Birthday Skydive
We went skydiving for Katsufumi’s birthday yesterday. It was a surprise. He had kind of guessed that that’s what it was, but I played it off like it was too expensive…
(The awesome thing that you can’t see in these pictures is that a 60 year old lady went with us! She happened to be driving by and saw another group of people landing and thought “Hey! I want to do that!” and so she did. So cool)
Anyway, we got there and suited up and started to walk to the plane.
Katsufumi got a picture with his tandem partner…
We had one last kiss…
We got on the plane and I realized that because we had so politely let everyone else on the plane first, it meant that we were going to be the first to jump. At first they said that Katsufumi would be first, but then when they realized that we were together and had only gotten the photographer for him, they suggested it was best that I jump first so the photographer could take pics of me too. Great.
The view from the runway…
And up in the air. They kept opening the door to the plane to get better pictures. This was really scary because in movies when the door to a plane opens, all the people get sucked out…
I was so nervous. Check out the look on my face!
Finally, we leveled off and it was my turn to jump. They opened the door and we waddled over there. I smiled for the camera…
took a look down…
said a prayer…
and bravely jumped…
and flew
and flew
Katsufumi was up next. He also smiled for the camera…
Seemed to regret this idea…
and jumped.
The freefall is the scariest part because it’s then that you’re thinking “What if my parachute doesn’t open?” Beforehand, people were telling me “Oh, it happens so fast, you don’t have time to be scared.” But to me, it felt like a pretty damn long time. Eventually though, the chute did open…and I could relax and check out the view…
Finally, I came down.
I was so happy that I did it and that I was safe on the ground. The next hardest part was waiting around hoping that Katsufumi would also land safely. When he finally did, I ran over to him all happy…but honey was sick!!
He was sick for the rest of the day, but he still bravely smiled for the camera.
It was so fun. I’m so happy that we did it. but I’m not sure that I’d ever need to go again. 