The Planet’s Professional Services engineers are a rare breed. Send us any non-standard problem, and we’ll jump on it to find a solution. That kind of jumping is typically the only jumping you see from one of us, but last Thursday challenged that status quo: a few of us spent our day jumping … out of a perfectly good airplane … hurtling toward a small field just South of Houston.
Being the last line of support at The Planet can get a bit stressful with all the interesting problems that come our way. Sometimes it becomes necessary to cut loose and take some risks. Our group is fairly tight-knit, so we end up supporting each other through these brief periods of insanity and have a blast in the process!
On Thursday, the three of us in Houston – accompanied by our colleague Geraldine Fernando who works at our help desk – ended up taking a half day off of work to go sky diving. We were all new to the process, and needless to say, we were a bit nervous.
Skydive Spaceland would be our proving ground.
To be honest, the location didn’t assuage any of our fears … the letters on the front of the building were merely outlines of their initial glory (pictured above), and we couldn’t help but wonder if this was the result of some unfortunate sky diving accident or just a boring hurricane.
As we started to prepare for our jumps, the sign-your-life-away forms were a bit of a reality check. Each paragraph literally stressed that there is a possibility you can die from jumping out of a plane, followed by several paragraphs confirming that you actually read the paragraph prior and understand the risks. Five pages, and twenty “initial here” fields later, we were amply freaked out and excited to start training!
Our training program consisted of watching an instructional video on what to do once you were actually plummeting to your doom … err, skydiving is what they called it. As an aside: If you can get your hands on this training tape, we’d advise you to take note of the instructor’s beard: it’s epic. Seriously, he could have been wearing a tie, and we would have never known.
(Left to right: Shawn Lime, Christopher Gallo, Geraldine Fernando, James Jhurani)
After training, we met with our instructors, all of whom were surprisingly laid back. They had the luxury of knowing the feeling of a successful skydive. We were not that lucky. They helped us suit up, answered all of our nervous questions and walked through the “this is how it will really happen” version of our training.
The only thing we had left to do was actually do it. Given the most recent skydiving safety statistics, we were confident that most of us would make it back to the office on Friday, but our legs were pretty heavy as we climbed into the plane.
After takeoff, we went over some-last minute questions and reminders. We latched onto our designated instructors, and they assured us that each of the harnesses could support 2500 lbs … which strangely didn’t help with our fear about the parachute opening.
Then we hit fourteen thousand feet, and we had to scoot the longest 10 feet of our lives.
No turning back now … the only way to the ground was out the side of the plane.
Pictures don’t do justice to the rush: free falling to terminal velocity and trying to process the fact that the only thing between you and the ground is a few thousand feet of air. You don’t know whether to scream or smile or close your eyes or breathe … then you realize breathing is not optional.
At Skydive Spaceland, you are encouraged to pull your own ripcord after checking your own altimeter, so you get the full thrill of pulling the cord and waiting for the ‘chute to catch. In reality — based on the statistics — tandem skydives are very safe, and each one of us experienced a textbook jump … the last few thousand feet drifting under canopy to our landing zone.
The final phase of the tandem jump requires you raise your legs straight out in front of you and slowly pull down on the flairs as you approach the landing zone. Depending on the speed of your landing, the instructor may tell you to sit or stand as you reach the ground. Geraldine insisted that we include the fact that she was the only one in our group to land on her feet, while the rest of us slid in on our backsides.
It was blast, and we couldn’t have been more reassured by the professionalism of our instructors at Skydive Spaceland. We’ve all caught the skydiving bug, and after we got back to the office we heard that one of our coworkers is a skydiving regular, so we challenge her to give her perspective on a jump … Patricia? 
- Shawn, Christopher, Geraldine and James
