Curious Namowal won.Curious Namowal: Let's try skydiving.Cautious Namowal: Have you lost your mind!?Curious Namowal: C'mon! It'll be the craziest thing!Cautious Namowal: You don't like to jump off the high diving board and now you want to jump out of an airplane? You know that can potentially end very badly.Curious Namowal: We'll do the kind we're we're strapped to an instructor. He'll know what he's doing. And you know they carry a second parachute in case the first one fails, right.Cautious Namowal: Yes. And I know the term "double canopy failure" means chute number two doesn't open. Spatula City!
So there I was, strapped to an instructor in a roaring Cessna. There's something counter-intuitive about swinging your feet over the doorway edge of a plane that high. The wheel spoke hung nearby, pointing to the ground below.
"Put your head back," the instructor said.
Good, I thought, because then I won't see what happens next.
We swung back and leaned forward...
Whoooosh! The "Oh $#!!! you're falling!" sensation kicked in so hard that I screamed.
Then the falling sensation stopped. The chute hadn't opened yet, but I suppose we'd reached terminal velocity. Since we weren't gaining speed, the "you're falling" detector in my head decided I wasn't falling and turned off the danger sensation. Now I was "floating" in a strong wind. Patches of green and brown farmland spread below. Clouds hung in the distance. This was bizarre. Crazy. Cool!
Curious Namowal: Holy Crap! We did it!Cautious Namowal: Not so fast, Cannonball. Let's see how well this parachute works.
Something tugged me upward. I looked up as the blue and gray chute plopped open. Now we hung there, floating down as the ground slowly grew closer. It was a live action session of Google Earth, but more fun.
It was over too soon.
I could babble on and on about it. Instead, here's the video.
Wanna come with me if I do it again?
