Hey, Scott from Albany, NY. I just turned 30 and as a gift, my girlfriend took me skydiving. My first jump was on Saturday; a tandem at Mohawk Valley Skydiving, and what an incredible experience it was. Such a fluctuation of emotions. I was extremely anxious, borderline petrified, on the ride up, yet absolutely thrilled on the way down. The jump itself was less than perfect, that's for sure. The jump altitude was 10,000 ft, and we were about 1 mile West of the DZ. While exiting, my hands were tightly grasping the door; so much so that my tandem partner had to grab my arms and muscle them to my chest :) Just after exit, we tumbled forward a couple of times due to my poor arch, but lucky he was able to put his right leg in front of my legs to bring them back, which worked. After that he threw the drogue and we settled into a nice smooth freefall from that point on. At 5,000 ft, I couldn't find the ripcord (how, I don't know), so he pulled it. Chute seemed to have deployed smoothly, and we had a great ride down. We came in with our legs up and landed very smooth. The overall experience was so overwhelming, that initially I wasn't sure that I would ever do it again. However, this changed drastically over the next few hours and days, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Obsessing about it even, which seems to be a common aftereffect. I've been turning to every resource available to learn as much as possible about skydiving, and I can't wait to jump again. I'm so glad that I stumbled onto this site with a community that has so much combined knowledge and experience. I have so much to learn from everyone. I'm still uncertain whether I'll be making another tandem jump next or just go on to AFF. I was pretty tense during freefall, so it seems that another tandem might help me feel a little more relaxed. And I've got to admit that my flips out of the door on the first tandem jump have got me pretty anxious about going solo. Seems that most people recommend to just go on to AFF instead of doing another tandem though. Regardless of which I choose next, I'll eventually be enrolling in AFF training. A Mohawk Valley Skydiving AFF instructor went up for a fun jump during my tandem and helped calm me down on the way up, and he seemed very knowledgeable. When I finally have the cash to take the AFF training, I'll consider doing it there. Until then, I'll probably stop by the DZ occasionally and talk to the instructors and learn as much as I can from them. Anyway, just wanted say hello and to introduce myself. Scott
