CaptaindeJong

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  1. Can't beat $5 jumps at Lodi Parachute Center in California. Not sure about Wifi but you're basically in south Sacramento which is a big city. Oh and it's $15 to go to altitude and the Super Otter gets there pretty quick. Pack jobs are $5 if you're lazy
  2. Precisely! I wasn't worried about spinning out of control which probably would have contributed to my fear.
  3. My fourth jump was when the fear started to subside. I had jumped three times and every time I pitched my pilot chute, the canopy came out and I didn't die so I had past experiences to tell me that there's a chance I would be okay. The second major turning point was when I learned to pack my chute. After my first jump on my own unsupervised pack job, I was fearless. I say fearless but I should state that there's always a very small sense of fear on every jump, but in my opinion, a healthy amount.
  4. I feel that telling my story of how I made it to my first jump needs to be written down, I think it can help others who are thinking of jumping on their own rather than a tandem. I should start way back, when I first even thought about skydiving... It was sometime around 2014 when a close friend of mine called me to tell me he got a job at a place called iFly, I had never heard of it. I eventually visited him at his work and flew in the indoor skydiving tunnel. Being a beginner in the tunnel is a lesson in humility, everyone is watching you suck and trust me, you'll suck, especially compared to the instructors who are flying head down. I won't make this a story about the tunnel but I want the reader to note that I had roughly 2.5 hours in the tunnel before going skydiving. When I travel, I don't do guided tours. When I need something fixed, I read about it and fix it myself. And when I skydive, I don't go tandem. This is my personality, some of you may be able to relate. So after flying in the tunnel and meeting a few of the skydivers, I was set on jumping on my own. But when was I going to do it? I put it off. For a year. Then I'd think how much I should just go do it. I put it off. Another year. It was early 2016 when I was talking to my friend Max about my desire, Max had never been skydiving either, I told him how I didn't want to go tandem. He said solo (AFF) was the only way he would go. I couldn't believe it, another daredevil like myself! I asked him if I could book two spots of an AFF class for the two of us, he agreed. If it wasn't for Max as a motivational source, I may have never gone. I booked online that night and I remember vividly the feeling of seeing the confirmation email in my inbox that read, "Congratulations, you're going skydiving!", holy macaroni salad, I'm going skydiving. My heart sank into my nuts. A couple days later and Max and I were headed to the drop zone. The entire ride up I was in a panic, thinking of hurdling towards my death and how my family would miss me. I thought of all the things I wanted to do in my life like sleep with two chicks at the same time, grow old so I can drive on the wrong side of the road and own a monkey that I treat like a son. All of those dreams would be lost if I just make a small mistake while free falling. I had to counteract those thoughts of terror with positive thoughts. I had done my research on probability and the statistics of dying while skydiving, I remember reading that driving 10,000 miles in a car in one year has an equivalent risk factor to skydiving 20 times in one year. Those aren't terrible odds if you consider how many people are driving versus how many are skydiving. I had to remember that I had a higher risk of dying just driving to the drop zone than jumping from one of the planes. I buckled my seatbelt. Max and I sat in class for five hours. I was so nervous, I kept thinking of the flight and the free fall and the canopy flight down. How would I react if my chute didn't open? Would I know how to pull my reserve? Yes. I knew where the handle was. Yes, there it is. Practice touch, practice touch, practice touch. Apparently my confidence overrode my fear because I stepped into that plane. The ride up was terrifying, my palms were sweaty, I kept thinking of my training and tried to picture the jump. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath but nothing was calming my nerves. Total, full on panic the whole ride up. I'm out of my mind! Now comes the moment of truth, my instructor asks me if I'm ready to skydive and hesitantly I say yes. We're at the door. Time slows down... That door represented something to me, it represented the line between fear and bravery. If I stayed in the plane then I had been defeated and if I crossed the line and went out of the door, I had defeated my fear. It was so loud! The wind sounded like it was moving at a thousand miles an hour! One quick moment in my mind digging around for any last thoughts, have I done everything right so far? Do I even have my parachute on? "OUT, IN, OUT..." There's no grand, stomach churning sensation when you leave the plane, it's just very windy. My first thought was "No god damn way! I'M SKYDIVING!!!" All my training stayed with me, I remembered everything I was taught in class that morning. I landed in the field and saw Max 50 yards away, we had done it. I was boiling over with euphoria. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I could go on for hours about how skydiving has been one of the most incredible, sensational and exhilarating experiences of my life but I'll wait until the next time I get drunk.