Skydiving Adventure! (John's attempt to fly...)

I've always been fascinated with flying. As a child I loved Superman, cause he could fly. I remember I used to go outside to the park across the street at our old house in Aptos, and try to fly. I was convinced that if I just believed hard enough, and jumped high enough, I might be able to start flying like superman. I also contemplated jumping off of tall places with an umbrella, thinking I'd float safely down. Fortunately, the highest thing I tried doing that on was the bunk bed. I didn't float at all. To this day I still have dreams where I can fly. In fact I fly frequently in my dreams. One of the reasons I enjoy SCUBA diving is because I get to "fly" underwater. It's flight in slow motion. So as you can imagine, I've always thought skydiving would be an exciting thing to try. And I've finally done it! Here are some pictures to showcase my exhilarating experience:

Here I am receiving some pre-flight instruction. I had been trying to finish eating a sandwich prior to this, and I think my instructor was a little nervous that I was going to throw up during the jump, with a fully belly. :)

Here I am anticipating hurtling myself from an airplane! I was actually at the head of the line, which meant I was the first to exit the plane. I didn't get watch anyone else do it first to get an idea of what to expect.

But that didn't bother me too much as you can tell from my calm facial expression.

WOOHOO! I'm flying!!

I didn't expect to have so much trouble breathing in free fall, but I guess 110 mph wind will do that to you. I had to force myself to breathe, so that explains some of my awkward expressions.

I love how the wind is pushing my skin all over.

Our parachute is being deployed...

Everything slows down and I realize how much my ears had been pressurizing, my SCUBA diving training starts kicking in.

This what it looked like when I looked down. You can see the small airport below were we took off, and the grassy field we're landed in.

Here's our smooth and graceful landing.

YAY! I didn't die! I decided to be nice to mom and not tell her about my plan to jump out of a plane until I was safely on the ground. That way the worrying would only last a split second. I think I'll have to try this again! (Pretend you didn't read that mom...)

Here's the video of my jump so you can a better feel for what it was like. The instructor even let me hold the loops that control the parachute for a little while. It was very cool, spinning in circles, and controling which direction on the horizontal plane that you travel in. I think that's as close to flying like superman that I'll get. :)