When nerds fall from the sky

Got a present from my wife today, a tandom skydive at West Point
Skydiving Adventures here in Virginia.

It was a absolute blast!
The first second of the freefall felt very strange. Not really a feeling of fear, just a general feeling of "this isn't right" - kind of an off-balance feeling.

But once the first second of freefall is over it really just felt like I was laying on a bed of air.
The temp was around freezing when we went so it really took your breath away (was very
difficult to breathe when looking down into the 120mph wind).

After the 40 seconds or so of freefall I reached to my right hip and pulled the ripcord (after double checking with my instructor).

When the chute deployed, it almost felt like we were being lifted up, not just slowed down (guess my body was getting used to going down very fast).

The view was spectacular under the canopy. I pulled the cord around 6,000 feet, so there was still plenty of air under us. We did a few "spins" by pulling hard on one of the "guidance lines" (I don't know the real term) and holding it. After a few seconds we would be spinning fairly fast. Once we got going to a decent rate, we would kick it the other way. Had a nice roller-coaster effect.

My instructor showed me how to flare when we were still a good ways up. It was farily quiet under the capopy normally, but when we did a hard flare, it got almost dead silent (no more air noise).

After a minute or two, we had made a safe landing down below and I had a perma-grin on my face. I absolutely loved every second of it. That was another one of my life-goals, so I can finally check one off.

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