming down, Johan asked if I wanted to do some spins, and I said as long as they were gentle.  We did several turns and it was magnificent!  Definitely one of the coolest things I have ever done.  One thing I was worried about was the landing and as it turned out, I did not have to worry at all.  Johan did a fantastic job of making the landing gentle and easy.  Wow what a rush that all was!!  I have to experience tandem skydiving at least one more time.  J  The first time was such a sensory overload for me, I feel that I was unable to fully appreciate the sheer awesomeness of what I did.  Such euphoria!!   

Here are pics from me and the videographer (warning there are many pics!)

                                                             Marcia, Lizzy and me.  Ready to go!!



Almost time...............

                                                               And here we goooo........................
     



                                                                  What a rush and a thrill!!!!



                                                  Parachute time!  My absolute favorite part!!!


                                                          Coming in for the landing.....

Safely on the ground!!!
 
Afterwards with our heads still spinning about what we had just done

                                                          Awesome Johan - my tandem diver

An appropriate quote
Side note - there was a bumper sticker in the waiting area that said
'Skydive because your mama told you not to.'   Hahaha!  ;-)

Landing zone

                                                                             Pics in waiting area

Repacking the parachutes

No comments:

Post a Comment