...and for some reason Eric, Jon, and I had to go and jump out of it!

After a 6 hour class we were ready to go on our very first jump, that also happened to be a solo jump! There would be no one on our back handling everything. We would be tethered to the plane, which would pull our chute for us, and a friendly man on the ground would guide us to our landing.

Gallery:

I'm thrilled to not have my restrictive pack straps on yet.



That seems... small.



And a bit cramped.



You want me to do WHHHAAAATT?



Dont look down! This was the worst part. Making the first step out into crazy fast wind to stand on a tiny 1 foot piece of metal.



Oops, I looked!



Sigh. Well this was a bad idea...



Aaaaaiiiieeeeeeeeee!



If you look closely, you can see the minor twist in the line. Just a quick pull (like you are on a swing) and it was out.




This was a blast and everyone was super cool and helpful. If you are up for it (ha!) you can go up north of Muskegon to Premiere skydiving. They do the normal tandem jumps there too that don't require the hugely long class. Most of our class was showing us how our jump could go wrong and what to do if it does. Pretty fun thing to watch before jumping out of a plane...

Awesome!  What inspired you guys to do this?  Life-long dream?

If it makes you feel any better, I read your post while sitting in the San Francisco airport because we did not have a perfectly good plane.  The plane for the San Francisco to Chicago leg of my journey home was broken, so I got to spend 30 lovely hours in the airport. 

Out of curiosity, what does it cost to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?


-b0b
(...skeery!)