That One Time I Skydived...

One day my friends and I decided on a whim to go skydiving… I wasn't scared or anything, just really excited. We ended up having a huge group go, about 10 people. This was a year or so after graduating high school. Anyways, I remember the day was cold and rainy. All of us girls went together in a plane and flew about 12,000-13,000 feet up. It started thundering so our tandems thought it wasn't safe. We had to have the plane go back down and we had to wait a few hours for the rain to clear. We had already paid and signed a waiver so we decided to split and eat lunch and come back if the weather permitted. The company called us back so we headed over to the Ogden airport.

When we arrived our tandems were rolling parachutes. They explained to us some basic rules and taught us what to do if our chute popped or something. They also explained that there was a knife sitting in the back pocket of our suits. If we got tangled or anything our tandem would whip that knife out and save our lives. So we were all ready to go! We had everyone and their families there to watch and take pictures. We all felt like celebrities! We were then off! For some reason they had to split our group which disappointed me a little bit. It would have been more fun if we all got to go together but it's better to be safe than sorry, right?

We hopped into the plane with our tandems and camera man. While in the plane my tandem kept wanting me to sing... for some reason. I was too nervous to do that. He just kept joking around and said if I didn't sing he wouldn't be my tandem. F.Y.I. it's super weird to be attached to someone you don't even know. Anyways he did eventually hook up to my suit. He asked how I wanted to go out. I just wanted to do the craziest thing we could. After about 10 minutes of flying up the pilot hovered and my tandem opened the plane door. My heart was racing a mile a minute. "OK ready...? Three, two, one!" We did a back flip out! It was the most amazing feeling ever! I was literally falling through the sky! The wind was rushing past me and I could barely breathe.

We freefalled for about a minute and then the parachute burst out drifting us slowly down for another 15 minutes until we hit land. It was amazing to see all of Ogden without having a barrier between you (versus seeing the view from a plane window). Although, when the parachute popped out it hurt like heck. It tugs hard on your thighs and I was bruised really bad from that force.When we landed we needed to make sure we followed directions properly since they warned us people got hurt more from landing than the actual fall. We needed to make sure our legs stuck straight out as if we were in a sitting position. Then we are lowered slowly down until we are sitting on the grass. Some of the girls got a little sick but I felt completely fine! It was an amazing experience! I'm also really glad I got a video. It's $100 more but it was worth having that memory and/or proof I actually went skydiving. I think altogether it was about $300-400... I can't remember exactly. I'm glad I went- it's such a cool thing to say I went skydiving. However, I think this girl will probably settle down and retire from flying from now on ;)