Andy Gapin

Without question, jumping out of a plane for fun has to be in the top five craziest things anyone can do. So naturally, I’ve wanted to do it since I was a kid. For various reasons I never had been able to do it until just recently. I don’t think I can actually describe the feeling of it either. You’re falling, but that’s not even what it feels like. You actually feel more like you’re floating than anything else. Floating with a whole lot of wind coming at you.

The whole experience was pretty crazy. They took us up in this tiny little plane that barely felt like it should be able to get off the ground. Including the pilot, there were six of us packed into it and that didn’t any room to move at all. It takes a while to get fully up to altitude and the sky was starting to cloud over to the point where they weren’t sure if we’d be able to jump or not. This wasn’t really a plane I wanted to land in. I think I felt safer jumping out of it.

We got lucky though and the pilot was able to get us up high enough to jump and even though it was a raining a little bit, the instructors felt like it was safe to jump so we did. My friend went first. They opened up the door and I nearly crapped my pants. That’s actually the moment it really hits you that you’ve about to do probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. At this point, there wasn’t really much backing out, I was all connected up the instructor and we started scooching over to the door. We got in position and before I could really even prepare myself, all say that I may have had in the situation was taking away from me and he pushed us out. This is the point were I’m pretty sure that I just started yelling “holy shit” over and over, but once you’re out the plane and doing free-fall, it’s not as scary. In fact, this was probably the least scary part of the entire experience.

The first few seconds of free-fall were through the rain. This wasn’t really the best feeling in the world. I mean, the falling thing was absolutely the most incredible feeling I’ve ever felt with my pants on, but the rain felt like getting shot with hundreds of paintballs. The good thing was that this only lasted a few seconds and then we were out of the rain. I’m actually not sure how that worked, but it did.

We continued to free-fall for a little bit longer. I couldn’t tell you how long it was, maybe 10 or 15 seconds? I really don’t know. Then the instructor pulled the chute. I had kind of expected this to feel a lot more intense as the air caught it. I thought it would be much more of a jolt, but it really wasn’t.

This is the point that I stopped yelling “holy shit” over and over.

From there, we did a couple turns with the parachute and made our way safely down to the ground with a perfect landing.

It was intense. I don’t even know how else to describe this. For anyone that even remotely thinks they might want to do, go for it. It’s one of the most terrifying things ever, but you’ll be so glad that you did.

Here’s the video, which is a little (read: one metric asston) embarrassing, but I’m glad that I got it. You may notice that on the certificate, they put my last name as “Capin” instead of Gapin. Oh well.