Adrenaline Junkie

Typically the adrenaline rushes that I get come from running or riding (or in the rare case swimming) past someone that I didn't think I would be able to in a race or finishing a killer training session, but this past month has been a little different.  I had two opportunities to get that adrenaline pumping in ways that I was not expecting.

 Just before Thanksgiving, my dad had been offered the opportunity to repel down the side of the Hilton out at the beach.  I thought it sounded pretty cool and I went out to take some pictures.  When I got there, he was all rigged up and had already gone through his practice runs on the parking garage.  he took the elevator up to the top of the building and I went to wait outside.  I watched him come down and walked into the hotel with him so he could take off all his gear.  While he was getting ready to go, the lady who was organizing the whole thing said that they were way ahead of schedule and asked if I wanted to fill one of the empty spots.  I jumped at the chance, I was so excited. 

The volunteers promptly set me up with a harness, ropes, carabeeners, and everything else I needed and took me out to the parking garage to practice.  There wasn't much to it and the garage was only one story high, so it wasn't long before I was 17 stories up ready to repel down the hotel.  I thought I might get a little nervous once I got to the top, but I really didn't.  We started by walking backwards down the roof, kneeling at the edge, and then leaning backwards until we fell off and started the descent.  It was so much fun and right on the beach, so there was a great view! I really enjoyed getting to share that experience with my dad. 

Matt wasn't there to witness that, he was at home and got a call from my dad telling him his wife was about to jump off a 17 story building :-), but the next crazy thing I did was all his doing.  Our 7th wedding anniversary is coming up this weekend, but I will be out of town, so we decided to celebrate early.  He told me he had something planned, but wouldn't tell me what.  We left the house at around 11:00 and I really had no clue where we were going.  After driving for about 40 minutes, he asked me if I knew where we were going, I didn't, and then he looked over at me and said "you're about to jump out of a plane." I was shocked, thought about it for a minute, then got pretty excited.  My parents have both been skydiving and I thought it would be cool to do, but I never dreamed that was what he had planned.

We got to the airport in Elberta, AL, checked in and started getting ready to go. Oh yeah, I do have to mention that I was a little nervous that he was sending me up to jump out of an airplane, but he was staying on the ground to "take pictures" :-). We had to watch the safety videos, sit through a short briefing of what was going to happen, and then we put on our jump suits and harnesses.  Since I had never done it before, I was jumping tandem (attached to an instructor).

When everyone was ready, we headed out to this rickety little airplane and climbed in.  It was pretty cramped and took us about 20 minutes to get to the altitude that we were to jump from.  When we reached 13,500 feet, the door opened and people started jumping out. We were the last to go and I really didn't get nervous until I was sitting on the edge about to jump.  We had decided earlier that we wanted to do flips as we jumped out, so I squatted down at the edge of the plane, pulling my knees to my chest, and then rolled out head first.  It was a rush like no other.  We free fell for about a minute which was incredible and then the parachute opened.  Once the parachute is open it's a pretty relaxed ride down.  The instructor let me hold onto the controls and we did a few spins which were cool, but made me a little nauseous.  I made it safely to the ground after a pretty smooth landing and told Matt that he has to try it, but he told me not to worry about returning the favor :-).