Another year ago today milestone.

So it started like this: I found a great airfare to Las Vegas, where my friend Nance in the Pants now lives and works. She had been after me to come visit, so I scheduled a trip for December 5-7. Not much of a vacation, but I had burned through all of my PTO already. She asked me via Myspace comments what I wanted to do or see when I was there. Half-joking/half-serious, I replied with 2 links: one was to an indoor "skydiving" experience in which they suit you up and you "free fall" in this huge wind tunnel. The other was to Skydive Las Vegas. I liked their motto: "Why gamble with money when you can gamble with your life?"

Much to my surprise, my afraid-of-heights friend said she'd rather go The Full Monty and jump out of an actual airplane, if she were to choose. The line in the sand was drawn, so to speak. I should have known. This was the same person who proclaimed her extreme fear of heights, yet bungee-jumped off of a crane on her first visit to Vegas. 

I don't claim to be afraid of heights at all. I made my brother ride the Skycoaster with me once, after which I was slack-jawed and could only utter "Awesome" the rest of the day. He, however, did not fare so well. He was a scary shade of greenish-gray from that point on. I never believed people could actually turn green from nausea like they do in the cartoons, until that day with my brother. Jumping out of a plane at approximately 3 miles off the ground, however, was going to be quite a different experience. How did I know this? Well, I took my cues from the fact that the words "die", "death", "paralysis", and "loss of life and limb" appeared no less than 100 times on the waiver we had to carefully read and sign before skydiving. The other interesting thing was that if we wanted to retain our right to sue for damages, it would cost a mere $500 to skip signing the waiver. Cheap when you're talking legal fees. Pretty expensive when you consider a tandem jump and picture cd ran about $300. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have pics of my grisly death than the right to sue after I'm dead. 

Anyway, we giggled over the wording on the waiver and I about peed my pants as we watched the required safety video. Not from fear, but due to the hilarity of it. I wish I had a copy of the safety video to share. The best part was the narrator: A skinny guy with a very long gray/white beard (think: ZZ Top). He looked like a cult leader or a guy who would live in a cabin in the woods and rant against society. However he was dressed in a very businesslike navy blue suit, with a tie. He would have looked much better in flowing robes or something similarly crazy. What's hilarious is, this guy must do the safety video for every jump school in the US, because if you try to search for the video, you get this: a million would-be skydivers who remember only the freaky-deaky bearded guy who narrates the safety video. 

We arrive. I am trying to get the "Skydive Las Vegas" sticker in the shot but we're both too short. 

So, we pick out our generic blue jumpsuits, so that we all look like errant auto mechanics, and we get these goofy soft helmets that look like someone bred a citrus fruit with a penis head. Goggles and gloves round out the sexy ensemble. I'm pretty sure *this* is when I realized that I was last on the plane, and therefore, going to the the first one off. 

We're crammed into the plane like sardines, our instructors harnessed to us so tightly that we are actually sitting in their laps while we ascend. That is the hatch door right beside me. 

They open the door. I hyperventilate a little. Ok. A lot. 

It is about this point where I am trying to put on a brave face, but I'm freaking the F out. It's not like they opened the hatch and BAM! We jump. No. They opened the hatch, and we swung around so that, still sitting in my instructor's lap, our legs are now swung outside the plane and we're sitting in the doorway, looking for the jump zone. So we're sitting there for several harrowing seconds. My instructor has to lean out to get a look outside, so every time he leans forward, yep, I lean forward too. Hanging halfway out of a plane at 12,000 feet. This is the part that is starting to really freak me out. Lean out. (steel myself to jump). Nope. Lean back in. Repeat X3 until the very last time, when the pilot told us it was time, we leaned out, and my instructor pulled back, yelling, "Not over the power plant!" At this point I think I said in a rather bitchy tone, "Next time you lean me halfway out of this plane we'd better be jumping!"

Next thing I knew, I heard my instructor yell, "Chicken wings!" (a very appropriately named term for how they wanted us to hold our arms until chute was deployed), and we were out. Free falling. Amazing. 

Bye-bye plane!

Not scared now. If I die, it'll only hurt for a second. 

After free-falling for about a minute, I learned that the chute works. This makes me insanely happy. Now is the time to enjoy the view. To say it was incredible is doing it a great injustice. Las Vegas is definitely the place to skydive. I saw Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. The strip. The mountains are breathtaking and the desert just goes on forever. 

We landed standing up, jogged a few steps and high-fived. Those little dots in the background? The other skydivers. 

I took this picture, after we were done, and sent it to Dan. "Guess what we just did?" He was not. amused. It took him a while to get over that, my jumping out of a plane without consulting him first. 

It was the experience of a lifetime. I would do it again in a heartbeat if:

1) I had $200 just lying around burning a hole in my pocket.

2) Dan wouldn't get really pissed and break of the engagement because I keep scaring him to death

If you ever had even a tiny bit of desire to do this, I'm telling you. Do it. You will not regret it.