The day I flew
I did a thing.
A few weeks ago, a friend had an extra pass to go skydiving and texted to see if I’d be interested in going
Am I interested??? Yes.
Am I terrified??? Yes.
“My hands are sweating. Yes,” I texted back.
As we were getting closer to the date, I was getting more sure I might die, but in a weird kinda relaxed way. Mildly made me question my mental health, not gonna lie; I couldn’t bring myself to tell people for this reason, like them knowing might irrationally make dying happen more surely.
As a person who lives in a lot of fear a lot of the time, it was so weird to be CHOOSING this fear. I was quite proud of my lil anxious self.
Jump day arrived and we were ready to do the thing. We arrived at the place and sat down to sign our lives away, (I lost count how many times I had to initial) and then watched people leave and come back from jumping out of a plane like it was NO BIG DEAL.
Just signing my lil life away
My friend was a champ and had absolutely no fear which was really quite helpful. By the time we were suiting up, I was eerily calm. They casually told us how to thrust our hips and hold our arms out after we catapult out of a plane, then we walked over to our teeny tiny plane and crawled in.
You have to jump tandem when you’re new to skydiving. I knew this when we were suiting up, but I did not know this when I said yes to jumping. I said yes to jumping when I thought I was going to be jumping out of a plane alone.
KRISTIN.
Good thing someone’s making rules, cuz it ain’t me.
Staring at the ocean below me from the open door of a plane I’m about to jump out of
So we plop ourselves in this tiny plane, all kinda on top of each other; now, I’m not super big on strangers touching me, but you wouldn’t know it when it’s paired with being further from the lil door I was about to hop out of.
We flew 70,000 feet in the air and it was time to go. But first, my earrings.
I have these earrings that get caught on EVERYTHING. Hats, necklaces… ok not everything, just hats and necklaces. I was not wearing a hat and I’d taken my necklaces off, so I thought I was good. My tandem buddy put my goggles on and they immediately got caught on my earrings (so… not just hats and necklaces); all I could picture was being in the air with goggles that fell off, leaving me blind with earrings ripping out of my ears. Anxiety.
I promptly took them out,
except it wasn’t that prompt, you see, they have these little teeny tiny screws you have to undo to take them out, which is why I didn’t do it in the first place.
Fear can make ya act in a way logic just doesn’t.
So I’m 70,000 feet in the air, getting all suctioned to my tandem buddy while unscrewing and re-screwing these teeny tiny screws out of my ears entirely aware of the odds of managing to keep these teeny tiny parts on this teeny tiny airplane.
I did it, but TENSION.
So we’re at 70,000 feet, my earrings are secure, and my friend has now casually popped out of the plane.
It’s my turn and I’m scootin’ to the edge.
I get to the edge and I’m literally hanging out of the plane, while tandem buddy does the important things. He’s sitting in the plane, I’m attached to him in front with my entire body weight hanging off the plane. I’m just staring at the world below me and considering how this is the exact thing you don’t want to happen in ANY other plane riding scenario.
My hands sweat when I look at this picture
And just like that, we pop out.
I knew the tumble was coming, you kinda flip in the air a minute until you “land” on your belly. My stomach disappeared and I felt the “tap tap” on my shoulder to put my arms out.
And then,
I was flying.
*sidenote, the goggles stayed on, but look at my free lil earlobes flying about.
There’s a video and my mouth is open in awe, exactly like this, the entire fall. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t eat any bugs.
When the parachute caught, it weirdly felt like it was “done,” but, we were still 40,000 feet in the air.
I learned to fly the parachute; if you pull down you slow down and if you release you go fast. There’s a metaphor there somewhere. Poor tandem buddy had to take the reins because Kristin just kept pulling down. We be goin’ SLOW.
With tandem buddy’s help, (or entire responsibility), we glided down to earth and that was that.
The rest of the day, it was like, “did that happen?”
It was a 45 second drop before the parachute caught, so the entire fall probably took like 2 minutes, maybe?