Everything is checked one last time. Your straps and harnesses are tight and your heart is racing. Your once purely scenic view of the Swiss Alps which you have been enjoying for the last ten minutes is suddenly shaken to life as the jumpmaster opens the door and the chilling air whips inside the plane and lashes your unexpecting face. The photographer moves into place, and jumps out of the plane before your very eyes. Nothing seems real at the moment, yet you know it is all about to become very real. You swing your legs over the edge of the plane and they are dangling over... nothing at all. And now you realize you are truly in for a ride.
"One! Two! Threeeeee.....!"
Head up, knees bent, legs tucked back, you are the first one in the plane to plunge face first into the sky. The icy wind rips at your face and your stomach jumps up into your chest! The air is ice cold and you are free falling through the sky. The reality of the matter sets in after about 6 seconds. The next 39 seconds are both the longest and shortest of your life. With nothing stopping you, you slice through the air at a mere 120 miles per hour, bombing toward the ground and certain death. You make faces to the cameraman, try and breathe, open your mouth and swallow the freshest air ever. Your jumpmaster taps your shoulders, this means you are to grab the straps again. The free fall is almost over; yet it seemed like it just began!
Whoosh! You are sucked back up into the air as the chute deploys and the intense noise of the wind whipping into your ears cuts out. Everything goes very quiet. You are now gliding through the sky. The harnesses are loosened a bit now, and you are more or less hanging, attached at the backside to your jumpmaster. You take in the scenary, admire the view, when all of a sudden you are spinning in circles! Your jumpmaster laughs, and says, "Watch this!"... You spin in circles through the air! Your stomach and brain have no idea what is going on! Utter chaos for the frontal lobe.
What feels like 10 seconds later, the jumpmaster tells you, as you make your final approach to the ground, to keep your legs up as you land. This is to avoid breaking your legs. You listen carefully. : )
Being winter, you land in a bunch of snow, back at the runway you took off from. Your heart is racing. Your hands are shaking. And you cannot believe what you just did. You have just skydived. You jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. Shot through the sky like a bullet. Floated, rather quickly, to the ground. And you want to do it all again.
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