Skydiving is an adrenaline filled bucket list/merit badge type activity you can look back on for the rest of your life. For the cost of couple hundred dollars and an afternoon, you can have story to tell forever. This one is my story.
On this page you will find, a description of Tandem Skydiving, some information about Skydiving Snohomish (where I went) read all about “The Jump” and view actual footage in our Skydiving video Montage!
Tandem Skydiving:top
An old joke points out, “If at first you don’t succeed, Skydiving probably isn’t your thing”. 
There is clearly some truth to this. However you do not need to jump out of a plane and successfully deploy your parachute on your fist try all by yourself.
With tandem skydiving you can get an introduction to the sport of skydiving and experience free fall while also having the benefit of an experienced jumper. It is a great way to go. They call it tandem skydiving because you are actually hooked up to an experienced skydiver via 4 very strong clips.
Tandem Skydiving works like this;
- You get into a nifty flight suit and board a plane.
- When you reach altitude, your tandem skydiving partner hooks up the clips and you both scoot out of the plane.
- After some time in free fall, the instructor pulls the cord, releases two of the clips (so you can walk when you reach the world)
- You both parachute to the ground.
This allows a first timer to experience all of the rush of skydiving with out considerable training before executing your first jump. To move from tandem skydiving to diving on your own, it requires a certification course, or your own plane.
Skydiving Snohomish top
For my skydiving adventure I chose Skydiving Snohomish. Located in Snohomish WA (roughly 20 minutes North of Seattle), they operate on the weekends, offer certification classes and have taken countless people on their first skydive.
The gang at Skydiving Snohomish is very professional, safety conscious but still helps you have a great time.
We arrived an hour before our scheduled jump time to fill out all the necessary paper work (really long waiver form…), take a quick class on tandem skydiving skills and get ready to go.
- Tandem Skydiving Skills:
- Stare at the wing of the plane on the way out.
- Arch your back the entire time (it makes you easier to maneuver).
- Avoid staring straight down as this is kind of dull
- Upon hitting the ground pick up your legs and make touchdown on your butt.
You get a few options in your skydiving adventure, you can opt in for abit more vertical, thus longer free-fall, or custom DVD where your Skydiving Snohomish tandem partner will strap a video camera on his arm and get some first person footage of your skydive adventure. All of my companions and I opted for the extra vertical, however I was the only one who did not purchase the DVD.
The DVDs were pretty cool, and you will see much of that footage in our Skydiving Video montage. The rest of the footage was taken by my wife from the ground.
The Jump: top
I was anticipating a very dramatic moment when I would need to let go of the safety of the plane and allow myself to become part of the sky.
For days before going skydiving I was remembering countless TV Sitcom moments when people got all the way to the jump zone but couldn’t pull the trigger. So I attempted to steel myself against having stage fright and opting out.
Turns out, none of that was necessary.
When it is time to jump, a side of the plane opens up, and people start hopping out. One second they are there, the next they aren’t. It happens that fast. The first time you see someone jump out of a plane it is hard not to yell, “Man overboard”.
When your turn comes you scoot your way to the exit (remember you can’t really stand up to being strapped to someone else). Then you are supposed to sit on the edge and stare back at the wing. So your tandem partner can exit the airplane too, you just kind of keep scooting. This is how you leave the air craft.
Because you are still traveling at the same speed as the plane and it is really cold in the plane you don’t get a good read on exactly when you leave the plane. You just stare at the wing and it moves further away.
After I knew we were out of the plane, and in freefall I noticed a very loud sound I couldn’t place. Then it hit me, I was screaming, and had no idea.
Free fall is really cool. We did a few flips and spun around got an amazing 360 degree view of the mountains in the distance. Once you accept that you are in free fall, a funny thing happens, you feel completely safe.
I don’t know if maybe your brain just can’t process falling that fast, but you feel like you are standing still an in no danger. This is kind of an odd feeling because you also know you are several thousand feet in the air and falling at a break neck (break everything) speed.
At some point during free fall your tandem partner will pull the rip cord, and you will suddenly be perfectly vertical. When this happened to me I remember thinking, “oh neat, I am going to live through this…”
Parachuting to the ground is also really cool. Putting your hands through the parachute straps you get pretty good control of
your direction and speed. Pull down with your right hand, spiral to the right, pull down on both and slow way down.
Coming in for a landing works like this: You get a visual of the land area (you know it is the landing area because all the grass is worn away), and start spiraling down, faster and faster, then all at once you straighten out and slow way down.
When you actually hit the ground, you have slowed down considerably and the impact is minimal. However you do get a bit of a relief being on hard soil.
That’s about it. Then you saunter back to your friends and family and feel like a big shot.
