365 Project: Day 102

I wish I could just stay like this for just a few days. Curled up in bed, headphones on, iPod in hand. Content. But, you know, life keeps on going. You can't stop it. You can't slow it down. It moves on dragging you along with it whether you need to stop for a breather or not. Time keeps passing. New days keep beginning and ending and beginning again. Life doesn't care if you are tired. It doesn't care if you aren't ready. It doesn't care if you want to stay 26 a little longer.

Tomorrow is my birthday. Yep. In a few hours I'll be 27. I don't feel older. I just feel like I'm not living my life fast enough to keep up with my age. I haven't accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish by the time I turned 27. But somehow I'm supposed to accept that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be at this point and be ok with that.

Last year I went skydiving for my birthday. What better way to celebrate your life than by doing something that could end it? Short of driving into oncoming traffic, I can't top flinging myself out of a plane at 18,000 feet this year. I'm not even going to try. 26 was a tough year for me. Come to think of it, so was 25...and 24. Your 20s are tough. There is so much to learn about yourself. You do a lot of growing in your 20s. You're becoming this person. This adult. I'm still just trying to get my head on straight and get a grip on what I'm doing with myself. I feel like I'm going to look back on these years through the eyes of experience and shake my head wondering, why was I so worried, why was I so confused, why was I so stressed, why was I so hard on myself, why did I take things so seriously?

Honestly, I just want to stay right here, eat a cupcake, and let my biological clock tick over to 27 like a dream. Another year of my life. Gone. Lived. Here I stand on the brink of another beginning. Oh, 27, please be kind.

Diving into Life

So, today I turn 26.  The first 1/4 of my life is over.  I had to think of some amazing way to celebrate.  Then it came to me!  Skydiving!  There is no better way to celebrate my life than to hurl my body out of an airplane at 18,000 feet.  Last Saturday, that is exactly what I did.

I just got my harness and I was ready to go!

I was so pumped!  That is my instructor, Mark, sitting behind me.  He was so amazing.  Mark pointed out all the landmarks and he even let me steer the parachute on the way down.

This was my first look out of the airplane.  If you look in the bottom left corner you can see how far down the ground was.  18,000 feet is the highest tandem skydive in the world, but it doesn't really hit you exactly how high that is until you're about to jump out of the airplane.

This was the view I saw.  Monterey, CA is so beautiful.  It was the perfect place to jump.

There we go!

The free fall was 90 seconds.  That doesn't seem very long until you are falling and falling and falling at 120 mph.  Then you start thinking, "Shouldn't the parachute have opened by now?"

But just then, the parachute opened.  Thank God.  After that I could just really enjoy the ride down.  It is so peaceful and quiet up there.  The world is so beautiful from this perspective.

Here i am drifting back to earth.

The landing was a lot softer than I thought it would be.

I didn't get nervous about what I had done until it was all over.  I had both feet firmly on the ground when it hit me...I just flew through the air at 120 mph!  Whoa.  The whole experience totally blew my mind!  Even as I write this, it is still blowing my mind.  I can't imagine anything that could top my 26th birthday.

The Quote for the day:

"...and once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you long to return."

-- Leonardo da Vinci

I Fly!

I went to the vertical wind tunnel last night! It was SO MUCH FUN!  I'm planning on going skydiving in February for my birthday and I wanted to get a little idea of what it would be like.  That wind tunnel is incredibly powerful! The staff was so nice, and my instructor, Matt, was fabulous!

I got two turns to fly, but on my second turn my goggles came loose, so I got to go in a third time.  After everyone in my group got their turns, our instructor did a little demonstration of what you can do in there when you are really experienced.  The acrobatics were great! He put on a really good show. It definitely made me want to go back and do it again!