Skydiving

A few days ago, Seth Wainer sent out an email entitled "Operation Dumbo Drop," encouraging us all to go skydiving with him and some others. At first, I laughed and shrugged off the idea. But then my conscience called up and said, "Ya know Adam, you've always said to yourself that you've wanted to go sky, wait hold on, someone's on call waiting. No, no I do not want to resubscribe to Barely Legal Panda Bears. Yes, I know that I've had a Gold Membership for the past 7 years, but those were tough times, things were different then. I'm reformed now, I find that type of stuff sick and degrading. Oh, it's only $14.99 for a 3 year plan. Well then, sure, I guess so. Sorry Adam, that was my stockbroker, very important stuff. Anyway, you don't know the next time you'll get an opportunity to go skydiving, so you should go for it,”

And so, I decided to join in, and just not tell my parents about it, since I knew they wouldn’t approve, and probably stop paying for college (which my mom had said before, specifically about skydiving).

After a pretty crappy night of sleep (I guess I was a tad nervous/apprehensive), I woke up at 6:45 (AM!!) on Friday morning, and half slept, and half listened to Seth and Dave do Ali G impressions for 2 1/2 hours, all the way down to Freefall Adventures in Williamstown, NJ.

When we got there, we all had to sign these 5 page waivers that basically said, “If you die for any reason whatsoever, even because your instructor was drunk and packed a six-pack instead of a parachute, you cannot sue us.” So that was fun, especially when it got to the part about who to contact in case of an emergency. I figured, screw it, I’ll probably tell my parents about this anyway, so I might as well put them down…as opposed to Marc who put down Rachel Zisser, who would then have to tell his parents that he broke his neck/died.

And so, after a long wait, and a 20 minute prep, we were off.

(I have a video and a dvd of the whole thing, if you want to see it, but I’ve also posted some pictures here (account: ang2108@columbia.edu, password:ang2108), as well as including a few in this blog.)

The plane ride up was about 15 minutes, to get to 13,500 ft (which we later found out is the highest you can go without oxygen). I actually was not too nervous once we got in the plane (except for when my instructor was fiddling with one of the windows, and it just popped out—quality aeronautical engineering there). Once it was our turn to jump, I took one final look down, and we were off.





We freefell for 60 seconds, reaching a terminal velocity of 120 mph. It was pretty intense, and it seemed to go by in about 20 seconds.



At 5000 feet, we pulled the rip-cord, and then I got an awesome 5 minute trip, as we watched the world below us, and did cool stuff, like flying through a cloud (you actually felt the coldness and dampness) and then doing some crazy spirals before we landed. I stuck my landing perfectly (well, technically, I fell over on my face, since I completely misjudged where the ground was, due to my complete lack of depth-perception).

I called my parents on the way home, and told them what I did. My mom was kind of pissed, but all in all wasn’t too mad, and was glad that I told her about it afterwards. I watched the video back in the dorm, and it was amusing to watch myself, and made me realize that I definitely want to do it again (multiple times) so I’ll actually know what to except, and be able to enjoy it a little bit more, instead of just being overwhelmed. All in all, very very fun day.