I'm going to take a moment to get away from anything related to nerd culture to talk a little about an experience I had recently. It's something that tends to make the majority of bucket lists, that is a little expensive, but also totally affordable. Skydiving.
Firstly, it was a lot different than I thought it would be. To be honest, I thought that I would be totally fine on the plane and at the door, and I thought I would freak out when the parachute deployed. My thinking was that when I fly, the height doesn't bother me at all. It almost seems so fake to see the ground miles below you. But at a smaller height - like say, that of a skyscraper - I do get anxious and freak a little bit. The ground seems so much more real, I guess, for a lack of a better phrase. So I figured dangling and slowly falling at 3,000 feet would freak me out.
Turns out, there's a pretty fundamental difference between looking at the ground 13,000 feet in the air from inside an airplane, and looking at the ground 13,000 feet in the air from hanging on OUTSIDE the airplane. And so yeah, I started to get really nervous as we approached the door. Weirdly though, I felt totally fine on the parachute. Which is kind of strange because at the door, you can still back out. But on the chute, you're literally just sort of hanging there.
The whole thing happens so fast. They said the freefall lasted 55 seconds and the parachute ride lasted about 7 minutes. Honestly? I'd call you crazy if you told me the whole thing lasted more than 90 seconds. Part of it must be the adrenaline rush, but I think some of it too is that if it's your first time, or one of your early times, it's such an alien experience that your brain can't really even register what's happening. I don't really even know how to properly explain it. We did a flip right out of the plane, and I know I saw the sky and then I saw the ground, but I don't think my brain really realized we just did a flip. I don't even think I really realized that I was even falling. It's crazy.
They tell you it feels like flying, but I don't know if that's accurate. Granted, I have no idea what "flying" would feel like, but really, it kind of doesn't feel like anything. It might be the adrenaline, or it might be that your brain can't figure out what exactly is happening, but I don't even think I felt like I was falling. I almost couldn't even really feel my body. All I could physically feel was the air resistance. It isn't like a roller coaster. You aren't being whipped around. You don't go down, then get yanked up, then get pulled back down, then get turned upside down, then get jolted to the sides and spun again. Your stomach doesn't rise up into your chest - except maybe when the parachute deploys.
But it's so surreal. I said it before, but it really is the most insane, foreign experience. The brain and human body are not meant to experience this stuff. I almost feel like I "missed it," because I just couldn't really register what exactly was going on. I was dangling several thousand feet in the air, merely hooked onto another person who had the parachute, and I weirdly never felt in danger. It almost did feel like being in an airplane. Except your brain knows you're not in an airplane. And it doesn't quite know how to process that information.
Even though I feel a bit like I missed it all, because it all went by so quickly, I'm strangely able to reflect on the experience and really process it after the fact. I experienced weightlessness for a full minute. I felt what it was like to be part of a Newtonian physics experiment. I survived a "fall" from 13,000 feet. I saw the curvature of the Earth from outside of a vehicle. I saw the skyline of Boston from about 81 miles away. I saw trees the size of thumb tacks. And though an obvious comment about my current running abilities, I literally plummeted to Earth at the same distance that my last jog was. (To be fair, I did have a major back injury that I've never fully recovered from a while ago.)
I also possibly experienced symptoms of what is called "space adaptation syndrome." As we returned home from the trip, I felt nauseated, lethargic, and had a headache. I was experience a little bit of vertigo. My legs were shaking. Some of this might have been because of all the adrenaline that was suddenly gone, but these are also symptoms of astronauts living in or training for free-fall conditions. (That's what the space station is, by the way. If you didn't already know, the sensation of "weightlessness" is not actually caused by a lack of gravity, but actually because of gravity. It's a constant condition of free-fall.)
My big takeaway is that I don't really even know what my takeaway is. You don't have to go far to find stories of people who just jumped once to cross it off their bucket list, only to become addicts. I don't think I'm addicted. I actually have no desire to do this stuff by myself. I don't trust me enough to do it completely on my own, to be responsible for packing the parachute and pulling the cord (incidentally, my instructor asked me if I wanted to pull the cord and even gave me the chance, but I just couldn't. I think there was just too much happening that my brain could not even really figure out how to pull it, as stupid as that might sound). My brain also doesn't possess the kind of internal clock that might be necessary (as I said, they claimed the free fall portion lasted 55 seconds, but if you asked me, I'd have told you it took 15, 20 seconds tops).
But I do want to do it again, because my brain is only just starting to really process everything it experienced. And it just gets more interesting and awesome the more I reflect. I definitely feel like another go would be great because I already know a little bit of what to expect and so maybe my brain will be more prepared, and maybe I can take everything in a bit more.
Long story short, I loved it and I highly recommend it.
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