As the crow flies

Freefalling

I've heard that a common dream that people have is that they are falling and falling, and then they wake up before they hit the ground. I've never had that dream.

But I have been falling and falling at over 180km/hr from a height of 12000ft though. Yes I went skydiving when I was in Taupo. It was an interesting experience and I'm glad that I did it. So here's how it went down.

There were about 20 or so of us from the Kiwi bus that were going skydiving which kind of sucked which meant that we had to wait a long time since only 6 could go up in the plane at a time, but it was also good since we all sort of knew eachother so we could talk about it and stuff.

So I was excited about this sky dive the whole day and was rather disappointed that the weather was kind of overcast when we arrived in Taupo. I was surprised at this, as I figured I would be nervous and wishing the weather to be poor so it would be cancelled. The fact is I didn't actually feel nervous until we were up at 12,000ft and the door opened. I don't understand how my body works and how it gets so worked up over some little things, yet the thought of jumping out of a plane doesn't faze it.

Anyways, when the door opened there wasn't really any time to think about it as the skydiver strapped to my back (actually it was probably more correct to say that I was strapped to his chest) was moving towards the door and jumped out and I didn't have to do anything. It is quite a feeling falling extremely fast for 45 seconds from 12000 to 5000ft. Especially when you fall into a cloud. That was unfortunate since I couldn't see the ground anymore, but it did feel unusual as the cloud was going up my nose. Just as I think I was getting use to falling, the parachute opened and we were slower. But we were in a cloud so it was hard to tell which direction was down. Eventually we came out of the cloud and had a great view of the lake and the surrounding farmland. The landing went very smoothly.

So I've gone skydiving. Thinking back it doesn't seem that exciting - perhaps because it was over so quickly. I much rather go tubing underground in a cave full of glowing maggots.

posted by Aaron @ 5:16 PM