Posts Tagged ‘fear’

A friend of mine who happens to be a Francophone skydiver from Quebec only took up the sport a few years ago. She’s someone who impresses me. She has her motorcycle license, she has her skydiving license and she’s just an overall “bad ass” woman. She gave me permission to post an article that she wrote up for Canpara (Canadian version of Parachutist) This is the article: Skydiving in your early 50s? Written by Normande Cournoyer Translaled by Gaëlle Vercollier Yes, it is possible. ln 2004, around the end of the summer, I was looking for a special project to… » Read more…

Sydney, Ashley’s Life twin, and one of my recent new acquaintances wrote a letter to our beloved sport… I know exactly where she’s coming from, and I felt that this deserved a re-post… Check out her blog here Dear Skydiving, I’m going to tell you a little bit about me. You know when you get to that place with something new in your life where you kinda shock yourself by how full-steam-ahead you’ve been approaching things? I’ve been there. A lot. It happened with rowing when I jacked up my hip flexor and was out for the rest of the… » Read more…

It’s been 4 days since then, and I’m still feeling the after effects of Saturday. I started everything off by partying with some friends Friday night and got to bed around 4:30AM… Woke up the next morning at 8:00AM to pick up some friends at the Metro (Subway) and then head to the DZ. My mom, being a pastry chef decided that she wanted to make me some cookies and brownies to bring with me, so I had about 3 boxes of junk food with me along with my skydive gear, a small ziplock back full of cherries, my box… » Read more…

First and foremost, I apologize for not updating this page as often as I wanted to. I had initially planned on updating it after every single jump, but things happened extremely fast. As the title describes – I made 25 jumps in just under 12 days time, while still working 45 hours per week. But I can honestly say it’s been one of the greatest 12 days of my life. Along the way there have been some very notable jumps, here are my favorites: Jump no. 7 Obviously my first Free Fall jump would make the list. I already wrote… » Read more…

“It’s the closest you’ll ever get to God.” I guess my story begins with this quote from the movie Point Break, a film my friend and I watched incessantly and memorized line for line when we weren’t slingin’ drinks behind the bar together back in the early 90’s. In our early 20’s at the time, with an abundance of adrenaline and a deficit of good sense, we’d reaffirm our commitment to jump together one day each time we’d watch the exciting but (as I now realize) unrealistic skydiving scene from the movie. At the time, it seemed as sure to… » Read more…

Q: How cool am I? A: Not so cool as I think I am. I failed Level 1. Nobody fails AFF Level 1. (Well, some people do, but it not typical). Not type A die-hard nut-balls like me. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s how it went down. As I previously mentioned, I had a long two week lag time (due to winds and weather holds) between my ground school training and my first AFF jump. All that waiting had a certain value but it also served to get me pretty jacked up (that’s a technical term for you… » Read more…