This had been one of the longest wait for me. It was last year that my room-mate came back home and described the sky dive that he had done. That fueled my desire to take the leap from 13000 feet above the air. Of-course that was with the help of an instructor, but still I was waiting to feel the free fall. It was a pretty long wait at the academy where the tandem jump takes place. The wait was adorned with the usual pre-jump banter among the five of us who had gone for the jump. Finally the respective instructors came to the preparation area and finally we were ready to head for the sky.
The flight up was more frightening as compared to the thought of plunging into the open sky 13000 feet above the ground. It was this rickety old plane which was held together by tapes with all kinds of wires hanging out from the ceiling. Certainly not a very comforting sight while going up for a sky dive. Nevertheless after an eternity of loud brain damaging engine noise, I was pretty sure that we had reached the desired altitude. That was when my instructor pointed out that we had reached 7000 feet which was just half the way up.
Finally the long awaited moment had arrived. At 13000 feet above the ground the door was opened and the jumpers were going overboard one after the other. The first thing that I can remember when the door was opened, was a jumper being thrown out by two instructors. It was a pretty nasty sight when you see a guy being thrown off ( literally ). Well after this point everything that happened was like a blur. I had no idea when it was my turn to jump, ( obviously with the instructor attached to my back ). The last thing that I remember before jumping was the instructor firing away instructions into my ear. I am pretty sure they were pretty simple to follow as I had no idea what I was doing once we jumped off.
The
jump by itself was the ultimate zenith of adrenaline pumping in me. It was almost a whole minute of free fall. For a minute I really felt that I could fly. As they say all good things come to an end, the free fall was over as soon as it had started. The instructor pulled the parachute and we glided down to solid ground ( though landing on my rear end was not that cool ). The instructor was actually telling that we would do a standing skate landing, which did sound pretty amazing. But it was not the case to be. I really wish that the fall would have lasted for a bit more longer. I am hoping that the next jump would be from 16000 feet.
P.S- Had this post as a draft for a really really long time. Just managed to stitch some words together to get this post published.
