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Today I did what I'm still in shock I actually did....I skydived!! It is really undescribable, you have no idea what it's like until you actually do it. I jumped tandem (kangaroo) with this guy who has jumped over 1000 times but he didn't really speak English. When I got suited up, they had a translator give me the instructions. I was really nervous about going up with him, but it was fine because he was really good. The only English I heard from him was "legs" (to lift my legs before landing), "ok", and "this is beautiful!" (which he said when we were in the air).
There was a guy that went with us and took video and pictures of the whole thing- getting ready, airplane, jump, and landing. He was good. Right before we jumped he held onto the side of the plane to get a shot of us jumping, and he jumped with us. We flew in a little old Russian combat plane. Before you jump, you walk over to the door of the plane, you lift your legs to where the instructor is supporting you, and he goes to the edge to where you're just hanging there halfway out of the plane...and then he jumps!!
We jumped from 3km (10,000 ft or 1.8 miles)!! We freefell for 2km, which was crazy. We were falling so fast; they told us you fall at 160 mi/hr! I started screaming but my saliva was gone after a couple seconds and I couldn't scream anymore.
When the parachute came out, it got a lot quieter, slower, and more peaceful. My guy was doing little tricks with the parachute where he would pull it to make us swing around, and then we would like of fall until the slack ran out and the parachute would catch us again. It was really scary at first, but also really fun. He would do it and then say, "ok?"
One of the scariest things was when the parachute came out I could hear part of it flapping. I kept looking up at it to see if it was ok. He was fiddling with part of it until the fixed it and the flapping stopped. It made me nervous though because I thought something was wrong. Then, he was messing with the buckles that had me strapped onto him and he loosened them. When you're hanging thousands of feet in the air, you don't want to be loosened from anyone!
It was so fun though! I could see all the other jumpers below me and all the fields of farmland and trees. I also saw the plane land before we did. Our landing was good, pretty easy for me beacuse the instructor does all the work.
I was the second to last jumper out of the Americans. They were doing 2 together (first Emily and Drew, then Lana and Collin), but by the time it got to Dianna and I one of the instructors had to leave. Dianna kindly let me go first because I was starting to freak out at this point because we had to keep getting ready to go and then wait, and then now we had to go by ourselves!
After everyone was done, they gave us certificates for our first jump!
After a long day at the "airport"/field, we all (Asta, her boyfriend, and 2 of their friends were with us) went to a restaurant with traditional Lithuanian food. We had these things which are potatoes mashed, then reformed, then boiled with pork inside. I also split with Lana apple pancakes with raspberry and strawberry sauce. They also have good pear cidar in Lithuania called "Kiss" so we got that too. It was an exciting day to say the least!!
previous travel blog entry
MM77 says:
That looks like a lot of fun!