Yeah, I’m Free…Free Fallin’!

Oh yeah, that’s me…and that’s the sky.  As you can clearly see, there is a man strapped to my back and I’m pretty much hurtling to the ground.  I was bat shit terrified on the plane, but I did it…and it was fan-fucking-tastic!

As you may remember, I was supposed to have jumped eons ago, but to say Skydive Orange is unorganized is an understatement.  On our first attempt to jump, we were skipped over.  When I noticed everyone in my training class had finished their jumps, I started to wonder.  But when I noticed people who showed up waaaaay after me and my friend were jumping, I got pissed.  And no one wants to deal with a pissed Shaw Girl.  I may come off all cheery and “Oh, let me bake you some fresh scones” nice, but the bitch comes out when she’s needed.  I firmly pointed out that my friend and I had been skipped.  They alleged there were scheduling issues with the videographer, but that was hard to believe since there was always at least one videographer on the ground…idly chatting away with his buddies.  But almost immediately, as if by magic, our names showed up on the board for the next jump…just in time for plane malfunctions.  We got in our suits, even got on the plane and went up in the air.   But the engine couldn’t get us up high enough to jump, so the pilot headed back to the hangar.  All jumps were shelved until the plane could be fixed.  By this time, we’d been there for well over five hours and there was no telling when (or even if) the plane would be operational again.  So we begrudgingly rescheduled…something I didn’t want to do at all.  While there were some nice people there, there was also a lot of (how can I say this nicely?) frat boy behavior.  I’m not a prude in the least, but when I’m about to jump out of a freakin’ plane, I don’t want to see numerous bumper stickers expressing your extreme fondness for a particular sexual activity.  I also would prefer not to see you rudely throwing gear at a woman obviously frightened out of her mind because this is her first jump.  On that first trip, the tandem students were pretty much treated as an inconvenience…something only marginally better than what was at the bottom of the tandem instructor’s shoes.  Considering how excited we were when we arrived at the hangar, it was crushing to be greeted with this disorganized, rude and often callous attitude.  The staff’s attitude could best be summarized by a sign prominently posted at the front desk:  “Quality, Safety, Customer Service…Pick Two”.  But Skydive Orange doesn’t offer refunds, so we were forced to either eat the over $300 cost or reschedule.  I left so disappointed, I was almost in tears.  As you know, we stopped at Ray’s Hellburger to console ourselves, but I dreaded having to deal with Skydive Orange again.

On the morning of our second attempt, I woke up to a lot of cloud cover.  Because Orange, Virginia is over an hour and a half away from DC, I called to check and see if the cloud cover would be a problem.  I was told there wasn’t any cloud cover in Orange and that the forecast looked great.  I nervously asked “Are you sure? We’re scheduled to jump at 10 and the clouds here look bad.”  I was assured the clouds were fine and that there shouldn’t be a problem.  Uhmmm…no.  As we were pulling up to the PARKING LOT, my friend gets a call from one of the employees saying the clouds were delaying all jumps…since 8 FUCKIN’  a.m.  Wanna know what time I called?  Around 7:50!  When we walked into the hangar, there were a ton of people…apparently no one had jumped yet that day!  Seriously????? I was so upset, I was practically shaking.  We had driven all the way to Orange…for nothing.  As with before, there was no organization…tandem students were trying to find out from each other what was going on (as the instructors were once again treating the students as if they didn’t exist).  We finally found out from (of all people) the mechanic that the chance of anyone jumping that day was nonexistent.  I didn’t trust myself to be civil, so I let my friend do most of the talking, scheduling us for a THIRD attempt to skydive.

On our third attempt, I woke up to a gorgeous day…and something told me in my gut that we were going to finally jump.  When we arrived at Skydive Orange, the atmosphere was completely different.  The front desk was being managed by a woman who clearly knew what she was doing.  She collected our receipts and assured us we would be jumping shortly.  We still had to go through the ground training (even though this was our third time), but I’m very glad we did!  The guy leading this training was much more thorough than our previous ground training instructor.  I learned several tips that I can confidently say helped to make my jump so smooth.  I was assigned to an excellent tandem instructor.  He was quiet, which at first made me think he was aloof.  But it turned out he was just very calm and very level headed.  Unlike the many young maverick wanna be’s floating around the hangar (some walked around without their shirts, doing push ups and handstands to prove their strength…I was seriously waiting for a bunch of them to whip out their units and start measuring each other), this guy was experienced and professional.  He completely lacked the cockiness (and annoying douchebaggery…oh yeah, that’s a word) of the others.  My friend was also lucky enough to be assigned a great instructor…a laid back and all around friendly guy who flat out said he loved sharing the experience of a person’s first skydive.  Hands down he was one of the few tandem instructors who seemed to have that attitude.  I once again saw other students being treated like dirt by a few instructors, but we lucked out.

I’m not going to lie…once we got on the plane, I was fucking terrified.  I usually don’t mind flying, but the wind was causing a bit of turbulence.  And considering how small the plane was, that little turbulence was magnified to scary proportions.  It helped tremendously to have my friend with me on the plane.  My instructor also calmly assured me that the turbulence was nothing and that if worse came to worse, we’d just jump off early.  To help allay my fears, he had me watch as he hooked our harnesses together.  He also went over some additional tips and let me know what to expect at every stage.  I think I mostly nodded and sat open mouthed, staring out into the sky.  I kept thinking to myself “What the fuck are you doing??? There’s nothing wrong with this plane!!! Why are you jumping out of it??? Stay the fuck inside!!!”

But something inside of me clicked and I realized this was about so much more than just a simple jump.  And here is the cathartic revelation (insert cheesy mellow music here):

I have always been a good girl…always doing what was expected of me, what was right.  I never did anything to upset the apple cart because I was afraid…afraid to reach for something higher…afraid to try something new for fear of failure.  That fear has led me to abandon things that could have been fruitful…not try harder because a voice said inside of me to be happy with the status quo.  I never did a lot of things because of fear…including my almost crippling fear of heights.  I had let fear rule my life for a long time…and I was tired of it.

I’m 33 years old folks…I may not look it, but I am.  I’ve come to a point in my life that I have to stop punishing myself for past mistakes.  I have battled weight issues all of my life and being a good cook hasn’t helped.  A few years ago, I lost a huge amount of weight, but over the last few years, I’ve slowly started to put it back on.  And in a family of thin wome with high metabolisms, it’s hard being the one with hips.  I’ve belittled myself to the point of tears because I allowed my weight to become a problem again.  I’ve longingly looked at pictures of when I was a size 2 and berated myself for gaining so much back.  A voice in my head has repeatedly said “See, you’ll always be the big girl…you’ll never be beautiful again.”  Yes, I’ve had all of these thoughts and when we got up to the opening of the plane, they were all tumbling around in my head.  I looked down at the Earth and for the first time in a long time, I thought to myself “You can do anything”…and then I jumped.  When you’ve fallen rapidly towards the ground with nothing but a (hopefully functional) parachute keeping you safe, suddenly nothing seems insurmountable.  I felt so free…the view was gorgeous and not one single bad thought came into my head.  How could it, when I got to see this view:

I wish I could describe the feeling I had floating up there…the sheer euphoria of watching my feet dangling so high above the Earth.  I can say that it’s a feeling I will never forget…something I won’t ever let myself forget.  Because I finally felt free for those few minutes I was up there.  I didn’t worry about how I looked or what I said or if I was making other people happy…I was just being me.  And as ABC Afterschool Special as it may sound, I realized being me wasn’t so bad after all.  I’m not saying this jump completely changed my life and I’m now a size 2 with no worries or cares.  This week alone I cried yet again as I tried to fit into something I no longer could wear.  But unlike before, when I would just give up and let the negative voices tell me I’d never succeed, I sucked it up.  I wrote to a few friends and they shared their take on their own struggles with weight.  But in the end, I realized it was up to me to make those changes.  And not because of vanity…but because I want to be healthy again.  I want to be able to walk up the stairs in my apartment without getting winded.  I want to eat better, not just so I can lose pounds on the scale but because I FEEL better when I do it.  I want to be free of constantly worrying…constantly fearing what others may think of my body.  I want to be free of punishing myself for loving food.

So I’ve started exercising again (it helps that the gym is literally a block from my apartment) and I’ve made a stronger commitment to being conscious of what goes in my body.  I will never go on a diet because I don’t think diets are realistic.  Sure you may lose the weight.  But once you do, unless you’ve changed your eating habits, it will come back.  Instead, I’m changing how I relate to my food and being a more conscientious food consumer.  Although I already buy a majority of my food from local sources, with a little planning, my goal is to get at least 85% of what goes into my body from farms and local food purveyors.  I want to be able to talk to the people growing and making the food I eat so I can make better choices.

But most importantly, I’m going to finally stop being afraid.  I’m not really sure how my little post about skydiving ended up being such a confessional, but there it is.  Even though the hassles with Skydive Orange were tremendous, they were all forgotten when I was floating in the sky.  Much to my mother’s chagrin, I would definitely do it again…just not at Skydive Orange.

Uhmmm, but seriously folks, all good vibrations and feel good revelations aside, don’t go to Skydive Orange.  We got lucky with our tandem instructors that day but the place is poorly run.  And knowing they’ve had two deaths in the last year (something I didn’t discover until AFTER I paid them money) doesn’t really surprise me considering the level of disorganization.  Although both deaths were ruled accidental, you have to wonder how two could occur so close to each other.  And although Skydive Orange will tell you otherwise, there is another fully accredited (and highly reviewed…oh if only I had Googled better) option for tandem skydiving in the DC area: Skydive Virginia.  It may be a little further out, but I’m definitely going to give them a try for my next jump!