How I came to "Fall" for Skydiving.

Skydiving has always been in the back of my mind as my parents met each other on the Drop Zone, so - Naturally, I had to find out what it was all about.

After nagging and hoping for my parents to pay for a tandem jump for a birthday, my dad quite clearly stated "If you want to do it, it's something you have to pay for yourself". I never really understood the reasoning behind this, but I can only guess it was somewhere along the lines of: "I don't want to pay for you where there is a possibility of you dying"? This I thought was a bit unfair, but understandable I guess.

So after my school years and a few years of building a career to enable me to actually pay for a jump myself, my best mate Katelyn and I were chatting about when we were actually going to do it (talking about it is one thing, but ACTUALLY doing it was a completely different story). Eventually I decided to sponsor her jump as a birthday present, well - and to make sure I had someone to jump with me ;-)

October 2009 was when we agreed to take the plunge (Quite literally).

After mentally preparing myself for my first jump, by watching videos on YouTube, chatting to my parents, reading blogs etc, the day finally arrived.

The drop zone of choice was Skydive KZN, right down the road from my dad's house

I was strangely calm at this point - uneasily so actually :-| Whereas Katelyn and the other friends that decided to join us on the day, were nervous wrecks! LOL - on a side note, there's nothing better than seeing a nervous first-time jumper :-)

I actually only began getting nervous when we scooted to the door of the little Cessna 206! The only thought that went through my head at that point was "I can't believe I am going to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft!" Strange - this is what everyone said to me before the jump, and I laughed it off as a Cliché comment to make. But - regardless, there was no turning back at this point as my Tandem instructor already had me dangling from the side of our jumpship.

Before I knew it, we were hurtling through the air, and towards the ground below. All I could remember (and with the help from my DVD) is a huge smile plastered to my face. With all the excitement, during the "Interview" for my DVD, the only words that I could get out were "AWESOME!", plus some garbled words that made no sense when strung together in a sentence :-/

After congratulatory hugs and high 5's from my friends and family, I thought to myself "That actually was not as exciting as I thought it would be :-(" I've put this down to me expecting it to be a lot more exhilarating - bummer...

I then decided that if doing a tandem was not as exciting as I thought it would be, I need to do the AFF Course and jump by myself to get the full joy and experience out of it.