Skydiving Adventure

You're strapped to a stranger’s back inside a tin can 13,000 feet above the ground. The wind whips through your hair as your stomach does flip flops into your throat. “No, no, no,” you mutter as your instructor edges you to the open door. “Go?” the instructor questions, misinterpreting your “No’s.” It’s too late to correct him as you’ve just been hurled out of the plane at 120 mph, straight towards the little green and brown patches of land way below.

Your brain takes about 1 second to realize you’re falling before you manage your first exhilarted scream. You quickly realize, it’s not a scream of fear, but one of wonder, amazement, and awe. You’re plunging towards the ground at terminal velocity, what 5 seconds ago was a spec, is shaping into trees, roads, and cars. The ground is rapidly approaching, but you don’t care because you’re falling in a wonderful bliss of uncertainty and freedom. Suddenly you’re yanked upwards, a direct stop to your impeding doom, replaced with a calm float to safety.

?I went skydiving, not for the first time, but the second. My instructor tells me on the plane trip up, "the second time is worst than the first." "What, why?" I choke. I'm already having second thoughts and previously he was distracting my nervousness with mundane questions of where I'm from and what I do. "'Cause now you know what to expect," he smiles. Last time I jumped, I pretty much hated the free falling. Yep, the reason most adrenaline junkies skydive in the first place is the part I despised the most. ?

No, nope, nah uh. Falling is falling. At least it was the first time. I just remember jumping and my blood pressure skyrocketing because I had a consent stream of butterflies the whole 45 seconds down. Thank God the parachute opened and then it was the most serene 10-minute float back to Earth. I determined then and there that I was not a "faller" but a "floater". To be able to glide through the air as effortless as a bird and take in the world below me was a wonderful treat.

The 2nd time, after the initial shock of, "f**k, I'm falling," I really didn't have the butterflies and although it wasn't a total "float" feeling, it wasn't a horrible falling feeling either. Just when I was accepting this strange new feeling of skydiving, I was yanked upwards and my drastic descent ceased. I had enjoyed myself. All my earlier anxiety flying up and looking over the edge of the plane was in vain. Maybe I was a “faller” after all.