Thursday, October 22, 2009

"Skydiving"

"Ugh I'm so bored," but little did I know that saying that w0uld lead me into what is without a doubt one of most intense exciting moments of my life.

I was visiting my oldest sister Kristin in Nashville, TN where she has lived since attending college in the city. Iwas there for a week and we had already exhausted all of the basics like the movie theater, the mall, and of course we had made several stops at the local Blockbuster. Along with that comes eating our weight in golden buttery popcorn. All of this was great but something was missing, I wanted to do something a bit more exciting.

I told my sister this and she thought on it for a few minutes, that's when she said "how about going skydiving?" I was unsure at first if I would actually enjoy something like that, but after some persuasion from her I agreed to go skydiving.We spent the rest of the night speculating on how much fun it would be and which one of us would be the first to wimp out. I went to sleep that night anticipating the next day and how exciting it would be.

The next morning I woke up to a kick and my sister saying "get up lazy you snore to much, oh and by the way get ready". I was unaware that something as exciting as skydiving was always just a phone call away. She had scheduled us for 11:30, that gave me two hours to get ready, unfortunately that was an hour and a half more than I needed.The time went by so slowly and I was beggining to get frustrated but finally 11:30 approached and wecould leave.

When we arrived at the skydiving place we were the only customer there, I was relieved that nobody was there in case i chickened out. Of course we had to take a few last minute boring safety courses to prevent any bodily harm. As if anything can save you from getting hurt or worse when your falling thousands of feet and your parachute malfunctions. Kristin said "Don't worry I'll save you," but I took that as just another form of teasing.

Finally it was time for us to go skydiving!!! We made our way to the airplane, it was relatively small airplane meant to fit us and our instructors uncomfortably. The plane started up and took off as we got strapped in with our instructors. In order to reach the required height to jump safely the pilot had to keep circling the plane which took a long time, this didn't help my nerves as I had more time to think on the chances of me going splat on the ground thousands of feet below us. I assume we reached the desired height when the instructor said "lets rock and roll," I unsuccessfully attempeted to distract myself by thinking of how much of a cheesey cliche "lets rock and roll" is but that failed miserably. The instructor pulled the latch and the door flung open letting in a violent gust of wind. He started counting down slowly, "FIVE" my heart began a drum roll steadily increasing in speed. "FOUR" I was thinking where the hell had five gone, "THREE" i was ready to pee myself. The instuctor pissed me off by skipping the rest and jumping out of the plane taking me with him. The air hit me with such a force that my face must of looked like a drawing of a deformed cartoon caricature. We traveled sp fast towards the ground that I could foresee myself hitting the gorund in a matter of seconds. I was instructed to pull the string and once I did I felt whiplash as I had never felt before. Soon after recovering from that it was extremely peaceful and serene as I took in my surroundings that I found oddly comforting. I prepared for landing as we approached the ground, even eith preparation the landing was rough and jolting.

In all we were only in the air for a few minutes but it felt like much longer. It feels as if it is a once in a lifetime expereince but in reality it is always just a phone call away.