Here are some fun pictures I took after my dives on Saturday. I LOVE Skydive Utah…they are so cool and considerate. They really care about you and your safety. I am fascinated by how they pack the parachutes.
The whole fear of skydiving is also very interesting to me. When I first did it I was absolutely terrified out of my mind. However, if you look at the statistics, you have a MUCH better chance having an accident in your own car or in the airplane ride before you jump. Most of the fatalities that I have read of (about a dozen or so a year) happen because the diver was doing something stupid and not following procedure. Granted, talking about getting killed skydiving probably isnt comforting, but the number of people who die in cars (60,000+ in the U.S. per year), or after being attacked by deer (65+ a year), or noodling (catching catfish barehanded), 70+ a year, puts it into perspective. The possibility of equipment failure is extremely remote, although it does happen, there are still backup plans.
When you jump, you have 2 chutes, and your backup has a program that will open if you do not trigger the chute at a certain altitude, so you can be completely unconscious and one of your chutes will open.
The more I talk with the instructors, the more I am convinced this inherit fear of skydiving is all mental. It is one of the more safe extreme sports.
Your first two jumps have to be tandem. This is where you are strapped into a harness and then locked to an instructor. Both of my tandems were done with instructors who had over 3000 dives each. 
🙂 You know you want to try this!
Can you try to explain what or how you feel when you 1) are on your way down and 2) when you are back on land!
Kudos to you for doing it. I am just thankful my husband isn’t on this blog becaue you probably would have sold him on jumping.
Just keep raising that bar!!! =) I noticed in the video that it seemed you were talking to other sky diver after you left the plane. Was that so and you can hear each other or was it hand gestures in preparation for the landing? Just curious. Thanks.
The initial drop makes your stomach drop, but after 5-6 seconds, you feel fine.Its hard to tell you are falling, because you are so high, it feels like a massive amount of wind around you-its so loud you cannot hear anything even if you yelled as loud as you could. So we have a lot of pre-determined hand signals to communicate with each other. My instructor is telling me to position my legs differently before he lets go. If you notice before we jump, I look at him and shake my head, then bounce up, down and then jump. We practice this a few dozen times and it becomes a reflex so when the moment comes you do not hesitate. Once on the ground, you feel like a million dollars. the first time I did it I was on a high for 2 months! I kid you not!
Wow…wow….wow. I will live vicariously through you! :o)
I have been skydiving twice and it was truly a terrifying yet grand experience! The second time obviously did not have the same edge as the first…but was just as gratifying.
terrifying is a good way to put it….but absolutely worth it. You feel so awesome and proud of yourself when its over.
Do those statistics take into consideration the number of cars on the road in comparison to the number of people sky diving? I have always been curious, because I have heard people say that you have more of a chance of being struck by lightening than being bitten by a shark. I always quote statistics to make me feel better when I am out on the water, but I have always wondered how they were figured out. Once again, congrats on your jump. I think it is fantastic.
My understanding is in 2007, there were 21 deaths in skydiving out of 2.5 million jumps, or .0000084 chance of death skydiving. As far as cars go, 43,000 people were killed out of 300 Million, which works out to a .0001433 chance. Thus you have a 17 times greater chance dying in your car than you do skydiving. Believe it or not!!
Thanks Michael. I feel better now 🙂