It's hard to remember what happened this summer in detail, so I'll just highlight some stuff. Then I'll talk about my recent skydiving incident. I'll start from the beginning. And just because I haven't updated in so long, I'll include some embarrassing photos. Well, two embarrassing photos.There's plenty of embarrassing photos of me out there, especially on Facebook, which is why my photos are set on private. But I'll throw some out here.
Well the first major highlight of summer was the beginning of summer when we celebrated Stephanie Vo's birthday at MyStudio, a club in Hollywood somewhere. It's pretty pathetic that I've been there twice already, but I can't tell you what it looks like inside. Anyways, we got a party bus for her birthday and we were pre-partying inside the party bus. Mind you, I was perfectly fine at that time. Then her brother Richard gives me a "cookie" (interpret that how you will, but it really was a cookie), and seriously ten minutes later my entire memory was wiped.
I don't remember that night at all, only fragments of it. I remember LMFAO's "Shots" coming on and Danny and I heading over to the bar to take a shot that I probably shouldn't have taken. Fast forward and next thing you know I'm fighting to stay awake with the bouncer slapping me on the cheek because I was falling asleep. Somehow I wake up in my bed. Anyways, embarrassing photo from the night:
I'm telling you, that "cookie" seriously messed me up. I wish I could tell you what happened, but apparently I was sleeping for most of it.
The next highlight was a barbecue at Danny's place. Nothing special, it was just nice to actually swim in a pool that's deeper than 5 feet. Plus, its always nice to just spend time with friends.
OK. So sometime in March-May, my friend Karl calls me up at like 11:00PM and says "HEY. DO YOU WANT TO GO SKYDIVING? BECAUSE THE GROUPON DEAL IS ENDING IN AN HOUR AND A COUPLE OF US BOUGHT IT ALREADY. YOU SHOULD COME WITH US."
I don't necessarily keep tabs on what's on my bucket list, but I know skydiving was one of them. I'm deathly afraid of heights, ask my sister if you don't believe me. So after contemplating whether I should go or not, I decided to just buy the Groupon and go with them because at that time I reasoned that I'd probably never get the opportunity to go with my friends again (I mean, no one just goes "HEY WANT TO GO SKYDIVING?"). So after a lot of debate on when we'd all go, we agreed on going August 27th.
So we got to San Diego on Friday night, and while looking up where this skydiving thing was located exactly, we realized it was located in the middle of nowhere in some unknown city called Jamul or Jumal. Something like that. It was like 40 minutes South of San Diego.
We woke up Saturday morning and drove there. Our appointment was at 12:00PM, but we ended up jumping at 2:30PM. When we got there, we had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and sign a billion waivers. While skimming through the waivers, there was this one that said something along the lines of we can't sue them for 21 years if anything happened to us after this event, I kid you not. Anyways, after seriously just waiting around for 2 hours in the sun, we finally got suited up and was waiting for the plane.
You see, we had this "order of jumping" mapped out between us. My friend Jason was supposed to jump first, then me, Karl, Vivek, Alex, and Morad was supposed to jump last. But I for sure did not want to jump first. Too bad we didn't get to choose when we were jumping because it just mattered on where you were sitting in the plane. Unfortunately, I somehow ended up sitting next to the exit.
My instructor and I. Notice my grimace while looking out at the plane, which was constantly ascending for 15 minutes or so till we finally leveled out. Interesting story, they closed the door to the plane initially during takeoff, but because the plane gets so incredibly stuffy on the ride up they open it shortly after takeoff. So when they were about to open the door, my instructor screams into my ear "HEY, MAKE SURE YOUR SEAT BELT IS ON TIGHT BECAUSE WHEN WE OPEN THE DOOR, SOMETIMES THINGS GET SUCKED OUT." Not going to lie, that made me pretty nervous. So when they opened the door, my instructor was pulling me by the straps to make sure I didn't get sucked out somehow. Mind you, if I was to fall out the plane at any point, I wasn't strapped onto my instructor yet so I would've just been free falling. By myself. Without a parachute. Just sayin'.
So when the time finally comes for us to jump, I had to sit on my instructor's lap awkwardly while he strapped himself onto me. When you're about to jump, you have to kneel down a bit while the instructor rocks you three times. On the third rock, you're supposed to jump off the plane. Seriously when you're on the edge of the plane and you're looking down, your mind just draws a huge blank.
Oh yes, that girl in the background was some random girl that was in our plane. So there was the six of us, and one random girl. Her name was Lindsay, she was the youngest (just turned 18, I only know this because Morad was trying to creep) and also the calmest of us all.
I'm not even going to bother commenting on this photo. I'd like to see you jump out of a plane without making a face like that. Anyways, looking at some of my photos I noticed that my instructor and I actually did a back flip in the air when we jumped out of the plane. But I can't remember that because after I jumped out my mind literally blacked out for 10 seconds or so. I think I was just in so much shock that I was actually doing this.
Anyways, overall skydiving was so much fun. Those of you who are seriously contemplating doing it should definitely do it. The feeling of the initial jump and the free fall (which was one minute for us since we paid for the upgrade, but the free fall period seriously felt like thirty seconds at most) is totally indescribable. After my instructor deployed the parachute, he let me take the reigns of the parachute and I was able to steer it around for a bit. It was pretty cool because when he was steering, we did some spins and loops in the air which was so awesome.
Summer has been amazing so far and there's still some of it left! Anyways, I'll try to update this more. I just need reminders.
-Wilson
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