Tandem skydive

I did a crazy thing today.

This is what happens when your coworker's mad and you're mad, too.

You buy it two weeks in advance and you don't think about it because otherwise you'd be freaking out. The day gets closer - suddenly you're driving a car, with your dear colleague next to you and her friend in the back, and you're slogging it out from Prague to that fateful airport. The car is charged with nervousness and a loud "highway to the danger zone" that you try to drown out the suffocating atmosphere.

They'll put you in a spacesuit and straps that they'll tighten to the stop. You'll go to the bathroom three times before that, but you'll still want to go back. A laughing tandem parachutist comes out of the airport lobby and takes you in hand and leads you to the plane. You get in between three other couples and the door closes. You sit loose on the bench, the plane soars and you can feel the pressure all around you. The tandems are throwing jokes to lighten the situation. They laugh loudly which makes you feel like you're just going on a trip. You're really high up, and when you ask, the pilot says there's still twice as much to climb. It turns your stomach a little bit. The plane climbs higher and higher for what seems like an eternity. Then something starts to happen. Your assigned tandem straps you in tight and puts your goggles on. The door opens and the plane is blasted with icy air. The smile disappears from your face. The first pair moves to the exit, straddles the edge, and disappears into the nothingness beneath you. The second pair is seconds behind. Now´s your turn.

Tandem sits on the sidelines with you. One of your legs is hanging four kilometres off the ground, but the other leg is still on the floor of the plane, so they have to take it off a little bit by force. You don't even get a chance to breathe. The tandem rolls over and... You're falling.

That moment when the last solid thing under your feet disappears and you free-fall through nothing. You're in shock. You freeze in terror. You're not breathing. You're struggling not to lose consciousness.

Then you start to feel like you´re in a movie, you see a plane above you and the horizon is spinning around you. It doesn't feel real at all. The speed increases and you straighten up. You fall belly-down and the air is roaring against you, fighting like a solid mass. Tears are streaming from your eyes, forcing the aggressive air in even through your glasses. You're no longer dizzy, but you're gasping and screaming with happiness. But you can't hear it because the wind around you is killing everything. The clouds below you, slowly closing in. You fall into the white cotton, but there's nothing there, you fall the same way - only your glasses are fogged. And then you're in the middle of nowhere, white all around you, you're not in reality again, you're in a movie. Suddenly a tap on the shoulder - the parachute opens. It jerks you and the world stops. The wind dies down. The fall slows.

You fly out of the cloud and deep below you, forests and fields appear. The tandem circles you, you see the parachute in front of you instead of above you, and you feel the pressure in your head. You're circling, you're flying, it's beautiful. For a long moment you feel like you're going to hang there forever, and you don't mind. But then the runway gets closer and you have to lift your legs. The landing is coming. You're flying, flying, legs up - and then your butt hits the ground hard and it's over. You're lying there and you don't understand what happened.

You go to return your borrowed suit - and it occurs to you that you never took off and the whole thing was just a dream. But then the thoughts start coming back, and you know that just a minute ago you were hurtling through the air at two hundred kilometres, not knowing if you were going to die in a few seconds.

And no one can take that experience away from you.

Tandem skydive, Příbram, Czechia 03/08/2024