I've wanted to go skydiving for a long time but circumstances have always conspired to thwart any such efforts. Since Evan was born those circumstances have had their own champion in the person of Stephanie, so I figured any skydiving ambitions were going to have to be put on the back burner for a while.
(A quick aside. When you read that last paragraph it's easy to draw a few negative conclusions which I'd like to assure you are erroneous. First, it's not like I've been on some quest to go skydiving my whole life and have been denied the experience by extraordinarily bad luck or the deliberate actions of others. It's something I think would be fun and I'd like to do eventually, but if I really cared about it that much I would have made it happen by now. I've mostly been too cheap to spend $200+ for essentially 1 minute of entertainment. Second, Steph hasn't forbidden me from skydiving or made threats of dire consequences if I went, she just worries about the possibility of something going wrong and would rather I pursue less risky activities. She readily admits that these are irrational fears, skydiving being statistically safer than driving, but she has them nonetheless. If I really wanted to go she might not be too supportive but she wouldn't stand in my way. But again, if I really wanted to go that much then I already would have gone, and since I haven't it has never seemed to be worth the potential strife to push the issue. Ah, the give and take of marriage....)
Anyway, back to my birthday. Steph had been working for a few weeks to try and arrange a surprise trip to iFly with several of our friends, but shifting schedules and an accidentally-nosy husband downgraded those plans to my friend Dan and I going this afternoon and me being involved in the organizing after all. I don't think that made much difference, though, it was still a blast.
When you get there you first watch a short video about what you'll be doing and your instructor goes over the hand signals he'll use to tell you what to do (because it's too loud when the wind is pumping to even hear yourself scream, let alone communicate instructions). It's pretty simple, basically "straighten your legs", "bend your legs", and "keep your chin up". Then you get geared up in your flight suit, goggles and helmet and you're off to the wind tunnel. Here are Dan and I all dressed up and ready to go:
I'd like to point out that the goggles fit really tightly and make your face look kinda funny. For instance, Dan does not normally look like Luke Wilson in a tornado.For the normal beginner package your 1 minute of flight time is broken into two 30 second chunks, but just before you enter the wind tunnel they tell you you have the option of going a third time for only $15 more (the base package costs $50). This is brilliant salesmanship, because after the first two flights there's no way you're not going to pay a couple of bucks more to go again!
Here are the videos Steph took of my three flights. Hopefully you'll see that I was more in control in each successive pass and able to tinker more with how different motions affected my flight, but maybe not.... Anyway, here's my 1st flight:
And my 2nd:
And my 3rd:
Finally, Steph also took as much video as she could (our camera's memory card filled up with all the video since I didn't get around to emptying it before we went) of our instructor playing around after we were done. It gives you some idea of what I'm going to be doing the next time we go:
I mention the next time because next weekend is Hayden's Birthday, Part II! Since none of the group Steph was trying to get together was able to make it on my birthday besides Dan we decided we'd go again next Saturday so more people can join us. Also Steph will get a chance to go then since we'll have enough people to warrant scheduling two time slots, allowing for a convenient baby swap. So check back in a week for more cool video!
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