Why jump out of a perfectly good plane?

I went sky diving with Roger from work last Friday. I really wanted to go again before I returned to England and Roger kind of wanted to go but just needed someone else to get round to booking it.

There are only two places in Sydney which do sky diving and the one I chose was in Penrith just west of Sydney. It’s only an hours drive from the centre and the place was right next to the Olympic rowing lakes. The weather wasn’t’ fantastic for the jump and I felt it could have been cancelled because of the low cloud.

They went ahead anyhow and after a brief training session Roger and I were lucky enough to be going in the first group of people. I must admit the people at Simply Skydive weren’t the best, as they weren’t that friendly really and there wasn’t much confidence when their set-up was literally just a tent in the middle of a field. At $500 including a DVD and photos it was a little more expensive than the New Zealand sky dive as well.

The actual air field was also a twenty minute car ride from the landing zone as well. When we got to the airfield I met my instructor, Bernie. Roger met his instructor on the mini bus and he wasn’t the nicest guy in the world either. I think he was just a little angry against everything and hardly spoke to Roger and didn’t really talk about the jump we were going to make at all.

Well the plane that we were going to go up in looked like a patchwork of metal just pained over red and I was frankly surprised that it managed to take off. I was sat almost right next to the pilot and was going to be last to jump out of the group of three sky divers in our plane. There were some great views from my wing seat, more so when we rose above the clouds and saw the full sun.

I realised at this point that I would be jumping through the clouds and thought, fantastic! Roger is on the very left of this photo. I’m sure his instructor was yawning during the flight and kept closing his eyes all the time. I thought not to mention this to Roger at the time.

We only had a video camera attached to each instructors arm and this was to provide the video and still photos. The New Zealand sky dive had a digital SLR for still shots and a separate cameraman jumper. I guess they both have advantages as the separate jumper can take better shots when falling, while the camera on the arm can capture shots while parachuting.

This is me just after jumping out of the plane. I pretty much had an insane grin all the way down. My mouth was quite dry at the end of the jump because it was open for so long too.

I was a little disappointed because the jump was advertised as being from 14,000 ft, but I noticed on the altimeter that we jumped at around 12-13,000 ft. So we probably only had around 45 seconds of freefall.

It was one hell of a 45 seconds though. The feeling I got when doing a somersalt out of the plane was fantastic, something that I didn’t do on my first jump. Even better was falling towards the clouds and then falling though them to see the ground below them. I could also see Roger just below me as well.

The instructor let me have a go at making turns once the parachute had been deployed. This was really fun as this time I was in control of what we did. I could pull really tight turns and almost fall horizontal downwards which gives that falling feeling in your stomach.

Even though Roger jumped before me I managed to catch him up and land before him while doing turns. Probably because I was doing more turns to fall quicker. The instructor did say before the jump not to pull both cords at once otherwise you collapse the parachute!

It was a very good jump and really encouraged me to want to try to do a jump on my own. It will cost quite a lot though so I have to weigh up whether it’s really worth it.

Just behind me you can see the Olympic rowing course in Penrith. I could see quite a few rowers in the lake. I wonder what they made of people falling out of the sky towards them.

Roger appeared to quite enjoy the jump as well. He looked very happy that he had done it and enjoyed it too. We both have a DVD of the jump which is quite good fun to watch. Unfortunately you can’t hear what I’m yelling on my way down. If you could hear it I’m sure you would hear me shouting “I’m alive, I’m alive, I feel so alive!”

Something quite funny happened on our way back from Penrith. The sky diving company are quite happy to pick us up from the CBD but wouldn't give us a lift back. Anyhow, we caught a lift from their next set of jumpers to the Penrith train station as it was on their way. In the next set of jumpers there were three younger lads who looked quite sure of themself earlier on. Now that they were in the mini bus they looked very quiet and stressed. We mentioned that we were heading back to work and one of them said in a very surprised voice. "What you're going back to work, after what you've just done!". We just replied, "Yes morning sky dive and then afternoon back to work as usual.". Tee hee.

Last night I went out for a final evening out with Ian and Anita. We went for some beers right after work and then he took me to a really cool steak restaurant called Prime. It’s located in the cellar of a very old post office building. The old post office building is amazing. It has all sorts of designer shops and bars as well.

It was very posh in the restaurant and we did feel very underdressed while there. The wine menu looked more like an encyclopaedia with all manner of wines, the most expensive was just over a thousand dollars.

You could have waggu beef here too, which was the most expensive thing on the menu. I decided to plump for the 500g T bone which was cooked to perfection and just melted in my mouth. I’m sure that everything was probably so high in calories that I’ll have to take a week of gym time to work it off while not eating anything but lettuce and plain boiled rice.