Description: Experience indoor sky diving, wherein one can experience the free-fall aspect of diving without the death part.
Check out our video at the end!!
(Heather's Report):
Steve, Marty's father, got it into his head that he wanted to go do some indoor skydiving and invited us along, his treat, which was extremely, very nice of him. He came down Friday and we hung about, going out to eat Indian food at my favorite place, Tasty Curry in the Inner Sunset and then to the Planetarium at the new Academy of Arts and Science. I hadn't been to a planetarium in years and years and so it was great fun to go and allow myself to be all girlish-kid delighted in the whole thing. Plus I love astronomy so double bonus!
The next morning, fortified by scrambled eggs and veggies and my usual Marty-brought-Mocha, we launched in separate cars (since it would be easier for Steve to drive back to Sacramento from the East Bay) towards Union City, around a 45 minute drive. Okay, I don't think I even knew of Union City existing in California. Maybe I'd heard of it in other states. But, yes, we do indeed have a Union City, which I didn't see much of since the building for iFly (yeah, really) was right off the highway. But it sort of smacked of Fremont where we bought Zippy, lots of Mall-like installations, like those big groupings of outdoor shops (meaning not like a whole indoor mall) - theater, various restaurants, Best Buy, Borders, Michael's Crafts, that sort of thing. These places always seem to have a vaguely depressing quality to me, a separation of community, which must exist somewhere in the area but is not inherently visible.
The building itself was oddly shaped and much smaller than I thought it would be and for some reason, taller, which doesn't make sense because you'd need tall for a giant vertical wind tunnel, right? I guess I wasn't sure what I was expecting. But it was a narrow rectangular building, long on front, thin on the sides. The observation/launch deck was the second floor, the blue part, while the tunnel ran right up the middle of the building from what looked like underground to the very top. That squarish part in the middle of the open part is the tunnel. Apparently it took about $8.5 million dollars to build the entire thing, I think it was said about $6.5 million for just the wind tunnel. These tunnels are a fairly new design, safer and apparently the best for simulating free fall. Apparently even the military adopted it over their old design they use for training their jump troops. Skydivers also use it to work on free fall flight skills for competitions as well.And then of course, there are the folks like me, Marty and Steve, coming for the "oooh, indoor skydiving!" bit. Most have never been close to jumping out of an airplane, so this is a fun, safer and cheaper option for folks like us. Well, Steve has jumped out a perfectly good airplane about 30 times and Marty and I did a tandem jump a long time ago. I vividly remember that jump. One, I have a fear of flying so the old tin can with wings we took off in was extremely scary to start with. Two, yeah, jumping out of a... well, not perfectly good airplane, but it was keeping me in the air so that was good to me. Three, the absolutely incredible nausea from having the adrenaline caught up in my torso after the chute went off and cut off the blood flow to my legs (apparently adrenaline needs the entire body circulatory system to process through). Not to mention the abject fear throughout the whole thing.
But this seemed much safer. No plane to start with. A large mesh where the instructor stood to adjust your basic flight stance. Someone to control the wind speed. No falling to one's death if the chute doesn't go off. Well, I guess if the power went out you might be in trouble but I imagine there are back-ups and back-ups of those. So I went forth mostly willingly. The only thing I was worried about were all the warnings that you shouldn't go in if you've ever dislocated your shoulder or had other severe shoulder injuries. I tore my rotator cuff in my left shoulder years and years ago kayaking in college (in the pool no less, after I was tired from learning rolls over and over, pulled up with my paddle when I should have hip snapped). I've never even really been bothered by it after it healed up until about a couple of months ago when I notice that my shoulder has been bothering me. Years and years later, for no apparent reason. But hell, I was willing to risk it.
So I flopped forwards into the air tunnel. My first little "flight" was just getting used to the environment, having the instructor stabilize me in my "free fall" posture. I felt I caught on fairly quickly. Marty and his dad thought I wasn't having fun but that was just because I was concentrating on all the instructions before hand and trying to adjust "on the fly" as it were. I felt completely fine with the experience. However, when I got out though, I was shaking all over and my legs were jelly. I attribute this to a body memory of the original tandem jump I did and that fear stuck in my body. It took almost the entire round of other people going for their first and second rounds to be able to calm myself down. But by the time I got up for my second round, I was feeling fine and eager.
The second time around, the instructor gives more time to stabilize on your own and then takes you by an arm and leg and whoosh, up you fly into the top of the air tunnel and down and up again and then with a wild spin in the air. By that point, I was howling with laughter and wanted to go again about five more times. We got to watch our instructor do some crazy stuff in the chamber. Folks might say oh whatever and poo poo it but you have to have some damn fine control to do the stuff he was doing in a confining cylinder like that. Full on dives to the "floor" with a last minute stop over the mesh, that sort of thing.
By the time the day was over, I wanted to take on a career as a body flight instructor. Or a sky dancer. Even though my shoulder was having some problems and I had dreadlocks in the wisps of hair that were poking through the helmet. I'd go again in a heartbeat. They do teach you how to do extra stuff the more you go. You can even train to be an instructor through various programs. I probably wouldn't end up doing that but I am interested in flying upside down on my head.
(Marty's Report):
So today was indoor skydiving day. Yesterday was Hangout With Pop and Heather Day, which was just as good as floating on a 100mph column of air in the boondocks of the East Bay (Union City, anyone? Does anyone not think it's somewhere near Daly City?)
Dad came down yesterday afternoon. We had planned for a 1:30pm meeting at my house, after Heather and I met with our couples' therapist. (I think we've done probably 3 1/2 years of couples therapy, with maybe four or five therapists, and it's really paying off. I wouldn't want to be married to anyone else.) But apparently Mom, having been thrown off Grandpa not being able to go (he had to sit on a grand jury), but nonetheless kicked him out at 10am, after cooking him a breakfast so he couldn't make excuses about how long it was taking to prepare the cereal. So Dad got to sit in his car on our street for a few hours, drinking coffee and watching the goings ons of 4th ave.
Heather had gotten tickets to the Planetarium, so we went to our favorite Indian joint (Tasty Curry, best Indian in SF, well, at least the nicest proprietor), where we had a big old table full of nan and entrees, and dosed ourselves up on highly sugared and caffeinated chai. That's one of my favorite parts of the place, the big tub of free chai.
We took a quick tour of the natural sciences museum--Heather's getting tired of my criticisms, so I tried to keep them at a minimum--hitting the aquarium (my favorite are the alligator gar, though the leafy sea horses are ridiculously cool) and the living roof, then going to the planetarium show ("Fragile Earth"). We agreed that the best part was when it simulated the whole room rising up through the roof of the museum, and swooshing around the roof, then lifting up and off over the city and finally into the heavens. I'd seen it before, though, so I allowed myself to drift off... or tried to, because Heather kept squeezing my hand each time I twitched (signaling a switch from waking to sleep state, apparently a common sign for me), so the show became a bit like a sleep deprivation torture.
Then we hung out at home and, as my Gpa likes to say, "hooted and scratched." We covered the bases, from movies to nuclear power to our parrots (a hard topic to avoid when they are laughing and chortling in the background, or on your head). Then we watched "Serenity," which Dad hadn't seen before, though for Heather and I it was perhaps our fifth view through. It's funny how with most films, once is enough, but with some, you can watch over and over. And it is an odd quirk of my character that the one's I love over and over are the genre films (I've watched "Live Free or Die Hard" about five times). Shrug.
Boy, it was cold last night! We slept on the futon in Heather's room, and got the cold air from the window seeping down on our heads. I said to Heather in the wee hours that it felt like camping.
Then today we got up at about 8am, and Dad and I went for the coffee run while Heather began some cooking behavior (what a good wife!). More hooting and scratching around the kitchen table--and I must say, I love have guests around, most of all in the morning. There's something deeply soothing and reassuring to me about having folks poking around in the AM, and with whom you can reconnect after a night of being dissolved into the dreamtime.
We headed off in separate cars (Dad was leaving after the adventure), and made our way down through the Peninsula, then over the San Mateo Bridge to Union City. I don't think, if we'd not gone to "skydive" there, that I might have even known that UC existed, not to mention actually having gone there. It reminded me of, well, every other American suburb I've ever been to. Except with a place where you could parachute on a big fan.
I told James Thursday about this upcoming adventure, and said there was an option to do the flying without the grate that covers the fan, the Super Adventure Option. He understands my humor, and was not afraid.
We got to the place, which was a custom built facility out front of a standard later-model shopping center, and went in to register. Eventually, after watching the earlier crews float around, we got into flight school, a quick video, then suited up and entered the chamber. They sealed up the doors and turned the fan on, and off we went.
I was nervous, as usual in these situations, more for the embarrassment factor than any fear of harm. Which is a little silly, given my minimal investment in being a good indoor flying, uh, person, but there it was. So I stepped up to the door after pop had did his turn, and it was tense such that the instructor kept trying to get me to take the right posture. It looks on the video that I eventually did, then after a minute he took me to the door and I climbed out.
The sensations were so strong in my body, like every cell and organ had gotten a little dose of adrenaline and was kind of humming inside with it. Then there was the wait for our second turn, where the instructor took us floating up higher into the wind tunnel, which was pretty cool. Though time did seem to slow down, so the minute that went by very quickly sitting on the bench, kind of slowwweddd down when you were actually doing it.
And that was that! We'd done it, we'd not fallen to the (almost) fate of Charlie and Grandpa in "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" (when they almost floated up into the fan with the super bubble gum). Heather had pulled her shoulder, which she injured years ago, and I popped my right shoulder, which is still a bit achy.
Dad, the stalwart Northern European descended dude, survived just fine.
(Here's the video of the flights. Dad is in red, Marty is in green, and Heather is in yellow.)
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