Skydiving!

For Rusty’s 30th birthday I gave him gift certificates for Skydiving. Read his skydiving post here.  Due to a fun and crazy summer, this weekend was the first chance we had to go. And through a weird stroke of luck, Carlie was here to watch the kids for us.  So, Rusty and I drove to the Boulder airport, and expected a big training session before we got on the plane.  But nope—they just strapped us in our harnesses, gave us a few little instructions, and we were off to the plane.  And talk about a TINY plane.  There was hardly enough room for the 4 of us in the back.  The view of the Rocky Mountains from the plane was incredible. All too soon it was time to jump.  It was “ladies first,” so my instructor, Daryl, pushed us to the door of the plane, and suddenly I was hanging out the door at 13,000 feet, with my feet tucked up under the plane.  This is when I started to freak out a little.  With a “Ready, Set, ARCH” we were free falling.  It was AMAZING.  The wind blowing in your face, and falling toward the earth at 125 MPH.  Surprisingly, it is not really scary at all.  Roller Coasters make my stomach drop more than this did.  After falling about 5,000 feet in about 45 seconds, Daryl pulled the parachute and we were floating.  He said, “look, look” and Rusty and his instructor, Brian fell right past us and we watched their chute deploy.  We did a few fun spins with the parachute, and then watched as the ground came up to meet us.  I picked up my feet like Daryl told me to, and we skidded across the ground on our bums (which didn’t hurt me, but probably hurt Daryl).  Rusty and Brian landed on their feet.  We were a bit shaky when we stood up, and totally exhilarated.  We both immediately said, “AGAIN!” It was an amazing, beautiful, incredible experience and everyone should try it!