Adventures as a Wannabe Aussie: Free Fallin'

14,000 feet. That's 2.65 miles. And it's several thousand feet higher than most jump sites in the US.

After our epic disappointment last weekend, we woke up this morning ready for the biggest adventure of our lives. Christy, Tori, Caitlin, Rachel and I, joined by Alex, who finally got the permission to jump (!!!) got to Byron Bay and after about an hour (it was hard to tell how long it actually was... I was too nervous to pay attention), we got all suited up in our super cute pants and harnesses. By this point, I was visibly shaking and totally freaking out. I honestly don't know what I was afraid of... I wasn't afraid I was going to die, I wasn't afraid of the falling or the parachute... I guess it was just the anticipation and the unknown. One of the ladies working there pulled me aside and tried to calm me down, which sort of helped. She told me that as soon as I landed, I had to find her and hug her, and she gave me all sorts of tips. After a brief training session (it literally was less than 5 minutes) telling us body positions for the jump and the landing, we met our tandem partners and loaded the plane. If you think I wasn't in full blown panic mode by this point, you are wrong. The little tiny plane had all 6 of us SLU girls, plus our tandem divers, plus another girl and her tandem, plus Christy and Tori's dedicated diver photographers. That's 16 people in this little bitty airplane. We started to take off down the non-existant runway and the plane door was wide open so I was certain that Christy was going to just get sucked out. After we had been in the air for a few minutes, I looked at my partner and was like 'So we're getting pretty close to our jump height now, right?' He just shook his head at me... we were only at 2,000 feet, only 1/7th of the way to our jump height. That's when I started to hyperventilate. I had my eyes closed and was just trying to breathe, apparently it looked like I was going to puke. When I was able to look out the window, the views of the beach were absolutely beautiful. You can see them in my video that I'll post a link to at the end of this post. Before I knew it, my partner was making the final adjustments and telling me to put on my goggles (which were incredibly attractive obviously).

Then all the sudden, Christy's photographer was hanging off the side of the airplane like a ninja and it was time for Christy to jump. The most terrifying part of the whole experience was watching my friends disappear over the edge of the plane and hear their screams die to silence. I literally screamed more and louder when I watched Christy, Tori and Caitlin jump than I did in my own jump. It was my turn then and as my partner sat on the edge of the plane, I was literally dangling over the side, 14,000 feet in the air. And then I was flying. For the first like 5 seconds I could feel the 'roller coaster free-fall' feeling and then that was gone and I felt like I was floating. It was incredible. 60 seconds later, the parachute was pulled and we spent the next 5 minutes just gliding down to the ground! Even though I'm horribly afraid of heights, I didn't feel scared or nervous at all anymore! Once we landed, I was ready to do it again! Skydiving is an impossible feeling to explain but I highly recommend you do it!!! I'm officially obsessed!

To see all my pictures, go to my facebook album 'Aussie Aussie Aussie' or friend me if we aren't facebook friends! There's a link at the bottom of this post to the actual video of the jump!