Well, you've done it now. You will spend the rest of the week contemplating skydiving, and how soon you can get back up there. Your condition will only deteriorate, and the prognosis is not good. Nobody ever went to the DZ for that first jump thinking, "This looks like a suitable hobby, and a way to meet the up and comers of society, let me spend every possible waking moment hanging out here with these fine chaps" or "I desire a hobby that will inexplicably compel me to the miss the weddings of friends and family [why must they marry between May and October?], abandon my girlfriend every weekend (and then permanently), and instead spend 20 minutes 5 or 6 times a day wedged on the floor of a Twin Otter with 20 other like minded individuals and a stranger's rig compressing my crotch, the stench of smelly feet in Tevas permeating the air, and people emiting noxious fumes as the plane climbs through 12K."
Of course, when that lexan door slides up and the cold fresh air, mixed with Jet A fumes fills the plane, nothing else in the world matters. The bad day at the office, that review you have next week, the money you should be saving to get a new car instead of skydiving...all melt away. For the next 60 seconds or so, your obligations, your concerns, your focus, become immediate--and your daily cares/stress have no part of it. There is some intangible, liberating quality, about jumping from a plane at 15K feet, that I've found hard to duplicate [legally]. In a society where you are told what speed to drive at, what line to stand in with 15 items or less, that you must press #1 if you have a question about your current balance, and for your safety to please keep hands inside of the rails while the vehicle is moving you are master of your own destiny when you step out the door of that plane.
Oh yeah, and don't worry about your current friends/girlfriends understanding. You will make many interesting new ones--people that you would likely not run across in your daily life if it weren't for skydiving. These are people who will drive a half hour out of their way to give you a lift to the DZ. People who let you crash on their couch so you can sleep closer to the DZ, and treat you as if you are a member of their family. People who will drive you to the hospital and wait with you for 4 hours on a sunny Saturday afternoon, after you dislocate your shoulder on a funneled exit. Then, some of the courser of these miscreants will make an unannounced "bandit jump" into your wedding reception, stealing the show.
I'm not sure if any of this is really true, it's just what I have heard. So you have been warned.
Cheers.
Blue Skies and Black Death.
imp:
hahaha
