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Between my business, my wife's long commute, and our training schedules, family quality time has been reduced to an hour or two during the weekdays, Saturday night, and most of Sunday. Over the summer, I decided that we should have an official date night and we should also have planned outings.
Family date night typically involves going downtown to the local hotel bar to visit our favorite bartender, Dana, who over-pours and undercharges for high-end California wines. Dinner usually follows at one of the local restaurants where we've eaten one too many of the same dishes but they seldom change the menu and we're too lazy to venture out farther.
This past weekend, I decided to change date night into date day and told my wife that we had plans on Sunday morning but didn't tell her what we were doing. My wife isn't the kind of person who gets anxious about Christmas despite my best efforts to pique her curiosity but did ask what she should wear. I actually hadn't thought that far ahead so I decided to check. The web site said "casual clothing" but for my wife, that could be business casual or grungy casual so rather than picking out her outfit, I told her I would let her know what we were doing in the morning. After awakening on Sunday morning, I informed my wife of our plans... indoor skydiving.
[A little history about me and heights: I've always wanted to go skydiving but the closest I got was when friends came to town to jump and invited me along. I didn't actually book my reservation but when they called to confirm, I backed out. It seemed like a good idea until I actually thought through the entire process.]
Per their instructions, we arrived 45 minutes early in order to get our pre-flight briefing, learn the hand signals, and get fitted for gear. The hand signals were very basic and consisted of: straighten your legs, bend your legs, look up, and relax. The gear consisted of: a helmet, earplugs, a large jumpsuit, and goggles. Actually now that I think about it, there was one other command, a double thumbs down which meant you were unhappy and wanted out but that was only used once by a small child.
Upon completion of our pre-flight class and gear up, we were brought into seating area which surrounded the chamber. Each side of the chamber had a door, an entrance and an exit. As a person entered the chamber, everyone scooted to the right which moved them closer to their turn. I was excited but not nervous because you could literally stand on the floor so the fear of heights was completely out of my mind.
When it was my turn, I walked to the door, leaned forward and 60mph winds lifted me off the ground and enabled me to fly inside the tube.
While I was floating around, the instructor adjusted my position and kept me from crashing into the walls. When my time was up, he guided me towards the door and my wife entered for her turn.
In the next attempt, I got the hang of it and floated around, up, and down. On one of the ups, I got a little higher than I wanted so I immediately pulled my hands closer which causes you to come down and I found myself hovering inches from the floor. The entire experience is only a couple of minutes but it is absolutely a blast and I highly recommend it.
My wife and I would periodically hold our arms out throughout the day making whooshing sounds as if we were still flying in the tube. It wasn't the same as drinks with Dana and dinner but date day was a success!
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