Don’t tell my mom

This morning, waking up early to finish up yesterday’s blog post, I geared up to drive about five hours to go SKY DIVING.

At around 4pm I was all geared up and ready to willingly jump out of a plane towards this beautiful earth.

This is definitely the craziest thing I’ve ever done and probably will ever do.

I went to a place in Gananoque, Ontario: home of the 1000 Islands. Farmland all around; there were about twenty cows grazing in a field about 20 meters away from the skydiving place.

I arrived pretty early because I had made great time coming from Quebec City, so I got all registered and everything, settled in, had a bite to eat (aka stuffed chips into my mouth), had some water, and then sat outside to watch other people fall from the sky.

Seeing them up there… they look like dots in the sky and then all of a sudden they’re landing right next to you. It’s surreal! Well, every part of this was surreal — seeing people dive and diving myself.

I was surprisingly calm; the lady at the front desk was surprised that it was my first jump!

I mean, it’s not like I was going to just fall out of the sky. I had a professional strapped on to my back; I was in great hands.

It also helped that everyone who came down before me had a huge smile on their face and kept saying “that was awesome!” over and over (which is what I ended up doing too).

Finally, it was my turn! They took forEVER to get everything ready, because I was one of only two guest jumpers, so they were kind of trying to wait to see if anyone else showed up to take a full load (in the plane). No one else showed up so FINALLY a bunch of the regular jumpers there decided to come along.

I got the whole spiel from my instructor, Dean, telling me what to do and when. It was so crazy and so exciting.

Then we all boarded the plane! Super tight quarters… everyone was straddling each other — it got super friendly super quick.

Then, one by one, they jumped out — then IT WAS MY TURN.

It was so surreal, I barely even remember it. I got into position, attempted to smile, and then JUMPED.

The initial free fall was really cool, but the air is so thin up there and you’re moving so quickly that it’s really hard to take a deep breath, which got in my head a little bit. I tried to remind myself it’d be over soon, and as soon as Dean brought up the parachute it was all perfect. Then we were just gliding and gliding over what looked like toys.

It seriously looked like I could pick up the farm houses and cars (including cute Shamanda who I could see from the sky) and put them in a dollhouse or something. It was so magical.

After marveling at the sights and getting to steer the rig a bit (which is SO difficult and definitely told me that I have to hit up the gym and lift some weights), we landed! It was super smooth.

Everyone was SO sweet!!! I had such an amazing experience.

I’m probably never doing that again, but I’m so happy I did it and will NEVER forget it!

P.S. My two fave photos from the jump: