Jake Arnell sees himself jumping again

My brother Kyle has been working on his skydiving certification for the past few months; he's only five more jumps away from his getting his license! He's been "encouraging" me to come out and jump with him for some time now.

I've never really seriously considered skydiving before, mostly just because the opportunity has never presented itself, but figured I could probably handle it, and it might even be fun. If nothing else, just to say that I've had the experience. So yesterday after work, Kyle and I headed up to the Ogden Airport to take the plunge.

I was surprisingly calm throughout the process, for some reason it didn't really freak me out like I was expecting. I had a little surge of adrenaline/nerves when the plane door slid open and the other jumpers started pouring out, but that was about it. I was expecting the free-fall to feel a bit like a roller coaster, that feeling where your stomach kind of jumps, but it was nothing like that at all, it kind of just felt like I was floating. Kyle later explained that the roller-coaster-stomach feeling comes from the rapid acceleration, not from the falling, and since we were already going almost 100 mph when we jumped out of the plane, there was no weird stomach feeling.

We jumped at just over 12,000 feet, which gave us about sixty seconds of free-fall and about four minutes of parachute gliding. I found myself having to focus on my breathing during the free-fall. With 120 mph winds blowing in your face, the instinct is to hold your breath, and you kind of have to think about it at first to let your body breath normally. For me the most unexpected part of the experience was pulling the rip-cord. It's a pretty rapid deceleration, all absorbed by the harness, which is uncomfortably positioned between your legs. I wasn't really expecting it to be quite as violent as it was, (and I have a couple of bruises to prove it).

Overall, it turned out to be a lot of fun! I'm glad I had the experience and even more glad Kyle was able to talk me into it! Its kind of pricey, so I need to let the old wallet recover a bit, but I can definitely see myself jumping again!