Code. Design. Explore.

For some reason I wasn’t nervous at all. That is until I signed the rather ridiculous waiver. The form explicitly states that if the parachute mailfunctions, I break my legs, the plane crashes, or I hit powerlines (what!?!) I cannot hold anyone other than myself liable. What a great way to start a jump.

We were one of the first groups to go. We were up waaay early because our jump was scheduled at like 9:30am. One of the Microsoft interns has planned the whole event, so interns would be jumping throughout the day. We were the lucky ones to have such an early jump.

I met my instructor and got suited up. He was a cool guy, but I think Captain America, Yeming’s instructor, had an instructor on a completely different level. I can’t even formulate words to capture he’s behavior, so just take my word for it.

My instructor gave me a quick crash course (no pun intended) on how to prepare my body for the jump then maintain my position in the air. When you are going 120mph even the slightly angle shift in a body part could completely throw off your ride. Think about it, when you are driving in the car with your hand out of the window and change its angle your hand flies up or down (depending on the angle). It’s like that with the small additional variable of 13,000 feet above sea level. When I said the course was quick I wasn’t kidding, after about 10 or 15 minutes we were “ready to jump”.

It was time. We started walking towards the small plane that would take us up and drop us off. To intensify my jump as much as humanly possible I figured I would jump first. There is more excitement in the unknown, and if I saw someone take the plunge before I did, it was take some of the adrenaline out of the dive. Since I was the first to jump, I was the last to load. This meant that I was put on the edge of the door, or I should say where the door should be. We had it closed during take off, but once we hit about 7,000 feet we opened it up. That’s right, I wasn’t completely secured to my instructor, I was sitting an inch from the door, and it was wide open. I looked down and out hoping not to get sucked out of the plane. It was breathtaking. Then before I knew it we hit our target altitude. It was time to jump.

I crossed my hands and tucked my head back. I held on to the bar for a brief second before my body was completely out of the plane. We couned back from 3 and my instructor pushed us off the plane tumbling in the air a few times before stablizing.

I tried breathing through my mouth, but was struggling. You are supposed to smile to keep your face mucles tight while breathing out of your nose. For the first 20 seconds I had forgotten this. I contend that it was due to the 10 minutes crash course. I started breathing correctly, but at this point we only had another 30 seconds of freefall. I took those moments to absorb the mountains in the distance. We reached the altitude to pull the shoot, so we pulled it. Next thing you know I am flying up in the air again (because of the shoot). Silence. I actually heard what silence sounds like, and it is peaceful. You feel like you are the only one in the world at that moment.

I can’t wait to do it again! Next time it will be AFF (Advanced free fall).