Wednesday, April 25, 2012

We jumped out of the sky

Yep.  We did.  There is somewhat of a backstory to this, mostly having to do with just how terrible of a wife I am . . . Two years ago Nick graduated from Willamette University with his MBA.  I was extremely proud of him, but also very nervous about the whole job situation.  When Nick graduated, I was trying to think of a graduation gift, and my favorite presents are one in which an activity is involved.  And I knew that it had to be more than something like a movie gift card (although I did think about this and then realized that I am extremely lame and cheap).  So I thought of dum dum dum, Sky diving!  I thought it would be an awesome gift.  But turns out sky diving costs a fair amount of money . . . which, we did not have.  So for my graduation present to Nick, I wrote him a card and told him that I would take him sky diving as his present, but that I wasn't going to do it until he got a job.  I am an awesome wife I know.
Now, two years later, thanks to Andrea Croskey's birthday and her adventurous ways, I finally delivered on my graduation gift to Nick (Please also note that I included myself on this gift since I am pretty selfish).   So last Saturday, we went sky diving.  Stuff has been pretty crazy, so I really didn't even think about the fact that I was jumping out of a plane until we walked into the office to sign the papers.  And then I got nervous.  But mostly I was nervous out of anticipation.  I just knew that I was going to pee my pants or else just completely freeze up, trying to push my body out of a plan 13,000 feet in the air.  I was scared, waiting for the nerves to come. 
After a few hours of signing like hundreds of waivers, mostly which warned me, "You might die;" and doing some intensive training, which included a five minute warning of, "Don't walk out to the plane by yourself" and that's all; I got on the plane with Nick, Julia, and a few other crazies.  The closer I got to it, the less scared I was.  I would think, knowing myself, that I would be fa-reaking out about the fact that we flew by a commercial airplane right as we reached the spot to jump.  But nope.  I sort of thought to myself, "Eh, what the hell."  I was the first to jump out of Nick and Julia and I.  And it was awesome.
It was nothing like I thought it would be.  Mostly what I experienced was crazy cold pressure on my face as I dropped 9,000 feet in the air.  It's not the typical roller coaster stomach dropping experience.  Just like you're getting blown through a really cold wind tunnel.  At 4,000 feet, the parachute popped up and it was easy sailing.  I got to "drive" the parachute a bit and I'm pretty sure my instructor was annoyed with me because I was trying to go in circles as fast as possible.  But honestly, I just kept thinking, wow, this is really peaceful.
Overall though, it was a rush.  I'm so glad I got Nick such a great graduation present two years ago. And truthfully, I am so proud of Nick for graduating, I love him so much and I am so glad we finally got to experience this together.




3 comments:

Kelly Munns said...

you rock. and you look like a rockstar in your pics.

Carly said...

I don't think I could get myself to do it. I am too afraid of heights, but it looks awesome.

brett said...

Who took the great pics?