hi, my name is katie and i like to jump off of stuff

See, the thing is, I've wanted to skydive for a while. But I was all talk and never got around to actually making my dreams a reality. So instead of waiting for another year to pass without throwing myself out the door of a plane thousands of feet in the air while attached to a complete stranger, I decided to stop being a chicken and drive out to the coast where I could fling myself out of a plane and have a stellar view of the Australian coast all the way down at the same time.

Sunday morning, we were picked up at 6am, slept the whole hour and a half drive out to Wollongong, and wandered around the beach for a little while watching the sun rise over the ocean while we waited for the facilities to open.

*In Australia, seeing a cockatoo flying around isn't weird or uncommon which is
definitely weird to get used to. They are, however,
the most annoying birds that have ever squawked and they are annoying as hell.* 

*A beautiful rainbow over the field where we would soon be landing,
which we took as a pretty good sign.*

None of what we were about to do felt even remotely real to me at this point. If you had sat me down and asked "Katie, you're about to jump out of a plane, how do you feel right now?" I don't think it would have even registered with me and I might have laughed at how ridiculous that sentence sounded when directed at me.

*pre-dive*

Whether I was mentally ready for it or not, we geared up, piled onto a bus, and drove 10 minutes to the local airport, where we climbed into a teeny tiny airplane and took to the skies.

Now, at this point, I was soaking in the views (which were beautiful) and none of what I was about to do was fully registering with me.

Then we got the 5 minute warning from the pilot and my stomach dropped so hard I could have sworn I heard it thud when it hit the floor of the plane. All I could think was "Holy crap what the heck am I doing ????!!!!?????"

Before I knew it, the door to the plane was wide open, and the first person had inched to the edge of the plane and hopped out. They made it look so easy, like they were hopping out of bed or something, and I was sitting towards the front of the plane (making me the second to last person to jump) finally freaking the heck out.

Everything suddenly took on a weird dream-like quality and didn't feel quite real to me. Call it an out-of-body experience, call it blacking out from nerves, call it whatever you want but before I had time to turn around to my partner Wade and say "Hey listen, I was just kidding about this whole "leaping from a plane" thing!! I'd appreciate it if you brought me back to the ground now!!!" my feet were dangling out of the plane, the wind was whistling in my ears, my hair was whipping around my face, and then we were falling.

Just like that. We were hurtling thousands of miles towards the ground so fast that if I think too hard about it, it makes me a little nauseous. And all I can say is that it was the most breathtakingly beautiful, terrifyingly cool and amazing thing I have ever done.

*Here I am casually enjoying the Australian coast from a few thousand miles in the air*

*In half of my pictures, I look like I have a mohawk.
This is both unfortunate and hysterical.*

It definitely beats bungy jumping by a mile because unlike bungy jumping, I actually got to enjoy the ride for longer than 20 seconds. Plus, even if I was frozen in terror at the top, it didn't matter because whether I liked it or not, my buddy Wade was going to hop out of the plane taking me right along with him. Bungy jumping, it's all up to you and your nerves of steel (or lack thereof) so you could be standing at the top for quite a while, giving you plenty of time to think too much and scare the pants off yourself. This was way easier.

*Comin' in hot for a graceful landing*

*post-dive*

Upon safely landing, I was still in shock that it had actually happened and I hadn't just imaged the whole thing. But oh my goodness all I can say is that I am so down to do it again. In fact, the sooner the better.

Cheers
Katie