Skydive from 14,000 feet over the GREAT BARRIER REEF

SKYDIVING IS SOMETHING NOT NORMAL TO HUMANS.  Thanks again to my short term career choice with Koala Beach Resort in Cairns, I was able to do a 'famile' skydive with Australia Skydive (one of the biggest in the world now due to two companies merging).  My jump cost me $35.  Jumps are usually around $300.  Happy days.  I wasn't as nervous as I was in Interlaken, Switzerland 7 years ago...funny how age can calm your nerves a bit and when you are younger you are more aware of scary shit that can kill you or give you a heart attack.  I guess as we get older we seem to get lazy in our paranoid thinking?  Anyhow, for all of you whom have jumped out of a perfectly good airplane know that SKYDIVING IS UNREAL.  One can watch movies and television and see skydivers doing there thing but let me tell you that when that door opens up in that little Cessna at 14,000 feet and you are higher than clouds and houses and cows are the same size, you question a lot of things about the short-term past, present, and future.  PAST = drank two beers.  PRESENT = 120 MPH free fall looking down on a tropical rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.  FUTURE = "where do I sign up to get certified?"

I HAVE COME TO REALIZE AFTER 30 YEARS OF LIVING on this planet that there are must do's.  Skydiving is a must do.  I don't care how scared you are of heights, or how much anxiety flying gives you, or how you can get motion sickness...if you want to really FEEL like a human in this 10+ billion year old universe, JUMP OUT OF AN AIRPLANE.  12 people fill this tiny, tiny plane and I would say it probably gets better gas mileage than a car it is so small.  You are packed in like sardines and no one knows to laugh or cry during the ascent.  Your jump master continues to show you his altimeter and you start realizing that this is getting close to the stage that jet airliners turn off the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign.  You go above clouds.  You can't make out things on the ground from houses to cars to animals to buildings.  The door opens and the cold air hits everyone resulting in SCREAMING and SMILES and FACES OF TERROR.  I put my dive glasses on and crossed my arms as I watch a girl in front of me (who was fairly nervous about the jump at the shop earlier) and her instructor head to the edge of the cabin to jump and she does not follow the rules and cross her arms but proceeds to grab the ceiling, door, wall, ground; basically everything to keep her from plummeting from the aircraft.  She exited the plane on the ground that day.  The kid next also grabbed the door when he is supposed to have his arms crossed.  Switzerland, 7 years ago, I grabbed the door like a child reaching for his mother.  This time, I just smiled and crossed my arms and let Jeremy, my instructor, scoot us up to the ledge.  It is frightening.  Sheer terror in a good way I guess.  Before you can realize what you are actually doing or where you are or what is about to happen, you have exited the plane.  One barrel roll and (thanks to my instructor advising me to keep my eyes open) you are looking back and waving to the aircraft.  It was a white plane I think.  Jeremy taps my arm signaling me to uncross my arms and let them FLY.  You are flying.  You are going 120 MPH.  I have told many of you throughout the years that the best way to picture what is like is to imagine a freeway.  You are standing 10 feet next to this freeway watching the cars ZOOM by.  So fast as they just WIZZ by. Probably doing 65 MPH (or if you live in California you are probably imagining cars going 80 MPH or 90 MPH), see the cars flying by as your head turns.  Now picture that same car moving at almost double that speed, or 120 MPH.  Now those cars are literally ROARING BY you and your head can't turn fast enough to eye them as they cruise by.  Now, picture you, yes, YOU, next to that car like Superman keeping pace with it as it flies down the asphalt.  Now picture yourself staying next to that car for a minute.  It is around a minute but it feels like a second thinking back.  A minute doing 120 MPH without a seat belt is almost life changing.  There really isn't anything else in the world that can give you the sensation that skydiving does.  We as kids stuck our heads out the window of the family van headed out on a camping trip and that was fun.  But double the speed and get rid of the cabin you are riding in and you will feel like Neo in the Matrix.

BEING A TRAVEL WRITER, I OBVIOUSLY ASKED A LOT OF QUESTIONS to Jeremy in the field (drop zone) we landed in.  Some of you already know that there are 2 parachutes on every jump.  If the first gets tangled you are trained to cut the first one and deploy the second.  What fascinates me the most is the computer generating emergency deployment.  A lot of people worry about dying when skydiving but it is safer than walking around a major city.  You see, if your body is still moving at 120 MPH at 700 feet (seems a bit low for me ay?), the computer inside parachute #2 will deploy automatically.  This is so rare and my instructor said that if you are having computer generated deployments that you shouldn't being skydiving.  My question, but never asked for obvious reasons, is "what happens if the computer fails?"  Thank you electrical engineers.

AFTER THE CANOPY IS OPENED AND YOU ARE JERKED AWAY from your superhero speed towards the earth, you look up and thankfully watch your parachute fill with air.  For a millisecond you see the cords untangling and think to yourself are we going to have a malfunction?  Jeremy has done around 3000 jumps and just recently had his first malfunction.  Funny how cords can knot up and tangle yeah?  I have enough trouble getting my shitty headphones for my mp3 player to straighten out.  (similar to losing your mask/regulator diving at the ocean floor), you simply follow your training and know exactly where to release your main shoot and deploy the second.  People don't die in the air, they die on landing.  With power lines, wind, trees, buildings, etc, most skydiving deaths are correlated to the landing going wrong.  Before the landing is almost my favorite part.  While the freefall is amazing and intense, the parachuting around at slower speeds is so tranquil and transcendentally calming that it is hard to explain.  Looking out and seeing the reef, the rainforest, Cairns, on a sunny day in the Southern Hemisphere is beyond breathtaking.  I was allowed to steer the parachute which was not offered in Switzerland.  By tugging on these large yellow ropes with handles, one is able to turn the parachute to the right and left.  One of the turns we did was so hard that our bodies were almost parallel with the ground of the globe we were jumping over.  It is just incredible people.  Highly recommended and definitely will do again, and again, and again.  Like scuba diving, things are just different to you when you are down there (or up there I should say in this case :) )  Good adventure, RCM