Gone Flying

Probably, I must have seen it first time on Discovery Channel. It looked amazing, breathtaking and by far most remote (unreachable) thing for me.

Then I saw it on Orkut… done by my college friend Ankur Verma. I was like.. wow so people whom I know… also do it… I think that must have put the thought about Sky Diving in my mind.

So.. then when Saif, my ex-roomie, mentioned about going for a skydive… I was immediately supportive of the idea. Khair… it looked like we were not gonna make it due to insufficient no of people joining us! What insufficient… No other person is ready to join us! Its only me n Saif. Sadly.. we dropped the plan till my Andy, other ex-roomie, returned from India. God knows for what reason, he immediately joins the charade for sky diving! And there we go, 3 old roomies together on sky diving trip.

We got the online booking for 1:30 for 5th July. And I had no clue as to what I am going for till 4th afternoon when I took a look at this video on YouTube.

I freaked out! Just by watching the video my heart was skipping the beat and in less than 24 hours… I am going to be part of that video. Uff.. I was knowing that I am not going to sleep that night!

We started in Indian style [read 1 hour after planned departure time]. The journey was pretty uneventful. As we were approaching the hanger for skydive chicago… We saw people coming down with parachutes… that gave the forewarning as to what lies ahead.. without further waste of time.. we went for registration n immediately encountered a personn on video with a like 2 feet long beard!

He was funny but his words were real dangerous. In essence, we were sign an agreement which takes away all rights in this whole world from me. Even if I die while doing this diving, no one can dream of sueing these guys. [Well rest is ok... but that mentions my possible death, you see!]

Anyways, as if we had any choice, we read through the document telling us what all legal rights we were giving away and signed the document and then started looooong wait for our slot for flying. Had we had clue as to we have few hours to kill and also that after skydiving we would be dea tired, we could have utilized this time for doing some site-seeing. Thus, we ended up just relaxing in the hanger waiting for our names to get listed.

Well that helped in at least one way. We saw video of so many people jumping down that freaking plane.. that we go our heart beat rate back to normal.. well almost.

After a looong long and further more long wait, finally our time came.. We got all robed in our diving gear (which was just some mesh of straps) and some kind of green jumpsuit. I met my instructor Mike and videographer Jenny.. Mike scared me for moment telling that he made his first jump just last friday and today he is going to jump only 5th time in his life! I mean what the heck man… I am about to jump out the freaking plane trusting my life on this guy…. and he has jumped only 5 times in his life!! But of course it was a joke to scare me. .. He later on told me that he has been doing this stuff for 11 yrs! man.,, Jenny also was very professional with 4 yrs of experience of jumping.

With that assurance, we started off to the plane. there was no place in the plane to stand also… we had to kneel down to get inside of plane. There goes my lucky point of the day… it seems that there was not enough space in plane… so I got to sit in cockpit.. first time in my life. man there are just soooo many controls in cockpit. I was taken aback.

We started seeing altitude increse in our own altimeters. Once we reached 10000 feet everyone started getting ready for jump… my instructor got me seated in front of him and got myself bound to him using 4 hooks… Boss.. so my life is bound on 4 hooks now!

Before I could even realize, every other person from the airplane was gone, leaving me and my instructor alone… Here comes my turn!

Despite every attempt made by Chicago Skydiver, I was still not fully panicked.. so it was pretty cool to stand at the airplane door… And in a moment, we were airborne..

Man… that one moment.. is simply not describable. You feel all silent and only weightless. That’s because my instructor was below me only for that moment shielding me from air pressure. Come next second, we turned around and I faced the ground, the clouds, the horizon. Man.. I don’t remember whether I scrambled to get some support or not… I guess I did recover pretty fast… mostly due to air pressure I guess

Then it was time running away at speed of thought.. I saw that Jenny is flying right in front of me.. asking me do so some stuff.. Man.. at that moment, there is absolutely nothing you can really do.. You have only your hands and ur head and you have them hardly in control. Even to get them together, you have to make a lot of effort. I was just trying out anything foolish that was possible in that roaring air turbulence.

Time flew like crazy. I could not even realize that I have already fallen 8000 feet. I did not notice altimeter. If I did not had instructor behind me then I could have continued right to the ground without parachute,,, maing that a last sky dive for my life but thank god Mike was there.. Looks like they see such stuff often.. so he pulled the trigger and opened the parachute.

Parachute opened with a jerk giving me bigtime pains in my groin area.. Cant do anything. Your hands are holding parachute on your head. pain can wait! Mike quickly asked me to clear my nose and ear if they are blocked due to heavy air pressure loss. I was already feeling dizzy. But I dragged on. Then we saw some breathtaking scenery. Now with parachute on my head, there was not much to worry or so I thought

Soon, Mike showed me that even with parachute you can go swinging down in no time.. He made our parachute circle 2-3 times to increase my anxiety. Then we navigated (rather 90% he navigated) to ground.

We slipped over the grass and did a smooth landing n thats it. Man.. I was feeling every single bone shattered, dizzy in my head… but it was ok.. I just did the sky diving successfully! thats all mattered.

Finally, there goes my video.. I know I was not able describe in words what this video shows for you.