It was very tiring but one of the best days in my entire life so far. As said earlier, I went to Superior Wisconsin, which is in a North West corner of Wisconsin and couple of miles south of Downtown Duluth MN. This picturesque small town is situated on the shores of lake superior, the biggest fresh water lake in the world.
I started my trip from Rochester at 945AM Sunday morning. Karoline and Alain joined me on my trip. It was actually a surprise to me as I was supposed to drive by myself to Duluth. Never the less it was a pleasant surprise, their company made my trip little less tiring.
We stopped at Forest Lake, MN and had a nice latte, to keep everybody awake, though it didn't work that well. But no worries as I didn't sleep which was most important considering the fact that I was driving.
After a 2hr drive from Forest lake we finally reached Sky dive Superior at 2 PM sharp, and that's exactly what I had planned for. Once we reached there, it was all business.
The lady at the desk started with my paper work. I started filling the forms and in process waived all ( if any) rights to sue the sky dive office and should anything happen to me, which obviously didn't happen. I then watched the training video, which made me both excited, and little nervous. Luckily the manager of that place, Mark had his birthday on Sunday so the cake helped me feel better. All the nervousness and anxiety had gone only excitement lingered around, which was good. After waiting for almost an hour for my turn to come, I suited my self up for the jump.
Then I put on my red jump suit, which I actually liked. They gave me some brief instructions about body positions and equipment handling which was followed with a brief one on one training while I waited for my instructor to land. He was already up in air doing tandem jump with some other people. Once he landed , he took some time off and then came to me and checked my jump suit, harness and the different body positions I was taught. Once he felt comfortable, we mocked the jump from the plane ( which was grounded ). Then it was time to go. Go up in the air.
This is when Mark took over, he started shooting my video. He did a brief interview and asked me to make funny gestures for his video. After the interview, we made one last mock jump, but this time all geared up with the instructor. Then it was 1-2-3 and go....
We sat in this small plane, I don't know what kind it was, I think it was Cessna. But that didn't bother much. The plane wasn't in a great shape as it was modified/stripped down to bare minimum. Me my instructor Dean, the camera man Mark, the pilot and one solo jumper Mike we all boarded the plane and took off. I tell you, flying in a Boeing or airbus is sure a luxury compared to this craft. But the kind of view you can get from these small planes is just amazing there is nothing that comes close. We started ascending at about 1200ft a minute. We circled around downtown Duluth, went over Lake Superior for a while and when we reached the altitude of about 12000 ft or say after about a 10 minute flight, my instructor asked the pilot to take us to a suitable position to do the jump.
The door opened, and he gave us a thumbs up to jump, and we acknowledged him with a thumbs up. The solo jumper without taking any time was out in a flash. Mark my camera guy, clung on to the wings and positioned himself to shoot me jumping out.
At this moment, we moved forward to the door, and positioned ourselves to jump, and for one last time I looked at the plane. Airplane flying at 12,000 ft with its door open, it is enough to make anybody nervous/panic, but I felt very serene. When the door opened I heard the sudden gush of wind, may be a 100th of a second I thought what the heck am I doing, but once I reached the door and looked outside all my fear and anxiety was gone, it was such a serene feeling, it was like 'Lets do it' . Dean put his foot out holding the plane with one hand, then he asked me to put my right in front of him, and at this moment I was 80% out of the airplane with only my left leg in the airplane.
It took me a second or two to position myself, and one last second in front of the camera and here we jumped and I was in the free fall. The first thing I remember is the sudden and huge blast of wind on my face. For may be 5 seconds I was unable to breath. But then I started breathing normally and it all felt such wildly wonderful. The free fall as opposed to what the word says doesn't' really feel like a fall at all. you don't feel like you are falling down or something. It feels like you are standing in front of a big, really big fan blowing really high speed wind at you. It all lasted for about 45 seconds, and during this time we had already descended from 12000ft to 5 or 6 thousand feet. At this time my instructor pulled the ripcord of the parachute. I realized it only after it opened completely and I felt a jolt. After that, it was such a nice feeling, it was all calm and quiet. We went on small ride of our own for a while. Dean was giving me instructions how to control the speed, direction and stuff like that.
After brief maneuvering lessons we were ready to land. I positioned my legs in bent knee fashion and we were ready to land. I suddenly felt the ground rush, which Dean said was normal, and before I knew we had landed. The moment he landed I put my feet on the ground and that caused him to loose his balance a little bit and we stumbled, but hey we didn't fall this time we already had fallen some 6000 ft doing our free fall. Mark had a final word with me asked how did it felt. Well what can I say, it was amazing, mind blowing experience after all.
I just uploaded some pics from my ski trip and my skydiving trip. They can be found out here..
No comments:
Post a Comment