WHAT COULD POSSIBLY COMPARE TO YOUR FIRST SKYDIVE??
Canopy Piloting
Everyone who has made a Skydive agrees, there is nothing that compares to that first jump. You take the class, sit through the video and watch lots of people jump before you get in the plane. But even with the training and preparation, your first skydive is still the ultimate “leap of faith”.
You tried to imagine what it was going to be like, the sound of the wind, the air in your face, the incredible acceleration and speed, that moment of actually stepping out the door. You dreamt and thought about it for so long before ever jumping, but it was nothing like you expected! The adrenalin rush of your first freefall followed by the quiet serenity of the canopy flight was so completely different from anything you’d ever done before. You try to tell your friends about it but you’re at a loss for the right words and end up saying “I can’t explain it. You just have to do it.”
We hear it all the time, whether you only do one jump or choose to pursue skydiving as a new (and often lifelong) hobby, that first skydive is a life changing experience. You leave the drop zone with new confidence, ready to take the next leap of faith in pursuit of your dreams, to face your fears and tackle all challenges. At the moment of truth, when it came down to it, you had the courage to step off the plane and fly. If you could do that you can do anything.
What could possibly be better than your first jump? Your second jump!
Your second jump is a completely different experience than the first. The first jump is everything I just described. But the level of adrenaline and the sensation of freefall are so foreign to you that for everyone there is a certain amount of “sensory overload.” With so many new physical and emotional experiences happening simultaneously it is nearly impossible to absorb it all. It’s sometimes hard to tell if the freefall lasted 5 seconds or two minutes. When we think back after our first jump it is difficult to recall and to play it back in our minds as a moment by moment rerun.
On the second jump our hearts will be racing again, but because we’ve experienced it before we know much more what to expect. There is much less sensory overload. We can recall every second of it. Freefall actually seems like the 50ish seconds that it is. Because we are so much more aware during the jump we are actually able to enjoy the entire experience more. We don’t just have the adrenalin rush when we exit the plane, we remember it! We remember how we became more relaxed after exiting the plane as we transitioned into stable freefall (“relaxed” is a very relative term of course?). We remember the view of the beach and the mountains. We remember the smooth deceleration from freefall to the canopy flight as our parachute blossomed open.
With less sensory overload we are more aware and in touch with the entire experience and can remember it vividly and enjoy it even more. We can play that memory in our heads over and over again and relive it as many times as we want.
We experience the first jump, but we own the second one!
There is nothing that compares to that second Skydive.
