I Took a "Flyer"

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dpittman
dpittman Posts: 1 ✭✭
edited October 2023 in All Discussions

All my life, I've been afraid of heights. I don't know why. I didn't have a traumatic fall out of a tree or down a flight of stairs or anything. But when I'm climbing a shaking ladder or within 10 feet of the edge of the Grand Canyon (or any size cliff, no matter how deep or wide), I get that incessant tingling deep down in my belly and my legs start quaking.

Unfortunately, I seem to have passed this gene on to my daughter (my old child, btw). This odd thing is we're both adrenaline junkies and thrill seekers. It's just ... heights. As she was preparing to go away to college, I wanted to find some way to encourage her to take chances so she could discover for herself what she's capable of. What I landed upon was - skydiving.

Yup, I signed both of us up to jump out of a perfectly good airplane from 13,000 feet in the air, with nothing but the trust in a few square yards of fabric and two Aussies who were spending their summer in Chicago and we had met just 15 minutes before our leap.

When the time came for us to unclip from the line in the plane and step to the door, my daughter's clip wouldn't detach. Her "jumper" was working frantically to unhook it because our drop zone was slipping away, and I was freaking out that he was going to make a mistake that would cause their chute not to open. After a very l-o-n-g few seconds, it released, they stepped forward, and leapt. My "jumper" had me out the door seconds later.

I could see her chute opened, so I was able to relax and enjoy ... THE INCREDIBLY LOUD NOISE OF AIR WHOOSING BY MY EARS AT 'TERMINAL VELOCITY,' which is about 130-150mph. Then ... my guy opened our chute and ... near silence! Exhilarating! We slowly drifted back to earth while my eyes struggled to take in the incredible views all around me.

After we landed, my daughter rushed over to me, huge smile on her face, and we shared a deep, tight hug and laugh over her pre-flight encounter.

Now, we're planning our next jump. I still get that shaky tingling feeling around heights, but the fear is less.

Sometimes, you just have to make the damn leap!

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