15 Minute Blog

I'm leaving work in 15 minutes to go pick up my car from the dealership (that I totally dislike but they are the closest by like 35 minutes). I'm bored. Today has been a task-y day at work, preparing for Student Research Week. Count these things, inventory this stuff, make these copies, etc. The light at the end of the tunnel, though, is that we get Friday off. Well, maybe. Officially, the University gets Friday off but we may have to come in for a few hours to complete SRW prep. Either way, it's better than nothing. Having no day or a short day after St. Paddy's rocks.

Last year on St. Paddy's, I met this guy through a semi-random connection (he was the roommate of a karaoke friend of my friend). While chatting over various Irish-type beverages, I inexplicably agreed to go sky diving. I did go and it was by far the most terrifying experience of my entire life. Scarier than when my boyfriend-at-the-time hid under the bed and grabbed my ankle as I was coming back to bed from the bathroom in the middle of the night and I gasped so violently that I couldn't physically get the air out of my lungs. Scarier than when my parents thought I had cancer as a teen and I had to have surgery. Scarier than choking on food while alone in my apartment. TERRIFYING.

Now, I love a roller coaster. Love the fair, carnival, amusement park, etc. But I DO NOT do the free fall rides anymore. Anything else, I'm all for it (as long as my stomach is sufficiently coated with fried foods). So why did I agree to go sky diving? I'll never know. The beginning part was really fun (minus the fact that I didn't know anyone and they weigh you in front of a group. Awkward!). We hung out, cooked burgers and brats, got to know each other, put on our harnesses... THEN we had to get on the plane. I was getting increasingly nervous as I waited (FOREVER) for my turn. And they asked me "Pockets empty? Bladder empty?" And even more so as the plane circled around and around and around trying to climb to 10,000 feet (yeah, that's right). And as the pilot reported that he was having trouble making it that high and that the other plane had caught on fire.

Let me paint you a quick picture of this plane: Originally for 4 people, all the seats had been ripped out except the pilot's seat. There were seat belts bolted to the ceiling for you to hold on to. The pilot has to wear a parachute as well in case one of the jumpers hits the wing of the plane (and dies) and he has to jump out. The door was held shut with a hook and eye closer you'd see on a screen door. There was a "button" that said "In case of emergency, push here." I say "button" because it was a sticker and there was no one there to save me.

We finally make it high enough and the guy I'm about to be strapped to says "ready?!? in this excited voice that means I'm supposed to be having fun. In reality, I haven't taken a full breath in about 27 minutes and am about to pass out. I want to back out but I can't because then the other guy won't get to go either because there's not enough room for us to move around and I'm closest to the door. So I have to go before he can go. As if this weren't bad enough already, it gets worse. He straps me on front of him, unlatches the hook-and-eye on the doors and HE OPENS THE DOOR. THEN he has the NERVE to say "put your feet out the door." EXCUSE ME?! I don't think so mister. But then he just swings me around and my legs are hanging out the door. It's cold that high up and the we're moving so fast that I can't even put my feet on the step to steady myself. I try to give him a terrified look but as I'm strapped to his stomach, we can't make eye contact. He smooshes my head on his shoulder so I don't knock him unconscious with my head and says "here we go!" AND HE JUMPS. I'm too terrified to scream and the wind it moving so fast that I can't actually take a breath and the free fall is making my shirt flap against my neck in a painful way and the safety goggles (so ugly) I'm being forced to wear are smashing into my face in an even more painful way and WE ARE MOVING TOWARDS THE GROUND AT AN INCREDIBLE SPEED AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO TERRIFIED IN MY WHOLE LIFE. Then he shouts some of the most beautiful words I've ever heard in my whole life, "I'm going to pull the chute now!" YES!! PLEASE!!! WHY DIDN'T YOU DO THIS AS SOON AS WE STARTED PLUMMETING TOWARDS DOOM?!?!

Then he pulls it and although the harness yanks uncomfortably in the crotch area I will take that feeling over a free fall any day. Then it's actually kind of nice. Texas is really very pretty and we're over farm country. I get to "steer" a little (not that I can tell which way we're moving) and we do some swoops. Then he starts giving me directions about landing. Pull, push, bend, etc. We move towards the ground and it seems faster and faster and then we get hit by such a big gust of wind that even I can tell something is wrong and we go shooting away from the "landing site" and towards the barbed wire fence that keeps the cows (and their poop) off the runway. He starts yelling directions that WERE NOT covered in the original landing brief and I'm trying my best to comply but I really don't have the upper arm strength to man handle a parachute. We miss the fence by like 3 inches (ok, maybe more like 3 feet), land sideways and skid across the dirt/grass, narrowly avoiding both cows and the patties (of poop). He manages to get the chute under control so we stop being drug across the ground and I breathe a sigh of relief that I am still alive and uninjured because no one I'm with knows how to contact my father (who is my emergency contact) and he doesn't know how to contact anyone near me (except my office number but it was a Saturday and two days is too long to wait when your daughter went sky diving with some random and might be dead).

Some barefoot guy races over to us to make sure we're alive, does some fancy arm signals to show we're ok. A tiny Honda races up to the fence and a (barefoot) girl gets out (wearing a bikini). We spend the next 15 minutes trying to maneuver both the chute and ourselves through the fence and trek back to home base. Slash I got to ride in the car because I'm a paying customer and they almost killed me. We're checked out (sort of) when we get back but no one offers me a band aid for my scuffed up palms, elbows and knees. In fact, I begin to suspect there is not even a first aid kit in the place (and I am a big believer in first aid kits as I have one in my car, two at home, on in the office and a travel one). Fortunately, I'm exempt from clean up because it was all done during my interminable ride to the top of my fall and we load up and go to the Renaissance Fair.

That's right. The fun didn't stop with my near death experience. We then went to the Sherwood Forest (actually not a Renaissance Fair, it's a Robin Hood/Fairy thing) and the guy who invited me to go proceeded to get drunk on mead (honey wine), wore a kilt, I almost ran out of gas on the way back and I finally made it home late that night and didn't do anything for the next day.

And that is why I will NEVER go sky diving again.