I guess I could call this weekend a bit of an adrenalin weekend, or at least Sunday was. Sunday started out with a trip up to Demonstration Forest. It's a park frequented by mountain bikers (including the Santa Cruz and Specialized testers who have their main offices very close to here) that is just above Santa Cruz. I biked there last week and it was pretty wet, unfortunately this week was the same. This week the SawPit trail was in better condition then last week (0 slides/crashes) while Brail was very sketchy in places (3 slides/crashes). After my third complete loss of traction down a step muddy section, I looked back up the hill and had a huge smile on my face. The ground was very soft and good for practicing cornering on terrible terrain.
After I got back from the bike ride, myself and Alan headed out to Byron for our first sky dive with Bay Area Skydiving! Mel got me a tandem jump for Christmas (she has been raving about it to me for over a year now) so it was now time for me to take the plunge. The experience was a lot of fun. Flying up in a very crampt plane to 14,000 feet was quite strange! At a reasonable height I asked the guy I was jumping with if we will be jumping soon – he replied, nooooo, we are only at 4,000 feet! Ohhh!
The jump itself was cool – I actually felt quite safe – looking out over the edge seeing California below you – no feelings of vertigo, I was just looking forward to freefall! The first few seconds are interesting – a huge feeling of acceleration, then a really unusual feeling of the wind 'holding' you up. After about 15 seconds, the whole thing felt quite normal! After about a minute the parachute went out normally and the slow down was much more gentle then I expected. Flying the cute was a lot of fun! Swooping left and right and flaring! The landing was gentle and that was that. I'd say that anyone could go and do it! It's not a physical thing and it does not feel that dangerous when your up there. I know a lot of the biking stuff I do is a lot more sketchy
Anyway, that's been my weekend. I'm looking forward to getting back to Ireland on Friday!
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