Skydiving

July has been pretty busy. I finished my job at Tesco and got to spend some time at home in between. The weather wasn't as hoped but we managed to head out to the river and for lunch and a few walks. One of the main reasons for going home was Dad's 70th birthday. And instead of doing something normal, he wanted to go skydiving. So we all went.

Signing in.

Mom was not going to go up in a plane, let alone jump out of one! So jumping, it was myself, my dad, my sister, brother-in-law and one of dad's friends who was also 70th year. We were split in runs, so Dad and I went first, Craig and Uncle Jim second, and Kerry was on the third flight. We all decided to have the video packages (who knew if we were going to do this again?).

On the way up.

Dad jumped first

He's off.

Then my turn.

It was an experience.

Oddly I wasn't nervous jumping (my fitbit says my heart rate got up to a massive 90 bpm) - maybe because I was firmly attached to someone who knew what they were doing. We did free-fall for about 45 seconds and were falling at about 120 mph, hence the wonderful face lift photos. :)

When he pulled the shoot, that hurt. I had straps around the top of my legs, my shoulders and across the chest, and damn the legs straps hurt. It was very pretty coming down but I totally screwed the landing. You are supposed to lift your legs up and land on your butt. But thanks to the straps my legs were numb and didn't go up. So I landed on my knees. I had some impressive bruises for the next few weeks. Though not as bad as my brother-in-law who go a huge bruise on his thigh from the straps.

Dad was glad he did it, but like me, not over-keen on doing it again.

After the skydiving, we all went back to Kerry and Craig's house for dinner. She had done some decorating and got a cake for dad. He was very happy with it all.

Happy with the giant balloons.

The awesome cake.

Dad was very happy with his cake and apparently it was a very good red velvet. He had a great time. So did I, though it took quite some time to get over the bruises and aches. 

Indoor skydiving

A few weeks ago I went indoor skydiving and I have finally got a hold of some of the photos from one of the teachers. (I am waiting for a copy of the DVD of the AirKix official photos.)
First you have a briefing on the basics which consists of watching a DVD. Then a guy comes in and explains in more detail the position you need to be in, why, and what will happen if you don't (which is mostly you crashing to the floor if you get it wrong!). There is a trolley thing which you can jump on to practice the position. And I mean jump on! The trolley is too high for the normal person to get on gracefully! The group I was in contained 8 students, one of the teachers and a random guy. The random guy went first but no one from our group wanted to get up and give it a go after seeing the guy attempt to gracefully get onto the trolley so I went first. After they saw me making an idiot of myself the rest followed.
After that we get dressed up in our very trendy gear to do the dive. (And yes, I know I look like an idiot!) I really wanted one of the helmets with the monkey or Shrek on the top. :-(

My AirKix group

We got ear plugs (as the fans are obviously really loud) and safety glasses which meant I could not wear my glasses. Plus I didn't want to lose them mid-flight. However, getting from the kit out area to the tunnel as interesting. Especially as I had to lead because the kids were wimping out.
The "flight" is done in basically a huge wind turbine. There is a massive grate on which the instructor stands. The corridor where the others wait for their turn is sealed to by huge solid doors. Again no one wanted to go first so I did. When it is your turn, you stand at the door, hold your arms against your chest and fall forward. The sensation is odd at first. The instructor holds you around the waist while you get the hang of it. There are a series of hand signals (similar to those for scuba diving) to tell you to hold still, straighten your legs, bend your legs, etc. Then he lets you go. And you fly!

"Straighten you legs"

Flying!

You fly about 3-4m high which doesn't sound like a lot but the instructor is standing on a wire mesh, below which are huge fans. It's a little unnerving. Luckily without glass, it's not so bad. However, looking down causes you to move down! Now that is unnerving. We had 2 flights of one minute each. While you are waiting for the second flight, there is a screen with a rerun of your flight so you see how well you did.

The whole thing was really amazing and now I really want to do a real skydive! :-)

Top gun moment!