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Any guesses as to what I chose to do to celebrate my birthday?...Take a look at the first picture collage for a few clues.
That’s right, we jumped out of a plane at 12,000 metres and plummeted towards the ground at over 200km/hour!!! I’d been thinking about ways that I wanted to celebrate my birthday and being in the country where extreme activities seem to be everywhere we thought it was only appropriate to “Go big or go home”! Lake Taupo is also one of the cheapest places in the world for a tandem jump as well so all things were working out quite nicely. We woke up in the morning not really expecting the jump to be a go as the skies were quite cloudy, but apparently only heavy winds and rain will cancel jumps. The clouds were actually a positive thing as they gave some perspective in the falling process. Apparently the human mind can’t actually detect depths or heights above 5,000 feet so the cloud cover serves as a nice gauge.
Choosing a skydiving company in
Taupo is like trying to decide on the best contestant in a Miss Universe pageant during the swimsuit portion; in the end I suspect they’d all be great and it doesn’t seem all that different (obviously this is Matt’s metaphor). We finally arrived on our decision out of the five outfitters in Taupo based on the fact that for the same price as all of the others, Skydive Taupo advertised that they’d pick you up in a limo and serve you complimentary champagne or beers afterwards.....they got our vote! In the end, the Limo ended up being in the shop for repairs and they are no longer allowed to serve beer on the premises (the jury’s still out on whether these two events were somehow related to one another) but in lieu of all of this, they did have a “throwback to the neon 90’s, bright pink” airplane to throw ourselves from so we were able to continue on with our day! Bonus!
We arrived to the Taupo Skydiving airport and watched a 5 minute video on what was to come. It was more of a selling feature for you to buy a personalized DVD but it still got
The pink plane
With the snow capped mountains in the background the butterflies going in our stomachs and the excitement and anticipation built of our own jump to come. There were 6 of us jumping and only 4 could fit onto the plane, so Matt and I were left for the second batch. We were given blue one piece suits to put on, a harness, gloves, and a little black hat with plastic glasses to protect our eyes on the freefall. Then we waited. We watched the other four jumpers as they floated back down to the ground, all with big smiles on their faces as they landed. Finally our tandem jumpers gave us the word that it was our turn to board the plane.
Matt writing now... After a few generic pictures for the “before” snaps just in case we changed our minds about purchasing the overpriced picture sets, we stuffed ourselves into the unnecessarily pink plane and began our ascent.
After admitting to our instructors that the inspiration behind our jumping today was Lindsay’s birthday, they quickly interjected with a very appropriate serenade of “Happy Birthday” as the plane climbed.
Nearing 12, 000 ft, our instructors began our last minute briefing which sounded an awful lot like
Before our jump
Do we look nervous or excited? the mother talking from the Charlie Brown cartoons, “maw ma-ma, ma maw” they told us. “Sure, whatever,” we replied. The nice thing about tandem jumping is that you really don’t have to do much besides try and not wet yourself on the way down so the details weren’t all that important anyways. Despite Lindsay now heading into life one year older, I am happy to report that bowel control is still one of her strong suits, thankfully.
They apparently don’t follow the adage of ladies first here, or perhaps I just got into the plane last, but either way not a foot lower than 12, 000 ft the door opened automatically to reveal Lake Taupo surrounded by a mountain clad horizon deep below the cloud line. First you are told to simply edge your bum up to the edge and then you virtually are hanging literally in mid air by nothing more than the straps attaching you to the instructor as you try to take in your surroundings. We were told that most people don’t really ever remember the first 10-20 seconds of their first dive (another attempt at trying to get us to purchase a video, no doubt)
so we both made a mental note to take in as much as we could before possibly taking our first and last plunge! Perhaps it was the 200 km/h winds that you experience when you reach terminal velocity, or perhaps it was the -10 degrees that the wind chill factor adds, or quite possibly it was actually the pristine coloured lake and backdrop of Mt Rupaheau (the peak used as “Mt. Doom” in the Lord of the Ring movies) around the whole Taupo area that adequately took our breaths away! Whatever the case we believe that contrary to what we were told about your first jump, the first 10-20 seconds was very memorable and probably the coolest feeling either of us had ever felt. The first 10-20 seconds of a skydiving freefall can most accurately be described as similar to the feeling you get in the lower part of your stomach when you go at just the perfect speed over a little bump while driving around the countryside, multiplied by about a million!
The best part about falling at 200 km/h is that you can scream as loud as you want and you don’t have to worry about making
the other person deaf because the sound of the wind rushing by your ear drowns out your voice anyways. After a while you stop producing a sound and your mouth completely dries out so it was another reason to properly celebrate with a beer after we landed!
After a 45 second freefall, we were given the agreed upon signal of a few taps to warn us that our chutes were going to be opened shortly and then with the pull of the cord and following a loud wind lapping sound, everything went completely silent. Only off in the distance could we still hear the faint sound of the plane’s engine as we regained our composure and viewed our new surroundings. Our instructors were great in that once both our chutes were deployed, they brought us close to each other and began a circular do-si-do, parachute style as we spiralled around together and exchanged rather excited remarks to one another.
After successfully touching down, we celebrated with a great big hug and posed for a couple “after” shots and ended it all with a beer....is there any other way to properly ring in another year older? We think not!
Happy 26th to Linds!
Love to all,
MandL
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Julie
non-member comment
amazing!
That is so awesome guys... I LOVE the after black and white shot of you guys...so beautiful!!! miss you so much!