Seems like a good day to jump out of a plane...

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Haven and I made a reservation for skydiving for 10:30am on the 30th.   Neither one of us had ever been but we were both very excited.   The thing about sky diving is that it always depends on the weather and in New Zealand this time of year the weather is always in question.   In fact, we called from our hostel in Rotorua at about 8:30 and we were told that the conditions were uncertain as it was foggy but expected to clear up.  Luckily, in the hour-long drive from Taupo to Rotorua the sky did clear into a gorgeous, cloudless blue.

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After quite a bit of waiting around and chatting with the folks who would go up in the plane with us, it was finally time to get going.  We put on these spify flight suits and then our tandem instructors came over to get us harnessed up.  My instructor was named John Paul (figured right then that God wasn't going to kill me with a guy named John Paul strapped to my back) and he was from Newfoundland Canada.  Rightly he thinks he has one of the coolest jobs possible.   We got suited up and then onto the plane.  I must admit that 11am is a little early to be sitting on the lap of a man I just met, but I figured I'd make an exception for the day.  Through all of this, Haven and I were both more excited than nervous, although I know I expected to be terrified when my moment to actually launch myself from the plane came.

As the plane climbed to our appointed 12,000 feet I realized that I'd had no idea how high 12,000 ft is (in case you are wondering it is really high).  The beautiful Taupo lake (one of the biggest in NZ) stretched out in front of us with the mountains in the distance.  Somewhere in my chatting with my instructor I asked him how many times a day he did this.  He said anywhere from 4-13.  I knew then that I wasn't going to die and I really ceased to be scared.   Haven's instructor had 9,000 jumps under her belt so they both seemed to know what they were doing.   As the plane climbed, I watching John's altitude reading and pretty quickly we were at 12,000.

As soon as we hit the mark, it was time to go and I was slated as the first one out of the plane.  The door was up (picture a roll-top door on a bread box), I smiled for a picture, my legs were out of the plane and then before I knew it we were off.  I can't describe how awesome the feeling is of launching yourself from a plane.  Your logical senses are screaming at you that you are crazy and you shouldn't be free falling at 12,000 feet, but you are so high that you don't see the ground rushing at you and you don't feel as scared as you would if you jumped off a 30 foot bridge into water.  We had about 45 secs of free fall and the wind was screaming past me so fast I couldn't even scream.  It was truly awesome.   Then John pulled the parachute and we we jerked from horizontal to vertical.  From that point on it was a leisurely, scenic float to the ground (although we did fit in a fun few spirals).

I could have gotten into a plane immediately and done it again.  What a rush!  Haven was as excited as I was and we were both so pumped that for a few minutes we just sat there going "That was awesome!"   Definitely something I could do again.   Makes me wonder how it will compare to the bungy jump in Queenstown....