Freefalling

Friday morning when my boss asked me if I had any big plans for this weekend, my answer was a sad little "no." That is, unless you consider running errands and cleaning the house "big" plans. Which I don't. So when a coworker (P) came up to me right before lunch and said he had two questions for me, I thought nothing of it and figured it would be about benefits or some other HR thing. Instead, this is what he asked me:

Question #1: How much do you weigh?
Um.....

Question #2: Do you want to go skydiving tomorrow?
Um.....

I sent a text to Rusty to ask him if he thought I should do it. Something about potentially jumping to your death seems to me like a topic that should be discussed with your spouse first. His response? "Hell yeah!" And who am I to disagree with my husband? I told P I would go because I've been itching to skydive again, particularly in better weather than my first jump.

But that still didn't explain the need for my coworker to know how much I weighed. Not that I'm embarrassed about it, it was just a weird question. The diving place needs to know so they use the right equipment and pair you up with the proper tandem instructor. So unless P was a secret pro-skydiver and the plan was to jump tandem with him, I wasn't seeing the connection.

Apparently, he's a pilot! He offered to fly me, and two other guys I work with up to Lodi so that he could do his first jump. P had gotten his hands on a small, 4-passenger Cessna 172 for our trip and weight is a major factor in whether or not the plane will leave the ground and stay in the sky for the duration. Kind of a critical detail. Luckily, I was well below what they needed my weight to be, so I was in!

So bright and early yesterday morning, I met up with the guys at the Reid Hill Airport in San Jose and we took off for Lodi. Can I just say, flying in such a little plane was something I was a little nervous about, but all my fears were laid to rest. This was the smoothest flight I have ever taken in my life. And having a 360° view of the mountains and valley from about 5500 ft was INCREDIBLE!

About 35-40 minutes later we made it to the airport where skydiving takes place. Within a half hour of us landing, we were meeting our tandem instructors and getting strapped in to our gear to take off, yet again. I elected to jump with a photographer again so that I could get some better pictures than I did from my first jump when the weather was crappy. Here are a few highlights from my 60 second freefall:

Coming out of the plane we did a backflip into a nosedive.


The photographer reached out and grabbed my hand and we spun around a couple times. (sexy goggles, huh?)

I'm flying!!!!!!!


And just like that, it's over and we're back to solid ground.
And for the third time in as many hours, we were back to our plane, taking off to come home. I was exhausted and ended up with a vicious head cold, which happened last time, too. Something about the air shooting up my nose messes with my sinuses and I sneeze alllll day long. So I spent the rest of the day sleeping and I feel great today. Who knows? Maybe I will go again!

Oh! And to top off an already great weekend with something even better? Rusty comes home tonight after being gone for 11 days! Yippeeeee!!