A shorter version of this article also appears in Algonquin College's magazine, Glue:
For about three years now, I have had the dream of going skydiving to conquer my fear of heights.
After I went ziplining back in 2018, I fell in love with the adrenaline and adventurous feeling of flying through the air.
So, I immediately put skydiving at the top of my bucket list.
This year, on August 14, I got the chance to go skydiving for the first time.
My parents booked a jump at GO Skydive in Gatineau, Quebec as my birthday present, and my dad ended up booking a jump for himself as well.
In order to be eligible to go on a tandem skydive without your parent’s permission, you have to be 18 years of age or older.
Since I am older than 18, I also had to sign my own waiver to indicate that I understood the risks that go along with skydiving.
The waiver is pretty straightforward until you get to the part where you’re signing the part where you understand that you might die during your jump if there happens to be a parachute failure.
Due to my eagerness to do my skydive, I flew through the waiver and finished signing it within about five minutes.
The waiver mentions that you should arrive to the drop zone about half an hour prior to your jump and plan to be on site for four hours in case the weather turns bad.
You also have to dress in clothing suitable for the temperature at 13,500 feet because due to Covid, GO Skydive doesn’t allow the clients to wear jumpsuits.
On the day of my jump, my dad and I arrived to the drop zone at 8:30 am for our 9:00 am jump. We were told it was between 0 - -5° at the altitude we would be jumping from.
We went in to the reception area to pay for our jump and then made our way to the harness area where we got put into our harnesses. Following that, the tandem instructors that were assigned to us came over and gave us a little debrief of what we should expect during our jump.
At around 9:30 am, we got onto the trailer that would take us to the plane.
When I saw how small the plane was, a plane that only seats 18 people, nerves started setting in, and by the time the plane lifted off from the ground, I was starting to feel nauseous due to knowing I’d be leaving the plane from the air.
I was so nervous to the point that I was gripping my dad’s hand as tightly as I possibly could.
When we eventually saw each other after our jumps, my dad told me his hand was hurting due to how hard I was squeezing it.
Since it’s a small plane, it takes about 15-20 minutes to get to the altitude of 13,500 feet.
My tandem instructor, Hari, also took the time to make me feel safe on the plane ride up to altitude. Every few minutes, he would show me the altimeter around his wrist and tell me what was going to happen at each altitude. So, when his altimeter read 5000 feet, Hari told me that at that point when we were skydiving, that is the point when the parachute would open. At around 8000 to 10,000 feet, Hari started hooking me up to him and at that point, I was physically closer to him than I have ever been to a stranger.
Although I was terrified on the plane ride up, Hari’s experience was also a huge factor in making me feel safe. He has jumped over 3000 times and has been skydiving for about 18 years.
When Hari and I got to the door of the plane ready to jump out, standing at the very edge of the door made my nerves heightened. We stood at the edge of the door for about 10 seconds until Hari rolled us out of the plane.
Those 10 seconds felt like forever though as I was staring at the ground from 4114 meters in the air.
When we began falling through the sky, I was still somewhat scared, but I was less scared of the height when we were falling through the sky. My mind was just so focused on being in the air and falling toward the ground that I wasn’t scared of heights at that point.
A few seconds after we jumped from the plane, Hari pulled open a drogue, which is a small white parachute used for a tandem. Since heavier objects fall to the earth faster, tandem skydivers fall faster than solo skydivers. So, the drogue slows down the tandem pair enough so that they’re falling at 120mph, which is terminal velocity.
From the time we left the plane at 13,500 feet to the time the parachute got deployed at 5000 feet, it took about a minute of freefall. At the time, the freefall feels like such a long time and in the back of your head you’re sort of hoping the parachute will work, but by the time I got down to the ground, I was like, “that jump was so quick! I want to experience that again!”
Once the parachute was opened by Hari, it took us about five to six minutes to get back to the ground, and to make it more fun, Hari allowed me to try turning the parachute.
Once I got to the ground, my body was under a high from the adrenaline and to me, the adrenaline didn’t go away for the rest of the day. I was so excited from my jump and my eyes were so wide and I couldn’t believe that I had just gone skydiving and jumped out of an airplane.
A few weeks later, I booked a second tandem skydive for myself and went skydiving again on September 25th.
After my first jump, I repeatedly told my dad that I do not want to learn how to become a solo skydiver, but after my second jump, I have seriously been considering going through the solo skydiver course.
If you are interested in going skydiving to feel an adrenaline rush, there are two locations in Ottawa. Parachute Ottawa in Arnprior and GO Skydive in Gatineau.
The Gatineau location closes the third weekend of October and they open again in May. A jump costs around $426.00 if you are interested in purchasing a photo and video package of your jump.
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