“Ready to jump?” Not really, I thought to myself while 10,000 feet up in the air looking down at the Gulf of Mexico and also death. Never did I think I would trust some string and a man I had never met before with my life.
When I think of a significant event, nothing pops into my head faster than that one time I jumped out of a plane. I have never described myself as a thrill-seeker. I played sports while growing up, but was never the type to put myself in harm's way to save a goal or anything like that. I mean, I don’t even like roller coasters. I have an extensive bucket list, but skydiving was never on there. I could not even picture myself jumping out of a plane while I was in the plane getting ready to jump out of it. While I am not an adrenaline junky, I also do not lose bets. When my best friend bet that I would not jump out of a plane, that is when I decided to do it.
My college best friend of only a few years now is a total thrill-seeker and has always wanted to go skydiving. We went to Key West, Florida in July to celebrate his twenty-first birthday. Key West just happens to have one of the most beautiful sky diving experiences in the world. The thing about skydiving is that you cannot book it far in advance because of the weather. I told myself for months and months that there was no way the weather was going to cooperate with us, or maybe I just hoped and prayed that it wouldn’t. However, with my luck, it got to be July 12th and the skies were completely clear. We sat down at breakfast around ten in the morning and called Skydive Key West. We asked if they had any openings to skydive and they told us that if we got there by one we would be fine, but that there was a storm coming later in the afternoon.
We rushed back to the hotel and changed before calling an Uber to bring us to the place that would soon put our harnesses on and send us off with almost no instruction. On the way there I was telling myself that the storm would come and that we would not be able, or have to in my case, jump. The next thing I knew I was 10,000 feet up in the air looking down at the Gulf of Mexico and out at a thunderstorm coming towards me, with a random man attached to my back. I had only met this man 20 minutes ago and there he was telling me “We should be fine to jump, but we better go soon”. The doors busted open and the coldest rush of wind filled the plane. At this point I knew there was only one way down, and to be honest, I was ready to get out of that tiny unstable plane. I watched my best friend jump, and then before I could even blink my instructor launched us out of the plane head first. All of a sudden my feet were on the ground again, and I realized how brave I really am.
No comments:
Post a Comment