This past weekend we celebrated my 31st birthday, and I can say with the utmost certainty that it will be forever etched in my mind.
Veronica had us wake early on Saturday to head into the city. I thought we were going to get on a boat to cruise around the harbor for the day. But I was way off target. My sweet wife had organized for us, and 12 of our friends to go skydiving.
Shock doesn’t quite do justice to finding out that you are about to jump out of a plane, that day. The moment we stopped in front of the Skydive office I felt a sudden wave of panic, and I kept asking, ‘Your joking, right?’ It seemed that all my talk of wanting to skydive but not having enough money might be a load of horsesh**! Luckily, after about a minute of feeling some serious butterflies, I wrapped my mind around it and started getting excited. Jumping out of a plane in itself was a surprise, but seeing all of our friends pile into the office was even more unexpected. It made the experience that much sweeter in the end.
Everyone except Gavin rode down South in a van to the jump center. The day was gorgeous, with barely a cloud in the sky and no breeze. After waiting for about 3 hours we were finally called up. After suiting up our tandem instructor told us 3 key things: how to exit the airplane, what to do in freefall, and how to land. Seventeen of us then got into a pretty small plane and took off. Interestingly, I was sitting right next to a sign stating that the maximum weight limit in the cargo hold was 800 pounds. I’m not exactly Stephen Hawking’s but I could figure out that according to that we were seriously overloaded. Thank goodness we didn’t have to worry about landing!
The flight was loud, and quite short. Before you had time to really process what was happening the door was open and people were diving out. Flipping out of the plane and seeing the Earth and sky rotate around was absolutely insane! After straightening out the free fall felt incredible. Obviously we were just hauling ass straight towards the Earth for what seemed like a fairly long time. When the chute was deployed the first thing I noticed (besides being thankful that the chute had opened) was that my hands were freezing.
Gliding down with the parachute was fun, but it lacked significantly compared to the rush of the fall. Still, I enjoyed cruising down over the green landscape, but I was stoked to be back on the ground. As everyone else landed around us I felt a delightfully euphoric giddiness. Afterwards we celebrated with some ice-cold Corona’s. To say it was a great day would be an understatement. After such a lackluster 30th birthday last year Veronica delivered such a perfect day. How lucky am I to have such an EPIC wife?
Yesterday we took it extremely easy. Took Ryan back to Barefoot now that he is a big fan of flat whites, even though he didn’t drink coffee before arriving in Australia. Drove out to Bronte and Bondi Beach to see some sights. We then met up with our friend Magnus to play some lawn bowls. Pretty similar to curling, except without the ice. For dinner we took Ryan to our favorite place, the Bavarian Bier Café. A titillating mango beer was the perfect end to a stellar weekend.
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