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Birthday Boy
And what a great teeshirt!18 May 2010 was a special day for Russ! He turned 40!!!!!!!!!!!! And to mark the occasion he jumped out of an aeroplane without a parachute. Luckily his instructor, strapped to his back, DID have a parachute! Trish jumped too and we both had an amazing day.
Skydive Las Vegas looked after us very well. We had a 30 minute stroll in the cool of the morning down to our pick-up point. Then it took the best part of an hour for our transfer to Boulder City airport. On the way we watched a quirky safety instruction video featuring some old boy with a strange beard telling us how it was possible for us to be seriously injured or even die on the jump. Because of this risk we had to sign our lives away and give away our rights to sue the company if anything went wrong. Everyone treated it quite light heartedly and just signed!!!!
Our training at the airport lasted for about 90 seconds. It involved demonstrating that we could make the "banana" position for freefall and that we could bend our knees, hold our feet in the air and point our toes skywards for landing. I guess
that's all we needed to know as our instructors were going to do it all!
We were in the first group to meet our instructors. Russ was with Kriter and Trish was with Joe. Both of them were fantastic. Before we knew it we were in our jump suits and squeezing into the brand new PAC 750XL aircraft which was specially designed for tandem skydiving. The aircraft climbed steadily and suddenly we were at 15,000 feet above sea level, around 13,000 feet above the drop zone! The door opened and the wind rushed in!!
Russ remembers sitting with his feet dangling over the abyss, but not leaving the plane! Before he knew it he was in freefall and unable to breathe. Remembering the instructors' words, he screamed!!! That ensured normal breathing resumed. After about 60 seconds of falling through the air, the main parachute deployed successfully and we spent a further 7 minutes drifting down to terra firma. It was AWESOME!! The only bit which wasn't so great was when Kriter spun the parachute around in the sky! The landing was soft and the jelly-like legs soon returned to normal. Trish didn't really enjoy the freefall section. It
was too cold and too windy. The spinning wasn't much fun either so Joe stopped doing it!! The glide down was wonderful though and the landing much gentler than her solo static-line jump some years ago.
So, an incredible experience. Who knows, maybe one day we'll do it again!!!!!!!!!!!!
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