Tyler and Emily in PNG

November 1, 2014 will forever be marked as the day we jumped out of a plane…on purpose! Yes, Emily and I went skydiving!

While on vacation in Cairns, Australia it has been my dream to skydive. I pondered the decision, slept on it, thought about it more and more and finally came to the conclusion that I am not getting any younger so why not do it now. You never know when the next chance will come and I always try to enjoy the moment and live for the day. So the decision was made…lets go skydiving in Cairns.

Prior to jumping you have to complete paperwork basically saying you are stupid and if you die then so be it. So we both signed, dated, and returned the documents with a smile. We are also members of the Australia Parachuting Federation.

We arrived at 7:30 am but soon found out that more jumpers were there so we were put with the second jump group. About 9:15 am it was our turn as the first group was returning to the office. They were saying, ‘awesome, amazing, thrilling.’ I knew I was in for a thrill of a lifetime.

My jump master or tandem instructor was Ben. He was raised in Cairns and made his first jump at 18 years old. He has totaled over 9000 jumps in over 14 years. He quoted, “I have yet had one failure.” With 100% success rate you could doubt skydiving?

We got the harness on and headed to the plane. I asked one last question, ‘who packed the parachute?’ Another tandem instructor simply said, ‘oh we have hired minimum wage monkeys for that job.’ There is always a second chute just in case.

I load the plane first which meant one thing, first in last out. So I got the thrill of watching the previous seven jumpers exit the plane. That had to be the oddest thoughts to run through my mind as I continued to see people line up at the door of the plane only to disappear in a blink of an eye. I thought to myself…I am next.

 
I crossed my arms as instructed, sat down with my feet swung under the belly of the plane. My instructor simply pushed us out of the plane as we entered into a roll. Wow…what a feeling to be falling literally like a rock. We jumped from approximately 12,000 ft. The parachute opens at around 4,000 ft. In 40 seconds of freedom we were going 200 ft./sec or 137 mph as we fell to earth. We covered 1.5 miles in 40 seconds. I can testify gravity is still king.

The parachute opened and all of the sudden things were really quiet. The rush of wind stopped and 137 mph slowed to a crawl. We gently fell through the clouds to see the landscape of northern Queensland. Cairns was off to the north and the sugarcane fields to the south. I could see a few other deployed parachutes as well below me. Ben, my tandem partner, gave me the ropes to drive. He told me to pull down as far as I could with my left hand. I did and this put us into a cork screw spin. Wow…now just a bit dizzy. That kind of set off a little bit uneasy feeling deep down inside. We spotted the LZ (landing zone) and made a successful landing.

I was unbuckled from Ben and yelled over to Emily as she landed before me. She came running over to give each other a high five. This bucket list item has been checked off!

Make sure to check out the videos!
1. 40 Seconds of Freedom
2. Skydive (full length)