One more thing completed.

“Are you comfortable?” he asks

What do you mean am I comfortable? I am 11,000 feet in the air in a flying gas tank, attached so close to a man that I have know for less than 30 minutes that I can feel his heart beat and my eyelashes are so long that they are smashed up against the goggles that it makes blinking impossible. Other than that I am extremely comfortable.

“Yep, I am great. Let’s get this show started.” I replied

“Okay, right foot. Good. Left foot. Good.”

“So you come here often?” I totally interrupt his scripted routine.

After a brief laugh, for time was essential, he continued. “Ready.....Set.....Bellybutton, GO!”

Off the ledge of the plane we went falling at a rate of about a mile a minute. After turning, I met the camera man who just happened to be right in my face. “Morning sunshine”, was my thought, but falling that quickly didn’t allow for any sarcastic remarks. I made the mistake of laughing and caught a mouthful of air and ended up having a coughing fit.

At that moment our parachute opened and I went from falling in a horizontal position to floating vertically towards the quickly approaching ground. He placed my hands into the ropes that controlled where the our direction and speed, took his hands out and promptly informed me that I seemed to be under control so he was going to take a nap and I was in charge of landing. I said okay but I wouldn’t be responsible for any damage that he might sustain during the landing due to his laziness.

As I sat on the ground (for they made us land on our bottoms), a quick assessment calculated in my brain. It was a great experience, but really didn’t thrill me all that much. I would rather scuba dive over skydive hands down. I made the mistake of telling my skydiving team that when they asked if I would ever do it again. They were sorely disappointed, but I asked and none of them had ever been scuba diving, so I told them that I had the most educated opinion.

I thought a lot about why this activity that I have wanted to do for so long was not as thrilling as I dreamed it would be. The reasons were many, but the biggest ones were that I was not at all scared or even got a butterfly of excitement in my tummy the entire time and for the money that I paid there wasn’t enough time to enjoy (well for example, I pay $70 to scuba dive which includes all my equipment and 2 dives, each dive lasting around 40-45 minutes. The skydive cost $250 which included equipment, but only lasted between 3-4 minutes).

So check off the skydive excursion on my list of things to do before I die, but I have decided that it will probably be an adventure that I don’t have to do more than once.