6 a.m.
I wake up at the crack of dawn to prepare for the hour-long drive into Oxnard, California. The realization that I would be leaping out of a plane in less than four hours hasn’t quite hit me. I’m more worried I’ll chicken out at the last minute than I am about the actual jump. I watched all of the warning videos and tutorials and done everything else I was supposed to do. Now, I’m just going through the motions: choosing what to bring, what kinds of clothes to wear and not thinking too much that this might be the outfit I splat on the ground in. I keep it light with a pair of jeans, a long sleeve top and some beat-up old Converse. The morning grogginess is beating out any pre-jump nerves by a long shot.
7 a.m.
The excitement is beginning to set in. My friends who are joining me, Elizabeth and Lauryn, are equally as pumped. The process to get to the jump zone is lengthy. First, we take an Uber to the train station, where we pick up our Zipcar to set out toward Oxnard. The ride is prettier than I expected. As we drive through the mountains and look over the coast with early 2000s bangers blasting through this poor Toyota Corolla’s speakers, I’m surprised the nerves still haven’t hit as much as I thought they would. I’m mostly just excited. I think of how the waiver video we all had to watch was led by a man who had been doing it for 70 years. I figure that if he’s been able to do it that long and is still alive, then I’ll definitely be okay doing it once… right?
8:30 a.m.
We pull up to the building. I could easily have mistaken it for a money laundering front had I not known what was in store for us. We park in the almost empty lot and walk around to the side of the building to get inside, pass the front desk and find ourselves in a huge airplane hangar. To our left is a man at his desk displayed on a screen with a camera eyeing us, and I become incredibly jealous of anyone who has a remote receptionist job. We show him our IDs, pay all the fees for photos and tip our instructors. The nerves are starting to settle in, and even though I keep denying being scared at all, the visible sweat on my gray top says otherwise.
Elizabeth is first up. We watch as the instructors strap her into the harness and all of the necessary gear, all while joking about the plethora of things that could go wrong, but probably won’t? After we watch her plane take off, Lauryn and I decide that we’ve got to listen to a good final song in case it’s the last one we ever hear: David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, to suit the occasion.
9 a.m.
Elizabeth comes strolling in like she just went for a walk in the park. She doesn’t have much to say, just that she wishes she could go again. Now it’s Lauryn’s and my turn. I’m practically jumping up and down from excitement. I’ve already told my mom I love her. I’m up to jump first; I sit on the ground of this plane that can’t hold more than five people at once, including the pilot. I’m right next to a clear roll up door. I somehow still don’t feel all that nervous, until my instructor opens up the door to grab footage over the mountains and the ocean. I can’t blame him, the view’s amazing. The water beneath us is this bright blue and turquoise, like it came out of an ad for the Bahamas. The mountains look like they came out of a scene from “Moana”. But, the only thing stopping me from falling out of this plane is his leg between me and the door. My whole body is shaking from excitement and anxiety, like my brain couldn’t wait but my legs just wanted to be back on solid ground. We’re in the air for less than 20 minutes before I’m told to swing my legs onto a 2-foot-long, 6-inch-wide platform outside of the plane. I don’t even have time to think about what I’m doing. This is it, as close to the sun as I’ll ever be and maybe the last time I ever get to see it, with nothing beneath me but rock hard dirt waiting to smack me in the face. There’s no countdown, no are you ready, before I’m suddenly flipping through the air.
Free-fall feels nothing like I thought it would. There’s no drop of my stomach like on a roller coaster, it barely even feels like falling. It feels like total, euphoric freedom. I don’t have the words to really capture the feeling of being above the Earth like that. It’s like I’m on top of the world but still such a small speck on it. The plane had disappeared from my view and I had a complete picture of the horizon in front of me. The mountains are towering to my left, and the air is fast and fresh against my face, like that’s how it’s meant to be felt. I forgot we were supposed to even have a parachute until the instructor pulled it, somewhat jolting me back to reality. The instructor gives me a chance to steer, and we’re spinning in circles parallel to the ground. The thought of splatting down below has completely left my mind, I’m giddy with excitement still. The whole thing lasts maybe five minutes, if that. When we land, and Lauryn joins us back on Earth, all we can talk about is doing it again, like we’re kids at an amusement park.
When I first found out about our surprise skydiving adventure, of course I was a bit nervous. But this was such an incredible experience that everyone should try at least once in their lifetime. There really is nothing like falling through the sky.
__
Featured Image Photographed by Rianna Pierce/BruinLife
