Two American girls were sitting next to us, also debating whether or not to jump. Together, we convinced eachother to go. Well, they convinced me to go, and I wrote down Chantal's name for her while she stared at me a bit dumbstruck, unsure of what she had half agreed to.
The bus stopped at Huka Falls, and our driver told us that the skydive van was coming to meet us to pick up the first group of skydivers. She had 5 volunteers, and needed two more. “We'll go first!” I said excitedly. I don't think Chantal has ever sent me daggers like that before. We took a quick peak over Huka Falls, but didn't really 'see them' since we were so distracted by our future reality. When the van arrived, we all hopped in and were given waiver forms to sign- if you die, you can't sue, blah blah blah. When we got to the airfield, I got continually more and more excited. Chantal became more and more afraid. Sadly, we got put into the second plane going up, so we had to wait around and not think about all the sky diving accidents we had heard about. Still, it wasn't too long before we started to see the parachutes coming in. The tandem divers made nice, easy landings, but the solo camera men and women did tricks as they came in, spinning around in their parachutes seconds before landing. Chantal started swearing, I looked up in fascination and my only thought was "I WANT TO DO THAT!"
We got all strapped up in our diving suits and met our instructors - mine's name was Joel. When the plane arrived, we had to be led to the plane by our dive masters and sit with our legs around a bench in front of the instructors who started to attach us to them. The ride up was probably the most stressful as Joel kept showing me the gauge on his arm that measured our altitude while he double and triple checked that we were properly attached to eachother. I tried to avoid thinking about just how well we were connected. Chantal and I ended up at the back of the plane, which meant we were last to jump. We had to sit and watch the 6 other divers hang out of the plane, and then experience the awful feeling of the plane bouncing up and down when they finally jumped.
Suddenly I was being pushed to the front of the plane, and hung out the door, waiting for Joel to throw us out. I looked back for a picture, and then had to keep my head resting against his shoulder as I went from looking at the roof of the plane to ground 12 000 feet below me. That three second rush was unreal, but I managed to remember my dad telling me that he unconsciously started doggy paddling in the air and avoided it. Once Joel sorted out his side of things, I was allowed to shift and I spent the next 30 seconds free falling thousands of feet, pushing my arms hard against the force of gravity. It was absolutely spectacular. The rush is unbelievable and it was my favourite part of the jump. Lucky for me, Joel remembered the proper time to pull the parachute, and it released properly. At this point, my only job was to admire the scenery. It was quite the easy job. If I had jumped in Edmonton, I would have been able to see the boring brown and grey patchwork quilt of farmland on the prairies. In Taupo, I could see 3 volcanos, the entire lake (which is as large as Singapore), and the town of Taupo itself. It was so beautiful that I had a what felt like a permanent smile stuck on my face and I wasn't positive it would come off. The ground came up too soon, but landing was flawless and I ended up standing on my feet- although at the same time I kind of wanted to fall and hug the ground.
Chantal ran up and shouted "That was AMAZING!" My first thought: Let's do that again.
No comments:
Post a Comment