Skydiving

Friday, June 2nd. 2006.
It was a windy day at Taupo airport, just outside of Taupo city, New Zealand. Yes, I (Dale) went skydiving for my first time. The operation was Taupo Tandem Skydiving (TTS). Basically, they give you a dive jumpsuit, a harness, skydiving cap, and gloves (it gets quite cold up there!). They have you watch a video and when your Tandem Master is ready for you, the two of you head towards the sleek, single engine, bottom wing skydiving plane that is idling in the runway.

My Tandem Master was Des Ewing, an older fellow about my size and build with about twenty years of skydiving experience. He sat behind me in the plane and during the flight he informed me of all relevant information about jumping and diving etiquette. It took us about half an hour to climb to our jump altitude of 15,000 feet.

Up until this time, I had not been nervous or worried at all. I was quite excited because, hey, we don’t all get the opportunity to just jump out of a plane. But I’ll say one thing, when that door slid open and the cold wind rushed by with earth looming 15,000 feet below, I was a little more than excited. Des edged us to the doorway and I sat there looking down. I looked back for the plane exit photo and then, see ya!

We plunged headlong into open air, the plane above me quickly disappearing. After a few inversions we leveled off, back to the sky, and we were gracefully, if not quite rapidly, freefalling! I must say, as you first jump off the plane your body wants to react to that fact that you are tumbling helplessly 15,000 feet above the ground. But Des said that skydiving was definitely NOT like a rugby game in that, you don’t have to be physical. His advice was to relax and not fight the feeling of falling, and since I wasn’t too terribly nervous, I followed his exact advice. And it worked. The first 2-3 seconds (not very long, I know) I tightened up. But after that I immediately relaxed and the very unnatural, thrilling feeling of falling reduced in severity quite a bit and I thoroughly enjoying every bit of my dive, I would do it again in a heartbeat.