Friday the 13th and my birthday! :-)

So it’s Friday the 13th and it's also my birthday! I won’t let on how old I am as I’m sure all of you know!! And anyone who doesn’t know probably doesn’t need to! :-)

Having decided on doing a skydive for my birthday it’s lucky I’m not really superstitious and equally as lucky that neither is the Skydiving school I went to!

So somehow I managed to convince my room-mate Bettina that joining me on a skydive today was a really great idea, now all I have to do is convince myself. No, in reality I’m really looking forward to it although I‘m not sure if it’s the jumping out of the plane part or being strapped to a yummy Kiwi (the male variety!) that’s doing it for me at the mo! :-)

This morning Bettina and I head off to the office to see if today they’re actually jumping, cause the weather hasn’t been so great the last couple of days. Well here we go, apparently they are and it’s all systems go!! Ok, it’s all looking a bit more definite now!

I decide to go for the works as it’s my birthday, so instead of jumping at 12,000 ft I decide to go for 15,000 ft, after all it could be the only time I do it. I also decide to go for the full works video and photo footage. I’m teamed up with a guy called Jonathan who, on his profile, says he’s a jumpmaster and has done over 7,000 jumps, sounds reassuringly good to me.



These guys literally do jump after jump after jump all day, so there we were all geared up waiting for them to land from their last jump. There are 4 novices on my trip up and each of them one by one get teamed with their jump buddy, I’m still just waiting for Jon to land! At which point in comes this gorgeous tall guy wearing a blue furry hat/wig! It’s at this point that I’m really beginning to wonder (again) what am I doing, I’ve obviously got the crazy one! But he was really very lovely, far more so (it later appeared) than any of the others. He did everything to make me feel at ease, reassuring me as well as having a bit of fun along the way.



We were the last ones to board the plane and therefore the first ones out! Jon showed me his altimeter which was as primitive as they come, in fact I think it was perhaps home-made, oh well at this point I was already in the plane and on the way up. Over a certain height all the professionals were on oxygen, slightly unnerving but I guess because they do so many jumps each day that they need it, I was kinda thinking that maybe they could share it though! :-)

Once we hit 15,000 ft we were ready to jump, and rightly or wrongly, I put all my trust, completely and absolutely and totally in Jon. And after all, as he said, it’s also in his best interests to make sure everything is working well. Then we were off, flying out of the plane.

Oh my goodness, I have never felt anything like it before, it was totally amazing. We hurled ourselves out of the plane and straight away did a couple of somersaults then for over a minute we experienced freefall towards the ground and Lake Taupo. Each of us novices had our own camera man and he was up alongside us taking pictures and movies of the whole thing. After a good minute of freefall Jon opened the chute and again, what an experience, there you are falling to earth one minute and the next you’re hurling back up again! Crazy!

Jon then let me take the reins and steer us on our way down we were able to chat as well and take in the sights, you just feel like you’re hanging in midair once the chute opens, it’s such an odd but fantastic feeling. Although we were the first out of the plane we were then the last to land, which was also really great, the whole complete experience, I think he enjoys himself each time as much as I did this one time.

I think that will definitely be on the list of things to do further round on my trip, and hopefully I’ll get as lovely a jump buddy as this one!!

For anyone that’s ever thought they might fancy doing a jump, do it!!! It’s so much fun!



Tomorrow I’ve booked on to do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing which involves getting a bus at 5.40am and then walking 18.5km up and over mountains and volcanoes so I guess too much to drink to celebrate the end of a good birthday is out of the question huh?