June 30th 2012: Skydiving in Chatham

We had to get up early this morning to get to Chatham to skydive at Skydive Cape Cod. On the way there, we encountered a traffic jam in the town of Bourne as everyone was headed to Cape Cod to enjoy the sunny weather as well. Being bored, my friend decided to get out through the moon roof in my car and take pictures of the traffic around us, and of the Bourne Bridge on Route 28 as we passed over it and over the Cape Cod Canal.

The Cape Cod Canal

Traffic Jam

The Bourne Bridge

Crossing over into Cape Cod

We managed to reach our destination at the Chatham Municipal Airport early, and were earlier than my 3 other friends who were going to jump with me as well. After signing the waiver forms and watching an introductory video which just made us more nervous about doing the jump,we had a few complications in terms of payment  due to each of us reserving our spots individually, but thankfully it was resolved soon after. My friends all decided to get the video, with the option to get the pictures later. However, as they had only one plane and could only take 2 people up at a time, we had to wait for four hours before my friend and I could go up. I took a few pictures of the area before it was finally time.

We got ourselves suited up, and while waiting for the couple before us to land, I asked the instructors several questions like the minimum height for opening a chute (>800 feet) and how likely the parachute would not open properly, which was really unlikely as the parachute was designed to open, and there was a reserve chute to open in case something went wrong, like the instructor strapped to my back becoming incapacitated etc.

Finally it was time to to board the plane, which was really small and could barely fit the four of us in the plane, and I was cramped into the back of the plane. The flight up to 10000 feet seemed to take forever as the plane spiralled upward, but the views below were magnificent.

Finally, it was time, and the instructor strapped himself to me. The plane door opened and the air rushed in, and soon my friend was out the door and plummeting to the ground below. We maneuvered ourselves to the door, put our right feet out onto the step below, and with one push, I was suddenly airborne.

The initial feeling for the first few seconds was just a little like the falling feeling you get from riding a roller-coaster, just that it isn't as bad, although I have to admit that the thought of falling to my death did pass through my mind at this point.

Soon, I reached my terminal velocity of around 120mph, and the feeling of falling literally stopped. It was great just seeing the views below, and all too soon, the parachute was pulled, and we began our slow descent to the landing zone. The instructor must have felt that I was a little tense, so he decided to loosen my harness a little right in mid-air, which made me really scared that he might loosen too much accidentally, so I held on tightly to my harness while he did that, but thankfully he knew his stuff, and I enjoyed the rest of the journey enjoying the views.

Some views while I was in the air follow.

My Parachute

The views below

Approaching the landing zone

I was supposed to lift my legs up before the landing so my instructor could do it first, but somehow I could not due to my wearing jeans, so I ended up landing about the same time as my instructor, hitting my legs on the ground and sending a slight shock up my legs. Thankfully, it wasn't permanent and went away soon after. At least now I know what it feels like to land. More importantly, it was an awesome feeling to have accomplished something most people do not dare to do at all, and of course, surviving the experience.

My friends on the ground also took pictures of me coming down.

Finally, when we were landed, we were soon allowed to view our pictures, and they were awesome, and we just had to pay the extra $30 to get them. We were also presented with a certificate verifying that we had done our first jump.

When everyone was done, we all had to hurry off to our own events as we had not anticipated the long wait time. My friend wanted to have sushi buffet, so we decided to head to Maki Maki back in Boston.

This place is pretty new, with decent decor. When I first went up to get food, I realized the arrangement of food was almost similar to that at Minado back in Natick. However, this has much more variety than Minado in every section, with a chocolate fondue machine as well, and raw oysters and clams were free-flowing here with no restrictions on how many one could take at a time.

Chocolate Fondue machines

Cute Yogurt Cups

My Bounty of Oysters

After our enjoyable dinner which only cost less than $40, my friend had invited me to a karaoke session at Do Re Mi Karaoke nearby later that night, so we decided to go. I had a great time here, singing songs like "Come What May" from the show "Moulin Rouge". I have to say that this place is much better than Golden Leaf in Chinatown in terms of variety of songs available, and they had the most updated songs as well.

Unfortunately, we had another busy day tomorrow, so we had to leave before the night was over to head back home.

Looking forward to whale watching and F-1 racing tomorrow.