Traedogg Down Under

This is NOT a joke. On Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 Jen Smoose, Brianna Harris and I went skydiving over the beaches of Australia!! I really appoligize for not telling anyone beforehand…(especially you mom, dad and T) but it was with good reason! I did not want to make anyone needlessly worry about me (or try to talk me out of it!) I figured after I was safely on the ground… no one could be too mad at me for it;) And you know me, I greatly weighed the risk of dying (1/20000)…. and realized I had a better chance getting hit by a car as a foreign pedistrian then jumping out of a plane! But risk or not, Jen, Bree and I decided weeks ago that before we left Australia we were going to hurl ourselves from a plane together…and today was the day.

Now I’m sure many of you are thinking…”what on earth posessed her to do that!” But the reason was simple. I just really wanted to. Sounded like one hell of a time, and since I am not afraid of heights, I thought as long as I was coming over to Australia to be carefree, challenge myself and make the most out of my life, what better way to see the country then from above. Not only that, but before I left the states, my dad gave me a St. Christopher pendent (a gesture that actually really meant a lot to me) and told me it would keep me safe on all my travels. So of course I had it on today and knew I would make it to the ground in one piece. That… and I have WAY to much living left to do. (God and I talked it over.. he told me he had more in store for me). So… enough pleading my case on why jumping was necessary… time to tell the tale of my adventure!

I’ll begin by saying the experience is indescribably BRILLIANT!! A “must do” before you die type of thing. (Although I take no responsibility if you do make the jump and end up being the 1/20000 who plummet to your death!) The journey began the night before when Jen Bree and I spent our evening writing out “just incase” letters, journal entries and emails…”just in case” anything were to happen. The following morning we left instructions with our roomate Britt where she could find these important notes if need be, and were out the door by 8:30 to take a bus to the train station. We rode by train 1 1/2 hours to North Wollongong (doing crossword puzzles and listening to music (“Hanging by a Moment” was my song of choice)) until we arrived at 11:01. After a quick call to “Skydive the Beach,” they sent a van to pick us up and take us to the drop zone.

At the drop zone, the first thing we did was sign wavers which clearly stated, “Skydiving often results in severe paralaysis and/or death.” (no joke) Yet, we cooly laughed it off, gave them our John Handcock and hopped into our hott looking skydive jumpsuits (after paying a pretty penny). Before we had time to finish taking our “we look so hott in these jumpsuit” pictures… a group of completely psychotic men come running into the building yelling for us…. YUP…. our tandem instructors! They were really quite a group…. honestly, if I saw them in a dark alley, i might be tempted to run in the other direction.. but as the lady who worked in the office told us… “you have to be a little crazy to skydive for a living!” And, these men turned out to be INCREDIBLY WONDERFUL people (that is why you never judge a book by its cover).

I quickly, politiely asked my instructor, Adam, if he was going to take good care of me today. He assured me he would b/c he recently fell in love and had too much to lose. I smiled and told him I was in love too;) (probably the only thing this man and I had in common…. that, and the parachute that would guide us both to safety!) After literally a few seconds of going over the position my body was supposed to be in while falling through the air and getting strapped into a harness of sorts, 10 of us (five jumpers and five instructors) were loaded onto a bus to take us to where the planes took off. On this bus ride, I learned that my instructor and I would be jumping first since our weight total was the least!! (don’t ask me why that matters…but someones gotta be first!) We then unboarded the bus and boarded the plane immediately (the trick of the whole day was they never gave you enough time to think for too long) and we began our 25 minute assent to 14000 feet. Our drop height. From there, there was only one way down… and that was a 60 second free fall, followed by a 5-7 minute parachute ride to earth. (Not jumping was not an option… not for me anyways). The whole way up, I was just thinking how wierd it was that I was surprisingly calm. I really wasn’t nervous or freaking out in the least. I was just excited and really wanted to get out there. This jump was about trust… (in a man I just met 20 minutes earlier…. with my life.. but hey… I’ve always been one to have faith in people!)… and trust in God that he would get me to the ground and somehow I just knew he would. Not only that, having the company of two of my best friends, Jen and Bree made the experience all the more worth while.

With the five minute warning, I was told to kneel in front of the door to the plane where i was quickly strapped into the harness of my instructor (VERY SNUGGLY) and with two minutes to go I put on my goggles (which the instructor tightened SUPER tight on my face… these babies were going nowhere!) At one minute the door to the plane was opened and I was looking down at earth and seconds later, Adam and I were tumbling out of the plane towards the ground! It will be IMPOSSIBLE to describe what it felt like to fly through the air.. miles and miles above…. but it DID NOT feel like falling. It was one of those.. “OH MY GOSH…THIS IS ME!” moments where you are trying your best to remember every detail… but its an out of body experience. The 60 seconds went by like 5 seconds…and it literally felt like you were suspended in air. There was no sensation of falling whatsoever. Then, when the parachute was pulled, (my moment of “oh god.. please open”… and i was expecting to get yanked up into the air.. but it really was just a slight lifting up and a relaxing ride to the ground! My instructor even let me steer!

THE BEST PART OF EVERYTHING: ITS ALL ON VIDEO! There was an option to buy a photo/DVD package for a hell of a lot of extra money. I couldn’t allow myself to spend $125 dollars on it above and beyond what it already cost to jump, but my two roomates Jen and Bree (Two of the greatest girls I know) INSISTED I got my experience documented. And by insisted, I mean they told me point blank not getting it wasn’t an option b/c they were going to split the cost of it as a gift for me for my birthday! It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me…(for two people I had met only 50 days ago to do something like that for me????) It just really touched my heart. They (along with my other 3 roomates) have made my time here all that I could ever have hoped it would be and more. Without them, I would be incredibly homesick.

But… these pictures and DVD footage Jen and Bree paid for… are easily the WORST DOCUMENTED PICTURES AND FOOTAGE I HAVE EVER SEEN OF MYSELF! Jen (a photography major) blames it on the “fish-eye lense” and the angle of the shots! But the fact that the pictures turned out how they did was perfect. It just wouldnt’ have been right if they turned out any other way. Other then the jump itself, my favorite part of the day was sitting with them in the drop zone afterwards watching the tapes of one another laughing our asses off! (or laughing at ourselves again, even harder, later that evening with our roomate Anna). Jen, Bree and I all agreed we could use the incriminating photos of one another in any way we saw fit for the rest of our lives! (I took full advantage already and posted some good ones of each of them along with me on snapfish! And for any of you who thought I was vain and only post photos I look alright in.. you were SO WRONG!) Nick, you will also take GREAT pleasure in these pictures. You know how you tease me about my big nostrils (all out of love of course).. well.. lets just say the camera (and freefalling at such rapid speeds) AMPLIFIED the width of my nostrils;)! A LOT! (mom.. kinda looks like your drivers liscence photo of old;)!!) But thankfully my face (and the faces of my roomies) returned to normal upon landing;) I hope everyone goes to the sight and gets a good laugh at our expense. Really… please do. (www.snapfish.com username: tlswartz@wisc.edu password: missyou make sure you click on the “photos” tab.. my ablums are in BLUE.. my friends ablums are in GREEN)

So in conclusion… for any of you still reading… skydiving was the experience of a lifetime. It was one of the greatest days I have had in my life (but dont feel to bad about this if you weren’t there… the rest of you at some point were part of one of my other “greatest days”). But Jen, Bree and I will be life long friends after going though this together. But I have a feeling.. even if we didn’t jump out of a plane together… we still would have been lifelong friends anyways;)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 at 8:40 am and is filed under In Australia!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.