Advertisement
Published: December 12th 2008
DSC03104
the planethurs - up at 8am to be picked up at 9am for a lift to the 'airfield' - i put it in quotation marks becuase it was literally a field with a hut and a plane - for my skydive :D went out there with 4 others, all of us a bit nervous at the prospect of what lay ahead of us. got to the hut and sat around waiting for the clouds to clear so we could actually get up in the air. Gav, one of the tandem guys came in and talked to us about what to do when up there, at this point my heart was a bit racy, then we slapped on a skydive dvd to keep us occupied whilst we waited. I and one of the guys who came with us, Roger, were the first 2 to go up. we got kitted out in the fabulous jump suits and harnesses topped off with a hat then went outside to be filmed for our dvds, very embarrasing standing there as a camera gets shoved in your face, but i was way too excited to feel like too much of an idiot!! we allpiled into the tiny little
Photo 1
still on the ground, not for long! plane (5 of us plus the pilot and gear) i was literally sitting on my tandem guy (Gav) whilst being squashed by my camera guy (Matty) and Roger and his tandem guy. take off, very weird on grass and sitting on the hard floor of the plane/lap of Gav, soon up in the sky looking down at the fields getting further and further away. we took a flight out over the bay giving us fantastic views of all the islands - something you wouldn't see unless you got an expensive helicopter out - after about 20 -25mins (you lose track of time up there) we went back in land to do the jump. Rger and his guy were first as they were nxt to the door, when it opened we got a rush of cold air blowing around and filling up the plane, after about 30 seconds they had jumped and were gone, i really wanted to wqatch him go but Matty had to get out next to hang onto the outside of the plane to film me leap. so Gav and i shuffled to the edge of the plane, my feet dangling out of the craft, 12000ft above ground
Photo 2
can you tell i was excited? and all i thought was "f*** yeah, this is going to be amazing, oo look at the fields!" rocked twice and then we threw ourselves out of the plane, plummeting towards earth. it didnt actually feel like falling, more that we were still and the air was gushing past us. a completely indescribable feeling, only other people who have skydived can understand as ther eis no way of explaining it! Matty caught up with us and grabbed onto my hand to film us - he has an amazing job, leaping out of planes all the time, spinning round filming people!! then Gav released the parachute and we were jerked to a steady, slower fall (after roughly 45s freefall). we drifted around in the air, i could see the islands in the distance and fields below my feet. did a couple of spins with the chute which felt weird watching the river below spinning very fast but it felt again like i was still. it was so quiet up there after the rush of air from the freefall then just floating in awed silence back to earth with the odd whoop here and there from Gav and myself. suddenly the land
began to come up at us very qucikly (you dont notice it getting closer when freefalling/floating as you are so high up, but suddenly it's there) then before i knew it i was lifting my feet up and we were skidding along the grass on our bums, over in a matter of minutes. the most amazing experience of my life so far. i grinned manically all the way up and all the way down :D
then back to Paihia to lie on the beach relaxing in the sun for an hour or so whilst waiting for the stray bus back to Auckland. sweet as, got a tan in an hour!!
got an 8bed dorm, chatted to Roy, a scottish guy in my room, for about 3hours then, shattered, went to sleep.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0545s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
