Monday, August 20, 2007

NY in August: The interim weekend


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Originally uploaded by cornasdf
Having been freed from work by various fuckups and incompetence, I had a free weekend. For Saturday, I headed up to the catskills. We took the dog swimming in some beaver pond which was hugely refreshing. It made me realize how much I miss the wilderness.

The next day was skydiving. A work colleague was having a bachelor party that involved jumping out of a plane. This was something I was very keen on doing for years but had largely forgotten about. This seemed like a good opportunity but I was still unsure. The tipping point was when Mason, another work colleague and veteran of 1000s of jumps, said, “if you do this, you will smile about it for a week”. Ok, how can I resist.

The whole episode took maybe 20 minutes in the plane and 10 minutes in the air. It was great fun but not a new hobby. The most amazing part, for me, was that initial feeling of leaving the airplane. You are high enough that it isn’t so much a heights thing but watching the plane, your lifeline, speeding away from you was curious. The freefall lasted about 20 or so seconds and then we floated down for another 10 minutes or so. Slide on your ass in for the landing and you are done.

And since we had to drive out to East Stroudsburg, PA for it, we even got cheese steaks (or pizza steaks in my case).

1 comment:

  1. OMG - your package looks so HUGE in that outfit! You should wear it every day ;-) Reminds me of a friend that just go married and to seal the deal, they took "the plunge" out of an airplane.

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