That time I jumped out of a plane.

Your girl SKYDIVED.  It feels weird even typing that.  Skydiving is something I have wanted to do for a long time now.  Yes, it’s inherently terrifying but it’s been high on the proverbial bucket list for me.  Recently turning 30 didn’t feel like a mid-life crisis to me so much as it just fueled the fire under some of my big goals.  I’m a planner to a fault, but sometimes I need to just put the list down and take action.

That’s why I felt like I needed to just do it!  Stop thinking about it, and SKYDIVE.  Thankfully I have the best friend in the world Hallie who is equally as crazy as me (she also ran a marathon with me in 2016).  We couldn’t go on my actual 30th birthday, but as any bestie should Hallie texted “if you can wait a few weeks I’ll drive down and do it with you then!”.  HELL YEAH.  We were in action.  We decided on Saturday, October 19, 2019.   I had already done research and found this place near LA called Skydive Perris (highly recommend, big shout-out).  Hallie and I decided to pre-pay online, because you can’t bitch out after you’ve dropped a couple hundred on your credit card, right??

I had the busiest October so I actually didn’t even have time to think about the impending jump.  Sheer avoidance was my strategy.  And it worked!  The weekend totally snuck up on us.  The morning of, I woke up at 7am or so, like any normal day.  Ate a light breakfast of oatmeal because I was too nervous for anything crazier.  My boyfriend drove us down (he was “ground crew” as the skydive team later told us).  We arrived just in time to see a huge jump of like 20 or so people.  Apparently the weekend we went was a huge competition jump.  “Hall of famers” were there and it looked like a big party.  Being in the vicinity of experienced, expert jumpers weirdly made me feel a lot calmer.

The jumps can get pretty backed up, so we had about an hour and half to wait from our original check-in time.  I hadn’t told many people I was skydiving so I didn’t feel the urge to nervously text or anything.  Hallie and I just sat and watched the planes take off and disappear into the sky.  It was fun to watch the jumpers return back and land, their colored parachutes gliding down the sky gracefully.

And then it was our turn.

Honestly the next 15 minutes were a blur.  I met my instructor James who I was jumping tandem with, I put on a jumpsuit, I was harnessed, and clipped every which way.  I listened as he explained basic safety rules and body positions after we jumped out.  I nodded and tried to repeat the information in my head, worried I would make a mistake and break my neck or something.  But I was starting to get excited.  I was doing this!  It was happening.  The same thing happened with our marathon, but the moment before doing something scary I get hit with this sense of delusion and goofiness.  Hallie and I were making silly faces as Armando took photos of us and we chatted with our instructors.   The plane hummed in the background, beckoning us, but I think I was probably dancing or taking a selfie with Hallie.  Here goes nothing, right?

The most pleasant surprise was the fact that the plane you board has no windows (other than the front one by the pilot).  You can’t actually see anything during the ride up, which made it less scary to me.  You just sit and try to breathe for 10 minutes.  I said a prayer and I grabbed Hallie’s hand and signaled I loved her.   I volunteered as tribute to go first, mainly because I didn’t want to sit around on the plane and watch people disappear.  That was going to psyche me out.  I just wanted to go first and get it over with.

About 2 minutes before our jump, James had me kind of sit on him as he clipped in all the remaining links.  He reminded me that it was a left step, right step, and gone.  “Left, right, step” was the mantra I repeated for those next few minutes.  I tried to control my breathing and when the huge hatch door opened and I could feel the rush of wind on my face I just focused on “left, right, step”.  We stood, inched closer to the edge of the plane, and took another deep breath.  We stepped left, stepped right, and then we were gone.

The freefall was wild.  You don’t feel like you’re falling, it’s more of a mildly uncomfortable floating feeling with a ton of wind blowing in your face.  It was hard to breathe at first, but I started screaming and that helped.  Shockingly, I didn’t curse once as we dropped.   I don’t know when I turned into a nun at 12,000 feet but no F-bombs were dropped in the jumping out of the plane.  After about a minute, James deployed the parachute and then we cruised down for a few more minutes.

From 12,000 feet, to 10,000, all the way down to the final landing, it kind of slowly hits you what you just put your body through.  The sensations become more normal and your head clears a bit.  I can’t say I had a huge epiphany or a come-to-God moment, but what I did experience was an appreciation for life.  I SKYDIVED.  I dreamed about doing this for years, and I had done it.  I had conquered a fear.  In that moment, I just felt really blessed to be alive and able to try new things.

We landed, we laughed, we hugged, and we finally called our parents.  Would I skydive again?  Absolutely.