Skydiving part 2

We were getting close to our jumping altitude and Jordi started tightening all the straps for the jump.  It was debatable if I was closer to the door or the guy sitting across the aisle from me so there was some discussion as to who was going to jump first.  Initially I thought it would be better for him to go and make sure there were no catastrophic issues before I jumped.  

The guy jumping before me

 They re-opened the door and the gusting wind was refreshingly cool, much cooler than the 36 degrees on the ground.  The other guy lined up to jump, my heart was racing at this point and, as it turned out it was worse to go second.  I watched this guy basically get sucked out of the plane and fall so fantastically fast.  This was where my pulse reached its all time high.  Before I could even process this and think about what I was doing I was being shuffled forward to the door to get ready to leap.  I got set up in the stance I was instructed and then I was falling. 

It all happened so fast I could have possibly blacked out for a few seconds because I can’t remember really leaving the plane.  The initial fall is not the best feeling in the world, you feel weightless and you have no control.  They tell you to hold on to your harness and arch back by kicking your legs back behind you.   At some point they’ll tap you on the head and then you can let your arms out to do whatever you like.  Once you reach your maximum velocity the feeling instantly becomes so calming.  The only sound you hear is the wind rushing past you as you plummet to the earth, there’s nothing else.  It’s loud in a sense but eerily quiet in another.  I stared straight down at the magnificent view almost the entire time, I wasn’t even thinking about the camerawoman and Jordi at one point had to lift my head up so that my face was in the pictures.   

The expression on my face says it all

12,990ft and dropping

Holding my head up for the pictures

genuinely smiling

Can't properly describe how incredible the view was

Parachute opening

The falling lasted for I think 20-30 seconds but I didn’t have much of a concept of time so I’m not sure.  I could feel when he opened the parachute flap and was waiting to feel the big pull upwards and it came.  Your inner thighs take the brunt of the force and it pinches for a while but then the feeling of floating and the realization that you just jumped out of a plane take over and you just enjoy it.  I let out a many obscenities as I was catching my breath from the initial fall and I could hear Jordi laughing behind me.  He asked me how it was all was ‘amazing’ and 'holy sh*t'.  Jordi gave me the control straps for the parachute and said I could spin us in any direction I wanted.  I still wasn’t quite thinking straight and just taking in the view so I wasn’t doing much with the controls.  After a bit of patience he just took them from me and spun us around and around.   This can get you dizzy quickly but looks pretty cool.  

As we got closer to the landing area he started to go over the landing instructions.  My camerawoman had already reached the ground and was getting the camera prepared to catch my landing and final reaction to the experience.  We swooped in at a fairly high speed but then they pull some extra form of brakes on the chute and you slow down to a stop right as you touch the ground.  The parachute was quickly disconnected and we got my final words on tape to wrap it all up.  

The landing

That deserves a high-five

 There's a bit of follow up with removing the harness, etc. but after that I ran into the two Kuwaitis.  They hadn't jumped yet as they were in the third wave of jumpers.  They asked me how it was and I gave them a brief description but didn't want to ruin the experience for them so I left it at that.  When it came time for them to suit up I went outside and watched the waves of jumpers landing to get a view from the other end of it.   

A view from below

The next wave of divers

I stayed until I saw the Kuwaitis jump.  The girl was going to be landing first but as they were getting close to the ground I heard her tandem jumper yelling for help.  She kept saying 'I can't get her legs up'.  From what I could see at the moment the girl was just hanging, motionless.  The tandem jumper could not get her to bring up her legs for the landing and that could get a bit dangerous if she hit the ground in the wrong way.  The other employees ran to try and help but they couldn't make it in time before the landing.  She seemed to land as softly as she could and the Kuwaiti girl just flopped down face down.  People ran to her attention, and not long after, her brother landed and ran over to her as well. Turns out this girl had began to feel dizzy as they were spinning with the parachute open.  She mentioned this to her tandem jumper but then almost immediately she fainted.  I spoke with the brother about it for a while after she had recovered from it.  At least she got to experience the thrill before fainting.  I guess the young ones just can't handle it like us near-30 year olds.  

All in all it was a fantastic experience and I recommend to anyone to try it.  As it turns out falling from high above uncontrollably isn't such a bad feeling as long as the chute opens...

Skydiving part 1

It was about one month before I went to Dubai that I made the snap decision to put down a deposit for skydiving.  The idea had popped into my head after I saw a music video of an artist who skydived with the same company.  The video clip made it very intriguing and if I was ever going to skydive in my lifetime, that setting seemed ideal.   I was 50% sure I was going to think about actually doing it and figured it was worth risking the loss of the deposit if I didn’t.  The one thing I made sure of was not to tell anyone that I was planning on skydiving.  It would have been a massacre had I spread the word and chickened out.  It seems my closest friends wait impatiently for those opportunities to hassle and I would do the same to them.  

For certain reasons I only mentioned it to one person on the night before I was scheduled to willingly jump out of a plane.  The conversation that followed was almost enough to convince me not to do it.  I woke up early the next morning, after a mostly sleepless night, with a few graphic dreams of how it could all go wrong.  It took a while to convince myself to show up at the building still thinking that I would have time to back out later if I wanted to.   

When I arrived I first met a brother and sister group from Kuwait.  The guy looked as nervous as I felt but the girl was cool as ice.  Because she was acting so calm I assumed the guy was jumping and she was there for support.  She informed me though that she was jumping as well and it was all her idea since she wanted to do it before she turned 20…..20!. 

My next thought - ’Wellllll shit, now I have to do this.’   

The brother and I took turns pacing around the room trying to calm the nerves. 

Jordi putting on my harness

When the time came to get my jumping partner, they paired me up with a tall, lanky Belgian named Jordi.  He was friendly enough but sported a rather dry and dark sense of humour that I usually would appreciate but not when it was aimed at me in my vulnerable time.  The first thing he felt he had to tell me was that the plane we were jumping out of was the backup and not as good as the normal one.  ‘Sometimes it doesn’t work very well…It’s as flimsy as a paper plane.’    Damn Belgians.  I also had a personal camerawoman from South Africa and she was a bit more sensitive.  She was equipped with a two cameras attached to her helmet, one for video and one for hi-def pics.

Jordi hooked me up in my harness and then walked away, left me standing in the middle of the room for about five minutes.  There was no direction, I had no idea what to do.  I figured he had to take care of something important and my priority was to nonchalantly make the proper adjustments in the crucial areas where the harness was encroaching.  I thought about the upwards pull that was going to come when the chute finally opened and I had to make sure future generations of Kruzers could still be a possibility.    When my Jordi finally came back he was having a good chuckle at me for the show I’d unknowingly been putting on in the middle of the room.  He said he wanted to see how long I would stand there looking like a fool.  Damn Belgians.  He has no idea, I would have stayed there much longer.  

This whole time while he was razzing me I tried to come up with witty comebacks or play it cool but I just couldn’t think of anything. My mind was racing but I had no thoughts the whole time I was there.    

Next was to discuss the safety operations of the jump.  I figured this would be a 1-2 hour presentation but 5 minutes later Jordi slapped me on the back and said ‘let’s go jump out of a plane’.  So we loaded up in the plane with the 4-5 tandem jumpers and we took off for what I found out was going to be 13,000ft over top of The Palm of Dubai.  

The 'paper plane'

About to get on the plane.  Failing at an attempt hide my nervousness and look cool

Last chance to back out

only smiling because I felt I had to