Birthday Present

I had a birthday last week! In honor of my 33rd Amy gave me a Skydiving session at Skyranch in Siloam Springs, AR. First thing Saturday morning we made the quick drive west, found the hanger, parked the car, and began the adventure.

We watched a brief assumption of risk video, signed the proper forms indemnifying Skyranch of injuries or death. Then the owner and founder, Wolf Grukley provided some high level safety statistics to reassure us safety is taken very seriously.

Next, my jump instructor Brandon discussed the equipment. He taught me the basic steps of deploying the main parachute as well as the reserve chute. Then, should both of us be incapacitated, the automatic activation device (AAD) would deploy the chute at 2000 feet regardless. Finally, I practiced arching my back to simulate the steps immediately after exiting the plane. After Brandon’s 15 minutes of instructions we were ready to go.

We jumped from 9500 feet, followed by 30 seconds of free fall, then about 3:30 seconds under the deployed canopy. I’ll let the video tell the rest of the story.

Posted in Adventure.

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