Dear everyone, I am alive! And I have returned to barrage you with words yet again.
To avoid having to type too much (because I’m on a code-writing rampage), I’ll rely a lot on photos. For example, Friday night was the Amish Craft Party at Cindi’s house. I’m now convinced that kids have a certain innate knowledge of how to construct things with pipe cleaners, pompoms, and glue, knowledge which gets buried in adult-life under ‘how to file your taxes’ and ‘remember to turn your wheels in the same direction as a spin-out’. Anyway, kid-crafts are hard, although my masterpiece involving foam and glitter and a unicorn came out looking pretty fantastic. I sort of want to hang it in my bathroom. Saturday, Wendy and I went to Lumberjack Days in Stillwater. I was planning on going regardless because timbersports are hot and smalltown festivals rule, and then I looked at the schedule and saw that THE WIENERMOBILE WAS ABOUT. I did some highly-skilled performance driving while we were there (involving miraculously not running into a car parked in front of me on a very steep hill with 6″ clearance, and during which I should’ve won an award for my stick-driving ability), we partook in the usual fried cuisine, and we hit up the Stillwater Police booth for free stuff that was intended for kids. Hey, we’re just kids who are allowed to drink and vote. In the afternoon, we gathered on the orange blanket on the side of Lyndale to watch the Art Car Parade, which is one of the extremely awesome things about Minneapolis. Afterwards, Cindi and Matt and I reconvened at Suzi’s for an afternoon of more sun and tiki drinks. I must confess I’m getting a little tired of that place, though, because at least half the time I’ve been there lately, we have a server with a really shitty attitude, and poor service pretty much overrides anything as far as my enthusiasm for an establishment goes. I got dropped off at home, tried unsuccessfully to take a nap for 5 minutes, then got up and made evening-plans. I walked back to my car on Lyndale and 28th (fun fact: I can calculate distances to surprising accuracy based on the time it takes me to get there. I estimated it was about a mile from my house, then recalculated it as 1.2 miles when I walked it; walkjogrun tells me it’s 1.23 miles. Is this a marketable skill? I hope so.), got Cindi, and she and I met up with Jumi and Peter at Kieran’s for pre-fireworks cute-bartender-ogling. Shortly before ten, we scurried off to the riverfront near the Central Avenue bridge. We wanted to get up close, so we ended up sliding down an embankment to get there. I managed to end up with dirt in my purse after that escapade, because flipflops are decidedly not for hiking. The Aquatennial fireworks (new photos at the bottom) were amazing; I stood there openmouthed for the whole thing, and even got a little sniffly when they made the fireworks-waterfall on the bridge. When they finished, we headed back to Kieran’s and were joined by Wendy and Stephanie. After a couple drinks, it became the best idea ever to head over to the 90s and dance. In the annex, I tried unsuccessfully for a long time to shake off this skinny South American boy who was being very very enthusiastic about dancing with me, and finally gave in. The dancing was actually fine, I was just super-paranoid after the dude tried to kiss me last time; I can guarantee that there will be absolutely no exchange of fluids going on in my world while I’m at the 90s. After a while, I ended up dancing with a really drunk girl in a lei, and then as part of a sandwich with me and him in the middle, and two girls on the outside. It was really funny, but I made a point of wanting to leave a few minutes before close, so I could avoid him on the outside. That didn’t go so well; he was waiting there as we left, and even followed Cindi and I for a block. I know I have badass martial arts skillz, but I don’t actually want to have to use them, dudes. Sunday, I got up and had a somewhat frantic phone call from my mom about what food to bring to the bbq; she was trying to conceal her fear about me skydiving by obsessing about potato salad, apparently. My dad didn’t even want to talk about it. I got nervous and paced for a few minutes, which was actually reassuring since I’d had absolutely no trepidation about it at all until then. Cindi and SJ and I drove to Wisconsin and checked-in at three; Cindi claimed a spot on the patio for the group, and SJ and I headed into skydiving training. So, how it works is this: you watch a video with a dude who looks like he’s from ZZ Top, telling you that there’s a fair chance you could die or be seriously injured, but if that happens, it’s TOTALLY YOUR FAULT. One of the guys in the class seemed not-very-ok with that, while I couldn’t stop giggling about it. We had to sign a several-page contract stating that our untimely deaths were our own responsibilities. Then Joe, one of the instructors, came in and explained the gear and how to tandem-dive. The instructor wears the parachute, and your harness is attached to both him and the chute. When you’re preparing to jump, you squat down with your toes on the edge of the door, hold onto your harness, and he counts to three and jumps. You arch your back and curl your legs up with your feet against his butt during the freefall; he signals to you when you can spread your arms and pretend to fly while you’re plummeting, then signals again for you grab the harness when it’s time to deploy the parachute. At that point you can pretty much do whatever, as long as you don’t grab him in such a way as you will crash. We even got to lay on the floor and practice this. We had twenty minutes to hang out (and more importantly, go to the bathroom) before putting our gear on. We went outside and everybody was starting to arrive: Kaye, Stephanie, my parents and Escobar (who’s never known to leave the house for anything but work), Wendy, Sean and Christine, Ken, and Bill and Katie. They were stocked with food and beer and cameras. In a little while, they called us back in, assigned us instructors, and we put on our harnesses. I could not have been more happy to be paired up with Joe, the guy who joked constantly about his failure rate with the main parachute, and the inconvenience of the massive amounts of paperwork they had to fill out when someone died. I knew he was the right partner for me. We got to spend another ten minutes or so hanging out in our harnesses, which were very snug in a private sort of way that made walking interesting, and then we gathered by the plane. My mom seemed to be taking the whole thing pretty well. Joe asked if I wanted to be the first tandem-person to jump. Um, duh. They had also told us in class that we could choose the easy fall or the rollercoaster experience, and I informed him that I was up for anything, and I liked to be scared. The seating arrangement in the plane is two long benches that you straddle, sitting with the instructor right behind you. I was the first in the tandem group, but there were five other single-jumpers in front of me. They opened the door of the plane almost immediately after takeoff, which was awesome. Three guys jumped when we were only about halfway up, and it was amazing to see how they’d just step out the door, hang in the air for a second, and drop. It was almost slow-motion. A few minutes before it was time to go, Joe told me to sit on his lap so he could strap himself to me. I said, “Wow, this is cozy!” as he had me tug on the straps as hard as I could. He said, “Why do you think I love my job so much?” The two remaining single-jumpers ahead of us gave high-fives and pounds all around (I love the cameraderie there on the plane, because even all the experienced skydivers were so pumped about it, it was impossible to be the slightest bit nervous), opened the door, and jumped. Joe slid us to the front of the bench, and I did as I was told: squatted in the doorway, grabbed my harness, and stared out at all of Wisconsin laid out like, well, all of Wisconsin, 13,000 feet below me. He held onto the bar, swung, and counted to three. And we jumped out of the plane. For that quarter-of-a-second as we exited, my brain nearly exploded with OH SHIT WHAT HAVE I JUST DONE. Then I started screaming, not out of fear but disbelief. Like, you really have no way of knowing what plummeting through the sky is going to feel like. I didn’t expect I’d be falling headfirst towards Wisconsin. I didn’t realize it would be so cold, or how quickly my mouth would dry completely as I screamed OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD over and over until my voice was gone. I only had a few seconds of that, too, because Joe somersaulted us onto our backs and then I was laying there in the air, watching the plane as we fell away from it at 120MPH. That’s an image I’ll never, ever forget. The freefall lasts for only a minute (a shockingly long minute, during which you fall eight thousand feet), but it gave me enough time to stop hyperventilating. The fact that I was pretty much curled up around Joe was comforting. He tapped my shoulders and I grabbed the harness again, and he deployed the parachute. It jerked us really hard, and suddenly we were drifting, and it was quiet. We descended the rest of the way at about 25mph. He aimed us so we fell through a cloud (SJ was told that really it was ‘industrial haze’, as it’s illegal to skydive through clouds, but it was good enough for us). I could easily see the landing area, my car in the parking lot, and my friends standing near the shelter. Joe told me to hold on and circled us around for a while, which is what causes the rollercoaster-like feeling; it made me a little dizzy, but not sick. As we got nearer to the ground, I saw everybody waving, and waved back. Then made rock hands. Then yelled the rest of the way down. We even landed on our feet! I shook for a good half-hour after that. I wanted to do it again. It was so unbelievable. We’re planning on going again next summer. And here, before I head out, are my skydiving pictures! Thanks to Stephanie and Kaye for taking them while I was in the air. I just realized it’s raining, and my sunroof vent is open. AWESOME.Jenni