Our Big Adventure
A very sunny day today, our last day in Brisbane with no specific plans. I looked out the window and saw this...
Beautiful blue sky...today was the day!
The day for my first skydive of course! After calling a couple of places and not having any luck making an appointment, I gave up, but Mike didn't. He found a skydive center and after a couple of calls and some skillful planning (not)...we set out for what would be an awesome adventure! The skydive place - "Rip Cord Skydive Center" was located east of Toowoomba, a bus ride inland about an hour. We got to the Greyhound bus terminal in time to catch the 11:00 bus to take us to Glenoure Grove, where we would be (supposedly) picked up by the skydive place. When we were let off at the bus stop, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, nobody was there to get us and the lady we booked the jump with couldn't get ahold of anybody. So, we got directions to the center- about 1/2 mile down the highway (with no walkways) and trucked over there ourselves. We were less than impressed.
The runway was in the middle of a field and there was farmland all around. It took a while for us to get anyone to pay attention to us and I was finally shown a video of a girl jumping- she got up in the plane and freaked at the last minute. When I said I definitely wanted to jump, I got the paperwork done, paid for a jump and a videographer, and they scheduled me on a run in their plane- a very small 6 person jump plane.
The minute I met my instructor Mick, I felt safe. He was very professional, very calm, had made many jumps (I forget the exact number now), and had been a tandem master for a while. I put on my blue jumping suit, which was a bit snug...and we went over some instructions. I had to put my head back and arch when we jumped and put my legs up in an "L" position to land- easy enough, right? So off we went...
Mike stayed behind to take pictures...skydiving was my dream, not his...
There were 2 jumpers ahead of me- novice skydivers- one would jump at 5,000 ft. the other at 7,500 feet. Each time the door opened I felt okay, they did awesome, btw! Then, at 9,500 ft., pretty much as high as that little plane would easily go, it was my turn. It happened quickly, we didn't have that long to jump, so with Mick connected to me and pushing me along, I slipped my legs out the door and we jumped. We flipped over and went through a cloud and I heard wind, very loud wind and looked up and smiled at the video camera- Sam had been filming me at different stages all along. We did a free fall for around 30 or so seconds and I felt a tug as the chute opened (yay!) above me and we were vertical and sailing along. I got to look around and steer a bit and it was totally amazing!!!!!!!!!!! Hard to describe. We floated for 15 minutes of so and it was time to land...legs up...perfect landing....WOW!!
We hung out with this very interesting group of people all day. They seemed a bit rough at first, but we got to talk to many of them and they were so nice. They had this really nice sense of community going on because really, they relied heavily on each other for support in a very dangerous hobby. The experts all watched out for the novices and it was so cool. One of those unplanned experiences that I won't soon forget for many reasons. One of the owners of the business gave us a (late) ride back to Brisbane, right to the door of our hotel so we wouldn't have to go by bus- thanks Eddie! Late dinner at the Pig n' Whistle!
Anyway, another awesome day, awesome adventure!! First trip to Oz, first (of hopefully many) skydives. Yay!!
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