A Perfectly Good Plane

For years, my mom has casually mentioned that she's always wanted to go skydiving. But it's always sort of sounded like one of those "Someday I'd like to..." things. Then a few years ago my friend Erica and I went skydiving to celebrate graduating from college, and when I showed my mom the video, she reiterated how much she'd always wanted to try. We talked about going in 2005, but never found a good date. So obviously, when she and my dad decided to come visit me in New Zealand, I had to put skydiving on the itinerary. Taupo has the cheapest skydiving in the world (don't worry, it's not as dodgy as it sounds. It's just because the airspace taxes are low), and it has other activities to entertain the non-skydiving half of our family.

To be honest, I wasn't 100% sure she'd go through with it. Jumping out of a plane at 12,000 ft is not for everyone, and it's pretty easy to get scared off. I've done it before, and I was getting pretty nervous in the days leading up to our jump. No matter how many times you do it, there's always that feeling for about 45 seconds that you are falling through mid-air and you don't actually know yet that your parachute will work.

But all the parachutes opened that day, and it was awesome. It's hard to explain just how awesome skydiving it is, so probably better to just watch for yourself. I have to say, though, that I'm not sure whether it was more exciting doing the actual jump myself (complete with some serious spins and flips during the free fall, plus a hit-the-ground-running landing), or watching my mom. See if you get as excited about it as I did.