Life As I Know It: SKYDIVING!

UNREAL, AMAZING, PHENOMENAL, EXTRAORDINARY, UNBELIEVABLE... okay I know these all mean the same thing, but there's just not one word to describe this experience! These words don't even cut it. Oh okay, I have one... INDESCRIBABLE! It sucks that I can't even explain the pure awesomeness to everyone because it is impossible to express the experience in its entirety.

We got to Lodi at 9 am on Saturday and were driving home by 10 am. I thought it would take way longer than that! When we first arrived, they told us we were going with the first group, so we were basically rushed into everything. We barely had time to go to the bathroom! I'm not complaining though, because if I would have had to wait around I probably would have thrown up. Thinking about it made me so nervous!

Without further ado, my skydiving experience...

The jumpers! Me, Gretchen and the birthday girl, Mattie. Plus my sister for moral support :)

I was the first one on the plane, all smiles! I was surprisingly not feeling nervous at this point.

In the plane, my camera guy in front and my tandem buddy (aka guy I'm trusting my life with) behind me.

The plane got up to about 12,900 and something feet. The instructors have watches with cool gadgets to tell them these things :) As soon as we got to that point, my tandem buddy showed me his watch and I immediately felt like vomiting. I'm not a huge sissy or anything, but I've been known to throw up when I get nervous. This was definitely one of those occasions. We were crammed in this little tiny plane, and I was so scared of being that one girl that ruins the moment. Luckily, I was able to control myself.

From there, everything is a blur. One by one, tandems were jumping out of the plane. Normally, most people don't get a picture from above, but Gretchen jumped right after me and her camera man took a picture of me. Thanks Mr. Camera Guy :) And here it is... the jump!

I honestly don't remember looking at my camera guy, but I obviously did. We all jumped out together and he pushed us backwards and we did a back flip out of the plane! I had no idea we were going to do this, but I guess it made sense since everyone else's instructor gave them difference instructions when jumping out of the plane. It was awesome, but I was so discombobulated at first and didn't know what direction I was going. Here is the back-flip mid-flip:

So then we were free falling for about 60 seconds which honestly feels much longer than that. We were going about 120 miles per hour, it was insane! This is the camera guys view (he was free falling on his back facing us most of the time) when we first jumped out of the plane.

We were so close to our camera guy that I was literally giving him high-fives throughout the jump (FYI extremely difficult to high-five when going that fast).

Although Mr. Tandem Man looks like he's going to throw up, I really don't think that was the case. I think he's trying to pop his ears. The only downside to skydiving, your ears hurting! Changing altidude that fast is really hard on them. Mine were hurting well into the day.

Haha I'm SO HAPPY in all of these photos :)

Pulling the shoot. This obviously took me by surprise! My face is priceless. It was such a relief at this point because I knew the worst thing that could happen was a few broken bones in landing.

Once the parachute was pulled, we had a good amount of time lingering in the sky enjoying the gorgeous view and having some nice conversation. It was then that he told me about our landing plans. Before we even got to the plane I was nervous about landing because we witnessed a bad one. Eventually, an ambulance and fire truck came to take the jumper away. He was a single "accuracy" jumper and they are known to get a little crazy. He was going in SO FAST which freaked me out. I didn't see any tandem jumpers landing so I thought that's how fast we'd go in, scary!

Here is our landing. We both put our feet up and slid into the grass, landing in a sitting position. Completely safe and painless!

Reliving this event through pictures is exhilarating. I still can't believe I did it. It went by so quickly that it doesn't even seem real. It's definitely leaving me wanting some more adventure in my life. But what gets crazier than this?! I think in my lifetime I'm definitely going to go skydiving again.

I do recommend the Parachute Center in Lodi. It was a cool atmosphere and everyone there was really friendly and supportive.

And I can't end without showing you a couple of the best pictures ever (forgive me Madeline):