Family Skydiving

My husband gave me a gift certificate to go skydiving for my birthday. I decided to make it a fun family adventure with Boogs and my husband.

It was about an hour drive to San Marcos to go to Skydive Spaceland. My husband went skydiving once about 30 years ago. I went for my first skydive in 2013 and once more in 2014.  Boogs is now old enough to jump so we all went together.

When I last went, it was owned by someone else. The facility is still a well-run, friendly, professional place to skydive. It is now a skydiving training center owned by the Boyd family and is one of their 5 locations. There was definitely a bit of a different vibe. It was a lot more about learning how to skydive than just being along for the ride. For our tandem skydive they discussed the process more throughly, had you wear an altimeter, let you pull the chute, let you steer, and let you land (if you wanted to). 

While we were suiting up, Boogs said he was not nervous. My husband said he was nervous. I was surprisingly calm but sweating profusely. Boogs jumped with Leo, my husband jumped with Vic, and I jumped with James. Vic said he had close to 30,000 skydives, James said he was right at 10,000, and Boogs did not ask Leo how many he had. Vic offered to take pics before hand for us and told us to pose in a few goofy ways.

Point where you are going.

Point this way.

Who is the most nervous? We all pointed to me.

Ready to go!

They saw us coming and knew we were suckers. We said we were not interested in purchasing photos or a video. A new videographer, Oscar, just happened to be practicing his skills and asked Samuel if he would let him follow his skydive journey. Samuel said yes and you know we absolutely caved and bought the video package after skydiving. I am so glad we did because the pictures and video are awesome.

Always the ham.

Ready to go.

The plane took us up to 14,000 feet for our jump. Boogs went first.

I was nervous for him. It was hard watching my baby boy jump out of that plane.

My husband landed himself standing up.

I gave the controls over to James and he had us come in for a sit down landing.

Here comes Boogs. He was first out of the plane and last to land.

Boogs helped land his parachute in a sit down landing.

We survived! What a great adventure and experience! After our skydive, we went in and purchased our next skydives at a discounted rate. 

Because it is a training school, today's skydive was logged in our brand new skydive logs. For the mere cost of $4200 and 25 jumps, you can get certified to solo skydive. That is not on my bucket list. I think I am fine being a passenger on a tandem jump. Boogs and my husband seem a little more interested in it. I think I will stick with scuba diving for adventure.

Boogs was great today. I love his adventurous spirit. Here is his video:

iFly for Boogs and Daddy

A couple of weeks ago, I went skydiving. I had so much fun and really want to do it again. Boogs said he does not EVER want to jump out of a plane but thought my skydive video looked pretty cool. Last year, iFly opened in Austin. It is an indoor skydiving facility where you can experience free fall without jumping out of a plane. I gave Daddy a gift card to iFly for his birthday last April, after my skydive he became more interested in going to iFly. Kids can fly too, so Boogs joined him.

(The lighting on the "flight deck" was not very good, so my pictures did not turn out very well. But, Grandmaman, I still thought you would like to see them.)

After classroom instruction time, my boys had to get suited up for their flight.

  Boogs showing how to position his body during flight.

I told them they looked like blue Minions.

 Boogs was looking a bit nervous before his flight.

Boogs did great! He said it was cool and he really had fun. Later he mentioned that iFly has a kids club.

 Daddy had fun, too.

 Here are their videos:




They both had a great time! They were all smiles after their flights. Check out those goggle lines!

My husband has gone skydiving and he said iFly was fun. It was more like an amusement park ride than a real jumping-out-of-a-plane experience.

I Survived Skydiving!

I had such a blast yesterday on my first ever skydiving jump! In June, my husband wrote on my birthday card - for your birthday present, how bout skydiving? I laughed back then and said it sounded like fun but inside my head I was thinking there was no way anyone was going to get me to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I love that my husband likes to give me once-in-a-lifetime experiences for gifts. For Christmas last year he gave me a flight lesson on a teeny tiny Cessna plane. I actually liked skydiving better than piloting a plane.

Well, I was feeling brave this past week and booked my jump with Skydive San Marcos. Did you notice that the sign to the left of the plane says, "There is no such thing as a perfectly good airplane. Learn to skydive!"

There are a few skydiving places near where we live but I am so glad I went to this one. They have a great, easy-to-use website where you can see what reservation slots are available. It was so easy to sign-up and pay. When we arrived, the facility was clean, well-organized, and the staff was fun and professional. It was a great experience.

I was pretty nervous when I filled out the death consent forms. Boogs was really worried that I would die and not be around to take care of him anymore. Poor kiddo. He was super clingy while we waited for my turn. We got to sit out in the viewing area and watch a couple of planes take off and see the skydivers land. Then it was my turn. Eeek! I loved that Skydive San Marcos had jumpsuits. My husband went on a skydive a couple of years ago and was not provided a jumpsuit. He jumped in his jeans and t-shirt and was a little bit cold while in the air.

 

Pretty soon, it was time to get on the plane. My skydive instructor was Matt. He was wonderful! He told me jokes the entire time we were in the plane to keep from thinking too much (or puking) about what I was about to do. When I asked how many jumps he has done, he said he had jumped over 2,500 times and not had a problem, yet.

 You can see my knuckles were white from gripping the straps so hard as we walked toward the exit. I was wondering if it was too late to back out of the jump.

 Oh man, that step into air was terrifying and exhilarating!!!

 We flipped all the way upside down as we exited the plane. I just kept thinking Matt said to arch, just arch, keep arching.

 It was absolutely amazing! We reached a speed of 132 mph during our freefall.

It surprised me how noisy the air was. Poor Matt, half of my hair came out of my ponytail and kept hitting him in the face.

 The view was incredible!

 Matt told me he would NOT let me know when he was going to pull the parachute cord so I would be relaxed and not freak out. So I spent part of the time during freefall, freaking out about when he was going to pull the cord.

 That first jerk as the parachute took in wind was very abrupt. It took my breath away. Then Matt told me he was going to loosen the staps around my chest and legs so I would be more comfortable. I yelled, "No, no, I am perfectly fine! Don't loosen anything!" He did anyway, and it really was much more comfortable.

Matt let me take over the handles on the chute. I got to steer us around in a couple of circles. He put us into a pretty fast spin for a bit, I did not like that at all. It was so peaceful floating through the air. I can totally see how people crave the adrenaline rush and the amazing feeling of floating free. We left the plane in the middle of a group and were the last ones to land. I have no idea how long we stayed aloft. Joey, the camera man, took some spectacular photos and video. I wish I'd had his camera so I could have captured the views while we were floating. I could not have asked for better weather or a better skydiving experience.

 

 The landing went fine. Matt told me we were just going to sit down. Easy-peasy.

This was SO MUCH FUN!!! I am definitely going to do it again someday. I don't know when, but I will.



Thanks, Honey for a fabulous birthday present!!!

Charlotte, thanks for the mini-tutorial for uploading the video!