(The title comes from a roadsign next to a bunch of cows, meant to remind travelers not to speed.)
Queenstown is my home away from home. Its fantastically beautiful here, the town extends up the side of a mountain, the ducks are friendly, the pizzas good, and all of the shops are extreme sports related. If one has the funds, they could bungee jump in three different places, including the tallest in Austral-Asia, skydive from 15000 feet (high enough to require breathing oxygen enriched air while still in the plane before jumping), take a jetboat down the river, cruise the lake while having a 7 course meal, go caving, skiing, river suring, and hanggliding. Guess which one we did. Oh yeah, skydiving.
We signed up this morning to go to 12000 feet ($100 cheaper than 15000), but falling 400 footballfields is quite high enough. Trust me. 2:30 this afternoon, seven of us got into a van and were shuttled out to the airfield. When we got there, there were already people falling out of the sky, which was way more exciting than seeing people do it before, since today we were actually going to do it. (Side story: All of us have been staying on each others good side for the day, because we kept joking that we would drop kick the other person out of a plane if they made us mad, and then realized that on any other day that would be a joke, but for today, that was a legitimate threat. Awesome.)
Luke, Devin, and I were going to go in the plane together, since it held three jumpers at once, and we opted for the photograph package, so each had a photographer, and each of us were attached to a dive master (Mine has been jumping for 23 years. He was awesome. From “the former Yugoslavia.â€) so there were nine of us in a plane four feet wide and probably 12 feet long. It was cramped. We took off, and climbed at a steeper angle than I knew a plane could fly, and the view above the mountains was incredible. 10 minutes later, we were at 12000 feet and a little red light came on. Our helmets were put on, our straps were double checked, and the door was opened. 10 seconds later, a green light, and Luke moves to the door. His photographer climbs out of the door, holds onto the side of the plane (yeah, hes completely outside the plane, hanging onto a rail) and Luke’s divemaster throws them out of the plane. Thats when it hit me that this was for real. Devin’s divemaster scoots her to the door, her photographer climbs out, and then Devin begins her decent into the void.
My turn. (I never really felt fear, or even anxiety, just a rush of adrenaline. The reality of the situation never really hit me, even in flight, and maybe thats why it wasn’t scary.) Before we jumped, I turned around to ask my instructor if we could flip a lot, and he told me that in 23 years of jumping, no one has ever asked him to do that. He said “We can try.† I think he had just as much fun as I did, because we flipped. A lot. When we came out of the plane, we turned upside down and did four backflips. Four is a guess, because I was completely discombobulated. After leveling off, we spun in horizonal circles, which was really really fast, because everything just blurred together. After the spinning, we calmed down and just fell. Fast. (I cant really explain how it felt to jump out of a plane, except that looking down 12000 feet with nothing below you was a little daunting, but I expected there to be a severe dropping feeling in my stomach, and that never happened.) Back to falling.
Terminal velocity is approximately 200 kilometers per hour, or 125 miles per hour. It took us all of 10 seconds to accelerate to that speed. Rollercoasters are like kiddy rides compared to this. After attaining terminal velocity, each 5 seconds we fell 1000 feet. Or 200 feet per second. Thats a football field every 1.5 seconds. We were bookin it. Breathing was almost impossible. Not smiling was impossible. Jumping out of planes seemed impossible until that moment.
The view was fantastic. It was a perfectly clear day, with no clouds (although it would have been fun to fly through a cloud) and we could see for nearly 10 miles before the Earth’s surface curved off into the edge of space. The sky was darker, due to the lack of atmosphere, and I think if we had gone any higher, we could’ve gotten sunburned in like 2 seconds. The water was metallic blue and the mountains were like little hills far below.
Looking stright at the ground created the loudest wind I have ever heard, equivalent to standing in a F5 tornado, and made my smile get sucked back to my ears. Thats going to be a goofy picture.
At 4000 feet, we pulled the chute, and by 3000, we had slowed down to around 30 miles per hour. The pulling of the chute wasn’t as jerky as I thought it would be, since watching videos of skydiving shows the person abruptly coming to a stop, but it was just like a severe deceleration. Not much of a jerk at all, but just a lot of pressure on your legs and chest. Pretty fun actually. We then had a 5 minute float down to Earth, and I got to watch Luke and Devin land below. I guess my guy wanted to spin more, since he suddenly called out “hold on†and we went horizonal in a death spiral. (Its not really called that. I just named it that because we were spinning sideways in a circle, accelerating towards the ground, with the chute getting louder and louder sounding as if it would explode any second.) I guess the dive master I had either realized that I’m a bit of an adrenaline junky myself, or he just wanted to scare the mess out of me, because he had one more trick up his sleeve. We approached the ground faster than anyone should ever do that, and soared in like a missle nearly 5 feet from the roof of the building we began in, rocketed towards the ground, then just at the last second, we pulled our feet up, he pulled the cords of the parachute, and we floated up just a few feet, only to float down softly into a mild jog landing. It was perfect. I felt like I was in a movie the whole time.
So that was my day. Probably one of the best days of my life. One I definitely won’t forget. Now its 8:30 pm and I can barely keep my eyes open. I had to write this before bed so I could remember every little detail possible to make the story worth it. Sorry if it was a bit long, but I intend to use this blog to remember the trip later on, so I figured the more in-depth, the better. I hope it was interesting enough to keep your attention. Mom, I know you said you’d rather me get a tattoo or my ears pierced or something, but at least this is over and you don’t have to put up with it everyday. And this is a much cooler postcard to put on the fridge. Except now I’m hooked and am considering being a professional skydiving instructor the rest of my life. Sweet.