"Me too! Do you want to go the day before school starts?" I asked.
"Ask me tomorrow," Andrea said.
The next day, she texted me..."I'm IN for skydiving!"
That was on August 4, and we were skydiving on August 25. I made an appointment to sign our will and thought about it almost every day. I told a few people - but not my parents. I knew my mom especially would worry.
~
Andrea and I met at Skydive TC - Traverse City. Kris and the boys dropped me off. I told them I loved them and have a good school year if I didn't make it. Ty and Cole just laughed me off, and Max said, "Would you please stop saying that?" Andrea said she told her husband Chris but not her daughter Sam - also because she thought she'd worry.
The pilot introduced himself as Tyler. The guy jumping with me was Max. I expected the next guy to be Cole or Colton or similar, but they were Brad and Eric.
There wasn't an orientation or a formal training or making us watch a video (as I feared there would be.) Max just said, "Step into this harness." As he helped me put it on, he conversationally said that when he tapped my shoulder, that meant he was going to pull the parachute.
"Is there anything I can do to screw this up?" I asked.
"Don't pull on the emergency chute," he said.
"Has anyone ever done that?" I asked.
"No, but sometimes people just start freaking out and trying to grab at anything," he said.
Hmm.
~
We quickly got onto the plane, which had only a seat for the pilot, and the rest was just a floor. We had to sit in front of the people we were jumping with, and they attached our harness to theirs.
"Do you promise everything will be okay and we'll make it to the ground?" I asked Max.
"I promise," he said. (Before any procedure, I elicit this same promise from anesthesiologists, surgeons, dentists - you can't break a promise!)
Neither Andrea nor I realized this, but the flight was really long - 25 minutes. We talked to the guys, we looked at the gorgeous views of the blue water. You could see different shades of blue delineated, and it was just so pretty. Max pointed out different places - Marble Bay, Elk Lake, Traverse City itself. We learned that Max had jumped 4,000 times, Brad had jumped 6,000 times, and Eric was on his 40th jump.
I was really nervous.
"My heart rate is 120," I said to Andrea.
"Mine is 90 - that's the same as when I watch Sam play basketball," she said.
If I talked and kept my mind off it, I was less nervous. I mean, I knew I was going to jump out of an airplane. Of course I was nervous.
"Why are they all wearing helmets and we're not?" I quietly asked Andrea.
"That's a good question," she said.
We contemplated this.
"Two minutes," the pilot told us.
Eric, who was jumping solo, rolled up the door and secured it with velcro. He hung his legs over the edge and was gone in one second.
Andrea and Brad scooted up and poof - gone.
Max and I scooted up, and I put my legs out the window. The wind was so incredibly strong I thought my shoes might blow off.
We waited there a few seconds and....we fell.
My sister said that skydiving is just like floating, because you aren't passing anything and you don't feel like you're falling.
I felt exactly like I was falling.
The wind was incredible. I was concentrating very hard on what I was seeing - the ground coming toward me. I thought about where my arms were. I thought about doing it right. I thought about the sensation of falling. AND THE WIND.
Then, I thought, he must have already pulled the parachute. There is no way you can fall this long. It seems impossible. We have been falling forever.
Then he tapped my shoulder, and BAM - as he pulled the parachute, we stopped. It felt a little like a car crash. I later had bruises in my armpits and around my legs from the harness. (I later read you go from 120 mph to 17 mph abruptly.)
I felt a real sense of relief. The parachute worked! We were totally going to make it!
He asked me if I got motion sick (which he had asked a few times) and I said no. So he asked if I wanted to fly the parachute. He handed me the two handles and showed me how we could spin in different directions, then let them up to be weightless for a second. We did that a few times. We looked at Andrea and Eric. We looked at the airstrip. It was a long float down!
"I'm just so happy," I said. "We made it."
"Well, we haven't landed yet," he joked(?)
He maneuvered and pointed us toward the airstrip. I held my legs up, and he stepped down first and then I did. It was actually graceful!
Andrea had landed right in front of me, and we ran and hugged and jumped up and down. We did it! And it was fun and scary at the same time!
We rode the van back to where we started, and I talked to Eric the owner about his business. He used to be a teacher, and then he started a flight school and now the skydiving school. All of his employees are also in pilot training. He was a nice guy.
We got back and they showed us each the video they made of us. Max told me we were freefalling for 40 seconds! It was funny to watch myself doing it, because I had a clear view of what I'd seen from my eyes, and this wasn't it - this was me looking like I falling and studying for a test! Andrea's was fun to see, because her expression was pure joy.
Eric offered us a t-shirt when we bought the video. I said I wasn't going to get a video, and he said we could have shirts anyway because we were nice people. Yay!
~
Andrea and I talked about it the whole three hour drive home. When we got to my house, my mom was here, and Andrea and I greeted her in our matching shirts.
"Guess what we did today!" I said.
"Did you run a race?" she said, looking at our matching shirts.
"No! We went skydiving!" I said.
"You did?!" she said, obviously surprised. "...Whose idea was that?"
"Carla's," Andrea said.
"Andrea's," I said.
~
Skydiving is very fun, and very scary, and I give Skydive TC high marks for making it fun and seem routine. I highly recommend it to other people, and I would totally go again as long as the tandem jumper promises it will be fine!
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