GNATTERINGS
Score: 7 / 10 
A Leap Of Faith
As payback for years of pain and anguish and for all the torment that I caused them, especially in my teen years, my parents decided to give me the "gift" (and I use the term gift loosely) of throwing me out of a plane cruising at 14,000 feet for my 30th birthday.
So, bright and early on a Saturday morning I descended upon my Sky Diving venue to complete the task. The first step involved signing forms stating very clearly and repeatedly that there was a fairly good chance that I would hit the ground at about 4,000 kph resulting in my horrible grisly death.
The next and most painful step involved looking at the sky for about 3 hours. Being rather a cloudy day we had to wait for a window of opportunity within which we could jump. It was explained to me that Sky divers generally don't jump through clouds because they can contain titanic sinking icebergs, airplanes, rampaging sky writers and in rare cases cows.
So we waited… And waited… and waited. Until finally the clouds broke and a hundred sky divers and pilots ran in all directions attempting to sober up and get ready for the jump.
Before I was allowed to hop into the plane, I was given my mandatory training which pretty much involved my guide telling me that he would be strapped to me awfully tight and if I could avoid wetting myself and/or vomitting he'd really appreciate it. With this information in mind I boldly entered the plane which soared me into the skies for my leap to what would almost certainly be my untimely demise.
We levelled off at our jump height and my guide strapped himself very snugly to me. And I mean very snugly. We were close. Intimately close.
We then shuffled to the door of the plane. Now, stupidly my first thought upon getting to the door of the plane travelling at 300kph at 14,000 feet was "Gee, it's really windy up here". That was also my last thought as my guide promptly pushed me out the plane before the other thoughts relating to me wetting my pants and leaping to my death were given a chance to fester.
And then we were falling…… very very fast and getting faster by the second which would no doubt have made Sir Isaac Newton feel very smug and content with his life's work. Now, somewhere between us taking off and jumping out of the plane, the killer clouds had decided to re-form underneath us so we were now hurtling towards these altocumulus clouds of death with no hope of avoiding them.
And then, seconds before we hit the clouds (and whatever nasty little surprises they were holding) my guide pulled the rip-cord. This gave a slight jolt and by slight I mean body splitting. My testicles actually forgot to stop falling so they continued on and ended up landing about 2 minutes before I did. I then experienced an extremely odd sensation where within two seconds I went from screaming through the air engulfed in noise to dead quiet surrounded by white (and thankfully no planes, ice or cows).
We then emerged from the clouds and the world was laid out before me in miniature scale. It was then that my guide gave me the biggest scare of the whole experience when he told me that he was going to loosen my harness so that I'd be more comfortable. Now, seriously, I don't want my harness loosened 10,000 feet from the ground. There'll be plenty of time for loosening harnesses when my feet are firmly placed on the ground.
But, loosen my harness he did and I didn't plummet to my death. We slowly glided to the ground and executed a perfect landing where I ended up on my ass unable to walk for about 30 seconds.
But, all in all, a hell of a trip. Not quite as exciting or life threatening as picking a fight with Trish but still, quite a rush.
Ah well,
-- Back to Gnatterings
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