Sky Diving!

For my mother in law’s 60th birthday gift everyone chipped in to send her sky diving. It is something that she has wanted to do so we were all excited for her. What a great way to celebrate 60, eh!

Jer kept saying to me that I should go with her and I kept saying that he should go since it was his mom. We were sure she’d like the company up in the air at 13,000 feet. I didn’t have a reason to go except Jer kept saying it was my 30th birthday and it also seemed like my kind of thing.

So the night before, somehow it was decided that I would go.

We went to Sky Dive in Ogden. While we were signing the papers we were trying to decide if it was worth paying the 90 dollars for the cinematographer to go with me and take pictures. After thinking about it for a while, Jer figured if he was going to spend that much money for a 2 min DVD and a few photos that he’d rather put that money towards his own jump. Jer asked if it was too late for him to join in on our plane and they said if he hurried and filled out his paperwork he could go. So at the very last second he decided to jump with us.

Here we are getting ready.

Here I am just about to climb into the plane. The butterflys were starting to turn about then.

My mother in law got the video and the pictures so here she is! I was the last one off the plane so I got to see her and Jer jump although everything was happening so fast. These pictures barely do justice for how it feels to leap out into the air like that but you’ll get the idea.

While we were ascending in our little rickety plane, Jer asked my tandem guy if I could do some flips out of the plane. He said sure and I wasn’t quite sure what to think about that. I just said Ok. I wondered if jumping was going to be freaky enough but he seemed confident about it. He told me to cross my arms and tuck my legs and he’d tap me on the arm when it was time to open. He said we’d do 4 flips. Weather or not that actually happened I’m not exactly sure. All I know is that the blue sky and the white plane flew past my vision a few time and then I opened up to something like this.

If I have the stats right, we free fell for 60 seconds. I think we dropped about 6,000 feet and were going about 120 miles an hour. The wind sure made my cheeks flap in the wind. I had to let out a few hollers but I’m sure not even the guy on my back could hear them because the wind is so loud.

This is Jer with the reddish parachute. He went right before me so I could see him in the air. It was so fun to have him jump with me. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or not but he did tell his guy not to do any spinning. My guys was pretty cool because when we were free falling he held out my arms and showed me how to steer in the wind to do circles. He also let me pull on the parachute handles to steer it. It really gave me butterflys when we did a ton of spins. Woo!

This is Jer landing.

And me coming in with the blue and pink chute. You have to lift up your legs because to land coming in at 40 miles an hour there is no way to run it out. You have to sit down and slide on your bum.

Here we are back on the ground. My legs felt a bit wobbly.

Emma and Isaac greeted us happily but I’m not sure they realized how great of a thing it was to have both parents back down on the ground.

We had a little crowd there to cheer us on. I think the 89 year old grandma was pretty happy to see us all on our feet.

I’d recommend sky diving to anyone. It’s not as scary as you’d think. Super fun and a chance of a life time. I can see why some people get addicted to it. It’s an amazing feeling. What a rush!

Humm, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to go again… Dad?