Absolutely. Totally. Breathless.

August is just about over.

It's cold and wet outside. Last weekend it was Hurricane Bill. This weekend ... Tropical Storm Dan. I always knew men were nothing but trouble.

But at least we did have our vacation.

It was a good trip. Most definitely not a relaxing trip (we didn't stay in any one place for more than three days at a time), but still a good trip.

Two days in Steinbach, Manitoba. Then off to Oshkosh. Oh yeah, Oshkosh ... heavy sigh... Back to Steinbach. This time for one day. Off to Saskatchewan for two days. Back to Steinbach for a whole three days. Then home.

Did I miss anything?

Oh yeah, maybe one not so little thing.

The Jump. The Free Fall. The Terror.

Yup, that's right. Yours truly jumped out of a perfectly good airplane [that did, in fact, land shortly thereafter].

How was it, you ask?

Well ... to put the matter simply, I pretty much hated it. That's right. I. Hated. It. End of story.

Don't get me wrong. I am totally happy that I did it. It's something I've wanted to do for a very long time. It's just that (did I mention that I hated it?) I have no need nor desire to do it ever again.

I wasn't scared at all. At least not until after we fell out of the plane.

I jumped tandem @ 11,000 feet, meaning we had 6,000 feet of free fall. We were taught to keep our hands crossed on the chest (so we wouldn't grab the door of the aircraft and refuse t budge), bend our knees so our feet were behind us and arch our back.

Hands. Check.

Knees. Check.

Arch. Not so much.

I simply could not arch no matter how hard I tried. The wind was too strong. I suppose strong core muscles would help, eh?

Anyway, as I said I couldn't arch my back at all and we tumbled. And tumbled. Did I mention the repeated somersaults? Between that and simply not being able to breathe ... yeah, that was a treat.

Absolutely. Totally. Breathless.
Absolutely. Totally. Terrified.

That about sums up the free fall.

When Moo (yeah, I said Moo ... you had to love Moo, he was a great guy and absolutely hilarious) pulled the rip cord and my head was finally up, my feet were finally down and I could breathe again, he asked me how I had liked it.

How do you answer that question? The word "terrifying" did immediately come to mind.

The rest of the journey was okay but nothing too extraordinary. We weren't up very long after the free fall. I guess you stay up longer if you jump solo. The trade off is the free fall, of course.

But then my dear Moo made a couple of sharp turns left to right (to slow us down to land, I presume) and suddenly I was so nauseous. So totally nauseous. I didn't want to yell say anything right away and admit how sick I felt. After all, he was having a ball. Fortunately for me, just when I figured out that my only choices were to whine complain loudly or totally embarrass myself, we were ready to land.

The landing was okay. Although he kept yelling at me to put my legs out in front of me. And I kept yelling back that they were up, that was as far as they were going to go. When that concept finally got through to him, he grabbed the legs of my flight suit and pulled my legs up higher. We both basically landed on our butts. So gracious we were. A thing of beauty you might say.

It was a hot day and I couldn't wait to get the harness off and get out of that flight suit. When I did, I immediately became aware of the rest of the story. I was absolutely soaked with sweat. I guess between the adrenaline rush of the free fall and the later nausea ... yeah, that's enough about that.

Except that a whole crowd of my brother's friends had come to watch his wife and I jump and we were all suppose to be going out for supper afterwards. Right afterwards. As in we were already late for our reservations.

No way. No how. I made my sister-law take me back to their place where I changed my clothes and drained the contents of their water cooler. I still felt so sick and the car ride back to the house (followed by another long ride to the restaurant) definitely didn't help any.

Eventually it subsided. Although off and on all evening, even when I was feeling fine, out of nowhere I would get the sensation of butterflies (free falling butterflies, perhaps?) in my stomach.

And that night, about o'dark thirty I woke up so dry ... You might remember in your younger days, when you use to drink a fair bit too much (or you might remember that from last weekend, I suppose) when you had been out drinking and would then wake up so dry you thought you might die from lack of water. Again I drained the water cooler.

And so. The tale was done.

Epilogue:
My sis-in-law loved it BTW. Go figure...

The place where we jumped also offered hang gliding flights. This was the first time we had been out to my brother's place in the ten years they have lived there. So I asked her if, when I came back in another ten years, she would hang glide with me. Sure, she enthusiastically replied.

Head up. Feet down. That's the way I need to fly. It be next on my list.

And if you were hoping for a picture or a video, then I am sorry to disappoint. Although my brother and his friends promised to send me some of the pics they took so if I ever get them, I might ... just might (no guarantees) ... post one.

But if you want to see how it's really suppose to be done, just go here.

Now how come it always looks so cool when other people do it?