Tag: Bungee

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Helicopter jump

So it’s nearly the end of the season in Quebec and in most places actually…
Although there’s still a couple of weeks left to the season, it’s over for me at this point.

I ended it with a bang though, got my first helicopter jump done (4000 feet).
And yes, I bought beer… And rum actually haha.

To give some of you a quick description of what it’s like to do a heli jump as opposed to a normal skydive from a plane, when you jump from the chopper, you’re getting off out of a vehicle that’s barely moving, so you actually get that feeling that you’re falling at first. When you jump off a plane, the plane’s moving at about 80 mph, so when you jump, there’s wind pushing you in some direction, the wind you’re feeling (Called relative wind) starts off on the side (opposite direction that the plane is moving in) and ends up in front of you (you’re falling down, wind seems to be blowing up)

I don’t know why for certain, but, once you’re actually in the relative wind, you don’t feel yourself falling, you feel as if you’re static in one place.
With the helicopter jump, you feel yourself falling until you’ve accelerated enough to reach a speed at which you once again feel motionless.
It’s quite the similar feeling to a bungee jump.
Base jumping is also the same feeling as this.
It’s something I’d do again, but it’s not that high on my priority list…

Blue ones everyone!
-Adam

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WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Sorry for the long delays in between postings, I’ve just been so busy with my new job, with my summer plans, with getting Skydive Addiction on the map, with making excuses as to why I haven’t been posting, with procrastinating posting, and with a bunch of other stuff.

Seriously speaking though, getting Skydive Addiction on the map is my #1 priority…
Behind skydiving of course 😛

So anyways, this past weekend, I managed to convince 8 of my friends from a couple of DZs I jump at to join me on a bungee jumping road trip.
Needless to say, I heard at least 20 skydivers say:
“Are you crazy? How could you jump off a perfectly good bridge… WITHOUT a parachute?”

Yes, that’s right… Skydivers asked me the most God awful question in the world…
Why wouldn’t I? It’s quite a different rush from skydiving, and it’s a welcome change from the regular routine… Given, it’s not something you’d find me doing every day, but it’s fun once in a while.

So we headed to the Great Canadian Bungee which claims to be the highest bungee jump in North America. It’s 200 feet over a very very blue lake. Beautiful place actually.
I jumped there last year (as you can see on one of my 1st posts). And it was a lot of fun, so I decided to head back.

Turns out that when you’re 8 or 9 people, it’s actually cheaper to pay for 10 then it is to pay for 8 or 9… Group discount… So that’s exactly what we did.
And since I organized it, my friends were quick to put my name down as the person to do two jumps.
S-WEET!!
So the 1st person to jump is a girl named Stephanie, she’s done 5 tandem skydives, but doesn’t have her license yet. She’s never done a bungee jump however.
(They went by weight)
After 7 minutes of her standing at the edge not jumping and 7 minutes of myself and one of the other guys yelling at her to hurry up, she finally took the plunge… Ok, well she held hands with the instructor and he slowly lowered her backwards until she finally fell. HI HI =)

The others jumped right away, which was a welcome sight =D

My first jump was a normal forward dive with my ankles strapped in, didn’t give me the same adrenaline rush as the 1st time though (Which pretty much proved that once you face a fear, you never get that same rush again =( )

I even tested it… I started running back up the hill to get to the top… Half way up, I couldn’t breathe anymore… If I had an adrenaline pumping through my veins, I probably would’ve made it up without breaking a sweat.
So on the 2nd jump, I decided to strap myself in by the shoulders. The instructors at the top told me that since I was so comfortable with jumping off the bridge that I could do a flip this time.
We decided that I’d do a back flip. That back flip then turned into a double and if I had known how much more time I had, I probably would’ve been able to get a third in. Damn me and my dissatisfaction!!!!!

So after spending 2 and a half hours at the bungee jump place, we then decided to go grab breakfast at some random place in town… This place was on the 2nd floor of a supermarket… And I can say one thing… If we thought waiting for Stephanie to jump was a lifetime wait… Waiting for sunny side up eggs and toast to be prepared was an eternity.

Fast forward an hour and we arrive at Go Skydive. It’s one of those DZs that you wouldn’t be able to find if you didn’t know where to go… We didn’t know where to go.
We parked in the Gatineau airport’s parking lot, looked around for signs, but couldn’t find any.
We were given directions on how to walk there by a girl who had just completed her 1st tandem =).
So we get there, they check out our paperwork, the rigs we’re jumping, and so on.
Then they tell us that even though we’re regular jumpers who have jumped together before, they want us to jump with a coach ?!?!?!?!

My buddy Alex lent me his rig (Sabre I 170 in a Javelin J2 rig), he spent 15 minutes checking the gear making sure that everything was ok even after a rigger took a look at it and I had inspected it too… His reasoning was that he didn’t want my death on his conscience. I laughed, told him that I’d pull the reserve on purpose then went into the plane 😛

In the end, they decided to put 5 of us on a Cessna 182 (TINY plane!!!) instead of their Navaho (Still tiny, but bigger than the Cessna) but this time, we didn’t need a coach.
For those of you who don’t really know the difference, with a Cessna, you have to get out of the door, hang onto a strut below the wing, stand on a step and hang there before your jump.
On the Navaho, you jump out of the door. On the Twin Otter and the Caravans that my home DZs have, you not only jump out of the door, but you have a bench to sit on 😛

Anyways, the DZ’s landing area is bigger than the one at Parachute Montreal but the planes, much smaller.
The staff was nice, but the rigger who packed Alex’s rig after I jumped took ages… He also asked us different questions about the rig and forgot to collapse the pilot chute (a fairly dangerous mistake that can sometimes cause a malfunction). Anyways, all in all, I’d jump there again, but I’d also pack my own rig 😛

Blue Skies everyone!

-Adam

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My little “problem”

Ever since I was little, I’ve always found myself participating in activities that most people would call stupid.

On my 5th birthday while everyone was outside the house waiting for me, I colored myself blue with the food coloring that my mom was using to make my cake… Then to my astonishment, when I went to show my mom, she got mad at me… At me!!!  On my birthday!!!! Ok, given I was blue and everyone was waiting outside… But I looked so cool! I was a real life smurf =)

Fast forward about 10-11 years, before the movie Jackass came out, I found myself in the street at 3 am with a couple of friends pushing a buddy down a hill in a shopping card with a broken wheel. Sparks were flying, the cart sped up and went out of control, and I lost grasp of the handle as he sped towards a speed bump. Oh how funny it was! Until he went flying out of the cart into the street… I was still laughing as he rolled around in agony.

This winter, I decided to learn to snowboard. Armed with about 1500$ in new gear and Mike as my instructor, I took to the hills and within 2 months, I was on the double diamonds… Not to let anyone down, I decided it was time to attempt a jump… Without scouting it… I went for it, started flying in the air, then lost balance, hit some ice, sprained both of my wrists and hurt my knee… Aren’t I smart? (Side note: I’m DYING FOR THE SEASON TO START UP AGAIN!!!!)

On to the topic at hand… From what you probably realized by now, I’m a yes man… This doesn’t mean that I give people all my money, or jump off cliffs… Ok scratch the second part, I have that planned for the week of May 9th…
The “Yes man” thing lead me to try bungee jumping last August (See below)

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Once I tried bungee jumping, I realized how much of an addiction to adrenaline I really have… It’s not the fact that I like doing stupid things, it’s the fact that I’m addicted to the rush of adrenaline that usually comes with the accomplishment of these stupid things.
So I decided it was time to step up to the plate and try the ultimate rush… Or so I thought…

I had spent the next 2 months organizing a group of 30 people to jump with me. On the day of the jumps, the weather was too cloudy for us to be allowed into the sky. The owner of the drop zone called me at 6 am to tell me that we’d have to wait till later in the day and we weren’t sure if we’d even get off the ground… So we went go karting instead… And after 30 minutes of go karting, out driving everyone who had came with me, I got bored and annoyed and decided to take the risk and drive an hour away to the drop zone.

Octobe 4th 2009, the day I did my 1st tandem jump. My instructor, who’s name I forgot at the time in all the excitement was a 6 foot tall guy who didn’t say a word and had black gloves with green skeleton hands printed on the back. He wore an orange and white jump suit, and towered over me like a hungry gorilla…
I asked him what brought him into the sport to teach and his response: “I don’t like to work.”
I turn to my friend Louis who was on the same plane load as I, and he says “This is the first time I get on a plan in which I will not be landing”… What great statements to attribute to my future addiction for which I was so excited to finally be part of.

It was the shortest minute of my life.

As soon as I walked back into the Manifest (For those of you who don’t know what it is or don’t sky dive, basically it’s like the administrative office for the drop zone) I went straight into the owner’s office and spoke to him about taking lessons. He was fairly quick to offer me to come with his school to Zephyrhills Florida (Skydive city) and take my PFF there in March. (The weather in Montreal isn’t exactly sky dive friendly between November and April)
So I started putting money aside and come March, I was on a flight to Zhills…

I am now CSPA Solo certified with 12 jumps in my logbook, I’m planning on completing my A license in May.

– Adam AKA Double A