It's A Trustfall Baby!

What a beautiful adventure! Such a blessing to be able to experience this skydiving adventure with my son.  I'm SO grateful.

There was a rain delay, the day we jumped, but it made for time to sit and be present and to savor the experience, all of it, anticipation and everything.

And although there was plenty of euphoria, and adrenaline and the like, overall the whole experience was much more sobering than I had imagined.

There were clouds after the rain, lots of clouds.  Sam, my son's jump was before mine.  We went in different groups.  His skies were clearer and all went as planned and they landed in the appropriate field near the airport runway.

It was cloudier by the time my flight took off.  I had the same instructor tandem jumping with me, keeping me safe and on my toes.  I felt confident.

The flight itself was an experience, for the views and for the miracle of getting 4 passengers in that little plane.  We saw the farms I have seen a hundred times growing up, but only as we drove by.  We had the bird's-eye view that day and it was beautiful! 

Then the clouds came in, they were beautiful too, but may have caused our pilot to get a little off center of the normal drop zone, but not enough to keep us from jumping.  

I can't say that I was scared, a few butterflies, may, but just extremely present.  When the time came, I hooked up to my instructor, we took the position to prepare for jump, then we took the position to take the step...no going back.  

I took a deep breath and completely relaxed into the jump, safely attached to my instructor, it was truly a trust fall... and I LOVED IT!! I absolutely loved the free fall.  It felt so liberating and I just soaked it in as much as I could, the whole 30 seconds of it.

Then he pulled the rip cord and the parachute opened, gratefully, but with a lot more force than I was expecting.  I felt like I was to pass out for a minute, I don't know, maybe I even did briefly, like the time my airbag deployed when I rear-ended and stationary pickup truck at 40 miles an hour.

I didn't pass out, but after free falling at 130 MPH, my body felt weak and heavy.  I kept breathing and relaxing as much as I could as my instructor guided us down.  We were in a dense cloud, how cool is that, but we couldn't see anything, like where we were going to land, and we were spinning and I was getting dizzy and a bit nauseous.

We finally came out of the cloud and we a good way off target of the landing spot.  My instructor said that this was only the second time in his hundreds of skydives that this had happened...go figure, lucky me.  I'm always getting a wonderful story out of my life!

Fortunately, we made it over the thicket of trees dividing two farm fields and were able to land in the one closest to the airport although still a bit away from the target landing zone.  And also, fortunately, we were coming in for our landing ina field of 6 inch wheat stubble and not a field of 4 ft. tall corn.  

I saw the ground approaching and I was grateful that this would be a safe and successful experience and I didn't want to mess up the landing by tensing up or anything so I closed my eyes and when my instructor told me to lift my legs for landing I did so, and according to my sister-in-law who had come to the airport to watch our jump, we landed like butter.  She video taped it so I could witness it myself.

I also decided to buy the photo and video package as part of my experience and I will say, I am very glad that I did.  It helps me remember the whole experience, which took less time than writing this blog post.  Crazy but true.

I'll share the video with you here.  I hope it inspires you to do whatever makes you feel brave, whatever makes you feel grateful, whatever makes you feel strong.

Life is a trustfall Baby! Dare to take it!