Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Skydiving

On a cold Monday morning just after shaking off the Monday blues one of my team members called up to ask if I was interested in jumping off a plane with a parachute.
I am a little crazy and was feeling a little suicidal on a Monday morning after starting my day at 7 AM with no coffee, so I said, “Sure, why not ? ” This sounded like fun and put on a very brave face as if I did this kind of thing for a living. Actually I do, I work in a financial services company and have a girlfriend and it is full time job making the twain meet, so I pretty much have experience in it.

I am currently in US on a training, so I’m surviving on a monthly stipend in New York city and stipend as all stipends go is not a whole lot to indulge in this crazy thing. So we checked out the most cost economic place (told you, I work in financial sector). The search was a pilgrimage which we undertook by journeying to the Mecca of all search engines, Google and like God’s reply to prayers, it gave us multiple answers ranging from cheap but far and expensive but close and some in between, and like God’s answers the information was all confusing. Why does Google have to give you multiple options? Wouldn’t life be much easier if you had very few options and you had to choose one of them than having a million options making it difficult to choose? Add to the chaos 7 more people and the war began. All of a sudden everyone turned into an expert in the places they’ve never visited and in the country they are visiting for the first time. This actually proved little knowledge is far too dangerous than no knowledge. So we discussed the options and then one of the team members took the responsibility of coordinating with the sky diving place. God bless him and his enthusiasm. He called up three places and did a price comparison and we finally after a lot of deliberations froze on the cheapest one, like that was a difficult choice to make. However, the place didn’t work out as it was becoming a logistic nightmare to get there so we had to go with the one which was the most expensive. We started discussing the option and after a lot of meetings (shows again that I am in financial sector) and emails and some more meetings and a lot of convincing that the experience is worth the money managed to convince 9 people. We also appealed to the quintessential Indian trait of freebie and said that if there are 9 we get $10 off per person and that just clinched it. Oh, the price for the jump was a measly $325 including the cost of getting a video and after the princely discount of $10.

I got up on Saturday, Nov 11 at 6 AM to catch a train at 7 or rather couldn’t sleep all of Friday night due to excitement and some fear. It should have been an omen considering it was 11/11. Think 9/11 or 7/11. Someone in the group pointed to the connection and the rest of the group was ready to murder him. The most obvious thing happened, which normally would happen to most of the people on a Saturday morning, we missed the train. So we had to take a different train, change stations, take connecting trains and go two stations from the actual destination and then take a cab to get to the skydiving place. It is called Skydive Long Island in Long Island, NY. Should we have taken missing the train as a hint and gone back? No, the never say die spirit or should I say the crazy side prodded us to go on and go on we did. We reached the place and paid for the jump, full in advance. Then were asked to sign an agreement absolving the place from all legal obligations. No wonder they wanted the money upfront. We were showed a video of a lawyer who made it very clear that no matter what happened to us, if we sued, like we could, we would not win as we had already signed the papers and there was no refund policy if the parachute didn’t open. We still went ahead.


The first timers have to jump in Tandem. It means that you are strapped to an experienced sky diver who controls the parachute and ensures that it opens when it should. We met with our instructor who immediately put us to ease by saying that he was extremely nervous and it was his second jump. I then realized that I was in good hands or rather strapped to a good chest. I got into the harness and went through basic training. Then I was off on the plane climbing the sky with one and only one intention; to conquer the sky, fly like a bird and feel free. It gets a little dizzy up there so it really doesn’t matter if it is one or three. The plane climbed to 11,000 feet, though we were promised 13,500 feet. The per feet basis cost came to 24 cents and the sky diving place owes us a refund of $60. This definitely proves that I work in financial sector. However, remember we signed an agreement which said no refund in any case. The moment of truth arrived and I was sitting at the ledge partially hanging in air with my instructor strapped to me. He gently rocked me twice, just enough for me to say no, and jumped, just not enough for me to stop from jumping. I was in air falling at a speed of 120 mph with wind and the ground rushing at me at a break neck speed. That was the time I broke free, free of my fear of heights, free of all tensions in life, free of the world. It was just me and the troposphere and the song playing in my mind “I’m free, free falling”. The free fall lasted for about 30 seconds and the instructor opened the parachute. Damn, why didn’t the fall last an eternity? He guided the chute to landing and I landed hard on my butt. It still hurts a little. Two of my team members also landed at the same time and we got up and walked on the runway, Top Gun style. We did something top gun style and came out as top guns. Money well spent. If I have the time I would do it again and would encourage anyone who gets the opportunity to do it at-least once in their lifetime.

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