My First SKYDIVING Jump - Spaceland, Clewiston, Florida

I cannot express enough how cool the experience is. It gives you another level of appreciation for the planet and what it has to offer. What a beautiful world we have full of adventure. I was quite come the whole way up to the jump itself. Now, I can handle stress and pressure, but I was surprised that I was almost too calm yet excited. But bear with me, it gets interesting.

My instructor Dominic and videographer-jumper Dawn were awesome. Dominic was hilarious by teasing me constantly with jokes to put pressure on me, haha. For example, he said he only had 3 jumps, that one was too obvious, but for a second he was convincing, lol. Apparently, he had more than 3000 jumps or close. I also liked the fun little rule on the plane portrayed by a sticker. Won't tell you what it is though - you'll just have to jump to see it. For the first jump, you do not get to do much, you can relax, and trust your instructor. However, you can always ask for more detail about safety and also ask if you can pull the parachute yourself. I decided to let the instructor handle it this time. For my next jump, I will explore more of my own action.

Now, here it comes. We are on the plane. Excitement goes up. But so goes mild nervousness. Last safety checks, exchange with an instructor, connecting clips, and we are going down towards the exit door and sh*t hits the fan. We actually jump. It is at that moment, after the entire time being calm., I realized. Or shoot, this is real. I am falling from the sky. Duh. Haha, but not for a second, I held back. The first 10 seconds of a 60-second freefall were relatively hard in the sense that you feel like somebody puts a lot of pressure on your above. And I do not think it is simply the weight of an instructor because although attached to you, he is not simply laying on you. That pressure comes from the fall itself and the speed at which you fall through the air. I mean it is freaking incredible. But it also is hard. You have to make sure you are in the right position with your arms and legs. My hands were all good, but my legs were hanging around until my instructor closed them in the right position with his own legs, and from there I kinda got a hang of it. It is much harder than indoor skydiving. Although I still highly recommend practicing indoor skydiving at least once. Although you keep thinking about managing yourself, I did have a second to take a view around during freefall, and it is magical. I also tried my best to keep my head up for Dawn to take good pictures. And thanks to them with Dominic I have great shots, but also, I have a lot of pictures where I simply...eat my beard. Haha. I smiled, and I tried to smile legit. But the beard just goes up. I did not feel it at the time, or I did not think of it, but pictures showed me that beauty, lol.

After the freefall, Dominic deployed the parachute, which man, you can feel, and we entered another beautiful stage of skydiving. This is when I had a chance to catch my breath and actually look around while sharing my emotions with Dominic. He told me more about the area and how we could see the beautiful Atlantic ocean within our sight. Also, a funny thing, I remember him saying "Oh, this is the cloud, we are about to enter into it" and I wondered, is that even a good thing? What if we have turbulence like on a plane? Lol. 5 seconds within a cloud, Dominic realizes it's not it. "Hm, it smells...or, we are not in the cloud, this is smog from sugar cane fields burning". I laughed but my laugh probably was a little psychotic. And I also recalled that when I was driving from Miami to Clewiston (around 1.5 hours), I saw that smog all over the place and thought - should I even ask them if it is safe to jump today? But all good, no worries. It was all good, all safe. And all incredible. I cannot wait to do it again because quite frankly it is hard to capture a moment in your head. I surely captured it in my heart, but memories tend to fade a little. Those seconds of freefall - I have a memory and a picture in my head, but it almost feels not enough. Maybe because there is less adrenaline attached to it while you recall a memory rather than when you actually live in that moment. Look, I have to say, this is risky and there is no amount of calculation anyone can do to predict everything and have a perfect jump at least as of today. But. A lot of things in this world are risky. Your daily drive can be an accident, your food can be poisoned, and you can get sick from whatever. The question is...do you want to live a life of an adventurer that may take some risks or do you want to live a very safe mundane life that will create a fake sense of safety? Maybe all of us have our limits. But who is it to say we cannot push them? I choose to push mine. Let's go!

P.S. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, we did reach the ground safely. I mean I would say textbook perfectly :).

#skydiving #tandemskydiving #flying #spaceland #florida #miami #clewiston