It was my 40th birthday, 2012. The world didn't end because of the Mayan calendar thing that in fact, never predicted the end of the world at all. So that's probably a good thing.
Being a milestone birthday, it seemed like a fine idea to get onboard a tiny airplane and jump out of it. It may not have been such a good idea after all, but I went into it with plenty of unearned optimism.
The place I went has you do your first jump strapped to a dive master. This way, you don't have to go through any training, you just jump and freefall. They toss out a tiny chute early on to stabilize you.
The dive master said, "Your fall will take about a minute, but it'll either feel like a few seconds or forever. For me it was forever. Here's a bit of video of me plummeting to the earth.
Human terminal velocity is 120mph. When the chute pops, you slow down to about 18mph really quickly, pulling 3G's.
Then, if your dive master guy thinks it'll be fun, he'll spin you in circles until you say, "Dude, I'm getting motion sick."
I sort of crashed on their couch while waiting for them to edit my video and transfer all the pictures to a thumb drive. It was taking quite a while, so I did make a fast trip out to the car to get my phone. When my friend needed to go to the car a little later, I told him, "The car is now parked at the right end of that row instead of the left end." and tossed him the keys.
"Oh? Why'd you move it?" he asked.
"I like the new spot better. It has the added benefit of not having a pile of puke beside it." I replied, my face still green.
I suffered from motion sickness that entire day. It was my birthday, so Heather took me out to dinner. Except food didn't sound good. So she went into Q'doba, and I stayed in the car with the seat tilted all the way back so I could nap. That's a romantic birthday dinner right there.
Then, to complete the magical evening, we went to the movie theater and saw Skyfall, the James Bond film.
Here's the kicker: I was motion sick the whole next day too. Any time I thought back to the spiraling, I would get dizzy and nauseated. I've never had wooziness persist through a night's sleep before. So for me, skydiving is a non-repeatable offense. It was amazing, and something everyone should
do once, just for the good story of it.
