Bucket List: Skydiving? CHECK!

August 13th was my 62nd birthday.  We all went to dinner - Gerrí and I, Tom and April, Kristin and Ian, Lindsay and Brett, and Joel and Jordan.  I got to choose the place and I chose Cafe Rio.  I really like the Pork Tacos!

My kids gave me a gift bag with a piece of paper in it.  That piece of paper just happened to be a certificate for Skydive Utah at the Tooele Valley Airport.  Earlier this summer, we were at Lagoon and I tried to get some of these kids to go on the sky coaster with me.  Our day was about over and the line was very long, so we decided not to go, but that led to a bucket list discussion.  One of the group asked me if I had any interest in sky diving.  My answer was yes, but I thought that was the end of it.  Obviously not.

So, today was the day that we chose to go make the jump.  Not everyone in the family was interested in jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.  When I was flying my ultralight, I could never get Gerrí to go up with me.  She has a thing about heights and flying in airplanes without doors.  Tom, April, and Brett came to observe.  Kristin, Lindsay, Joey, and Jordan all decided to take the plunge. Because we all decided to take a video, we ended up on two different flights - a camera man for every one of us.  Joey and Jordan went first. Kristin Lindsay and I went on the next flight.

The link provided with this photo is my YouTube video of the event.  You can see Lindsay jump first, Kristin next, and I was the last one out of the plane.


http://youtu.be/1tUYeGGFaAo

So before you click on this - let me explain why some things look kind of weird.  When my trainer and I jump, I have my head back and my hands in the chest straps of the harness.  It looks like I don't want to look down, but actually, that is what they instruct you to do.  I wanted to be able to see the event clearly, so I had my prescription sun glasses on.  They gave me goggles to go over the glasses, but I found that when you are falling at a rate of 110 miles per hour, it is a bit difficult to keep those goggles in place.  Also, at the beginning of the video, I sound a bit drunk.  That is the ALS talking.  I did NOT take anything to calm my nerves - I promise!  I really was not nervous.  (What do I have to lose?)

While it only takes about 10 minutes for the plane to reach an altitude of 13,000 feet, and it only takes a couple of minutes to return to terra firma, the whole process takes about 3 hours.  So we were hungry when we got done.  Where did we go to eat?  CAFE RIO!

So, the title of this blog is Kevin LIVES with ALS.  Well - this is living!!

Flight 1:  Joey and Jordan

 

 

Flight 2:  Lindsay, me, Kristin