Without being an adrenaline addict, I jumped. Open parachute!
Skydiving in tandem leaves you free to enjoy
When the info about a parachute jumping service came into my hands, I put it aside like an automatic reflex.
I’m not the kind of person that does extreme sports or is addicted to adrenaline. The biggest emotions I ever expose myself to is a good movie or something of that nature. Far from what I’d thought, the idea of skydiving had not completely left my mind.
Due to a series of strange coincidences, on a walk through downtown Cabo San Lucas, I found a business that offered parachute jumps. I went in, just to calm my curiosity.
They informed me that for inexperienced people like myself, there was a very good option to experience this adventure. The tandem jump, which consists of jumping while tied onto an expert instructor. The instructor opens the parachute and takes care of those oh-so-important details. I had to do nothing else than just “enjoy the jump”.
The rest of the afternoon I kept thinking, “Do I have the courage to jump from an airplane more than 4.400 meters up (about two and a half miles)? Maybe it’s not that difficult. After all my favorite recurring dream is about flying”. It took a couple of days for me to decide.
When I was boarding the plane doubts started flying through my head. I decided to ignore them. Instead, I concentrated on listening to the instructor who would accompany me on the jump.
Once in the plane, just before reaching the ideal altitude, I started feeling the first signs of an important production of adrenaline. The most intense moment was when the door opened and I got a sight of that precious view from 13,000 feet up in the sky. Without asking me anything, the instructor jumped into the void along with a bundle of nerves and emotions, me.
At a terminal speed of approximately 200 kilometers per hour in free fall, there isn’t room for many thoughts but one, “Get that parachute open!”.
Once the chute was open and with a lot of promises to fulfill in exchange for that, we experienced a great deceleration to about six meters a second. It feels like you are suspended in midair.
When you are so far up, there are no reference points to make you feel the downward movement, until a few meters before you touch down.
I’d never felt so happy as when the calluses on my feet told me I was on land once again. It’s definitely an extreme sport due to its excellence. I don’t believe there exists another activity that produces so much adrenaline in the body. I can only imagine what the experts must feel when they achieve a terminal velocity of 350 – 400 kilometers an hour…
In other words, it’s a gift to your senses. But, like in any extreme sport, the safety and professionalism that this company offers, is the most important thing to keep in mind.
Precedents:
- 1495: Leonardo Da Vinci drew up the first parachute design.
- The first parachute jump from an airplane was in 1912; it was executed by an American Army captain.
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