Allison's Wonderland: The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!!!

The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!!!

Posted by Allison ,

My Landing with Larry

I did it. It's official! I must say that I'm pretty proud of myself, because I took the jump. The jump from an aircraft 10,000 feet in the air. It was probably one of the craziest, nutsiest things I've done, but I think I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Maybe this time if someone else paid for it since I did drop about $350 bucks on my little adventure, but I'd do it all the same.

It's official!

I've been talking about skydiving for several years now. That and the fact that I want to move to Australia one of these days. Australia's still a dream, but skydiving has become a fact. My friend Wendy and I from the Orange Cat (where I work) were talking about it one day. She's been and I never had, so I was asking quite a few questions. At the end of our conversation we decided we were going to do it together. We registered, paid our $50 deposit and set the date for August 11th. As the date was approaching, I was getting more and more nervous to the point I couldn't sleep if I started thinking about it before bed. That dreading feeling you get when you really really really don't want to do something. My stomach was upset and it just wasn't good. Wendy called me about a week before our jump to say we'd have to postpone due to money issues. I was so relieved. That way if we didn't end up going at all, I would have a decent excuse as to why we didn't go. I would be out of $50 dollars but so what? What's $50 to dying? Dying was the inevitable obviously if I were to sky dive.

Well, Wendy is one of those good friends who will push you do things you don't want to do. I like that in a friend. As long as it's reasonable. Healthy peer pressure. She urged me to reschedule for a month out so we could get finances settled, yadi yadi yadah. I

Wendy and I before the jump

emailed the office manager at Frontier Sky Divers to tell him of our change. I thought they would say we had to do the jump when we were scheduled and there were no other dates available. He didn't. He was very nice and was more than happy to have us reschedule. Crap. That was my thinking. I'm really going to have to go through with this.

I was relieved and kind of perturbed at our rescheduling. I had 30 things on my list to do before 30 and I really wanted to cross this one off. I started to pump myself up about it. Like really getting my mind over matter. The beginning of this week I was so excited and assured. It really did take the rescheduling to help me overcome my fear. I went to see my Grandma Brooks Saturday morning in order to wish her well. Especially since I wasn't going to see her again since skydiving obviously means death. I'm such a weirdo that way.

We met at the Orange Cat at 7:30 in order to get to Frontier Sky Divers at 8:30. Grabbed a coffee. Said our goodbyes to our co-workers, Etc. When we got there, we were the first ones to arrive and already had our paperwork filled out. Some of the stuff we signed was like legitimately serious. I guess it's New York State contract law, or something, but seriously it was talking about death and dismemberment and giving FSD $100,000 if anything were to happen and one of my parties tried to sue. WHAT? But I signed it anyway. Whatev! Went through the class which I thought would be long and drawn out. Took about 15 minutes. I kinda thought it was going to be like Driver's Ed class where they show you all the car wrecks and terrible things that could happen. Glad, they didn't try to terrify us into oblivion. I guess they want people to skydive but don't want people to get their driving license. Who knew?

First Victim Suiting Up!

Larry and I before the big jump

We stood around and waited for awhile. Xaviar came out and asked me if I'd be cool going by myself and also being the first jump of the day. AHHH! WHAT? I was a little hesitant but then I was like HECK YES! Why not? Start everybody off on a good note. That was what I was telling myself. It was going to take a long time to get everyone jumped anyways because they had to take their second plane to Buffalo as 4 instructors were jumping into the Buffalo Bills Pre-Game Show. Pretty cool Got geared up with my tandem jumping instructor Larry. He was calm and cool as a cucumber. I was his 3,997th jump. Is that not crazy? I'm happy to say I've jumped once!

Getting into the small plane

Now this airplane we were going up in was like a cracker box. It could only hold 4 people. It looked like a crop duster! Had a big old propeller too. I was most nervous about the plane because about 5 years ago this same Sky diving place had a crash where the plane broke in half and the pilot was killed. YIKES! The thing that was crazy was I wasn't even nervous. Like not even a little bit. In the morning when I woke up I was. I probably had to poop like 6 times because of my nerves but on the plane ride up I was enjoying the gorgeous view of Lake Ontario, Niagara Falls, and the Niagara River. It wasn't till he opened the side door of the baby plane and my altimeter said 11,000 feet was I

Wendy and Mark boarding the plane

regretting my decision. We went from completely quiet with a gentle airplane hum to crazy wind and a rushing loudness like I was standing right next to the falls. My body turned into jello at bit. As my legs are hanging out the door, Larry says, 1...2...ARCH and we go flying out into the abyss. And then I had the sensation that I don't think I'll ever have again. Falling but not

falling. It was crazy. I didn't get the stomach drop feeling like you do when you're on a roller coaster, but I got the feeling of weightless calm. The weird thing is I can't really do heights, but this was different. I was too far away from the ground to even notice how high I really was. We free fell for about 40 seconds before I pulled the rip cord for my shoot. We pulled it at 6,000 feet. It was a little painful when that happened because I was strapped to another human being and I had this harness going in between my thighs. The loudness ceased and everything was just peaceful and quiet. Like how the world should be. It's amazing to see the world from above. You really notice how entirely round it is.

After the jump!

As we slowly made our way down we did spins and twirls. I started to get sick a little because well, that's just me. As the earth drew nearer and nearer I didn't want it to end. My experience was too short! It took a total of about 4 minutes to get down when it took 20 minutes for us to get up in the plane. Crazy how gravity works. The landing was also a little eh. We didn't hit the stone pit which I wanted to hit, but we did okay. I twisted my ankle a bit because when you land in you have to keep your legs out. It's quite weird. The moment I was on the ground I wanted to be back up in the air! Ugh it was such a great time!

Mark and Wendy before their dive

Wendy and Mark were next. They did a great job as well and both of their landings were a bit better than mine! It was a successful ridiculous day. Can't wait to see how my video turns out and if I can do it again! I'm just so incredibly happy I didn't die! :)