Day 23: I Am The Eye In The Sky

So. Tuesday. Whew -- what a day! Not long after coming into work, I rode my bike down to the recreation center to receive an orientation on the lab's gym equipment. Fermilab offers gym memberships for $75/year, and I'm finally making a commitment to lose weight and get back into shape, so I bought myself a membership. Not that I have a huge basis for comparison, but it looks like they are pretty well equipped here and I look forward to starting a workout program when I get back from New York.

After lunch, I left work early and drove cheshcat's Infiniti down to Ottawa, Illinois. On the way, Lucretia II and I passed the 100,000 mile mark. I took photos to commemorate the occasion (and to share with cheshcat). The Infiniti has a digital odometer, so the photos aren't quite as detailed as the ones I took last month when Pazu (my Honda Civic) passed 100,000 miles -- for Pazu, I took a series of pictures as the old-fashioned odometer rolled over from 99999 to 100000 -- but they'll do.

The reason for my trip to Ottawa was simple: I had the desire to take a ride in a perfectly good small airplane, then leave it from a height of thirteen thousand feet (about two and a half miles up). I have been skydiving before -- once -- back in September 1995. Since then, I have tried to jump again five times and, each time, I had been thwarted by bad weather. Finally, I had a skydiving appointment on a clear day, which made me start getting all excited about taking another free fall. This month is ten years since my first skydive and it was important to me to have another before a full decade had gone by.

I was not to be disappointed: I did indeed get to jump. Words fail me when I describe the thrill of leaving a plane with over two miles to fall before reaching solid ground again. Was I scared? Interestingly enough, I was somewhat nervous at first, though I had not been when I jumped ten years ago (and, back then, I had expected to be terrified). But I was able to acknowledge the fear, then isolate it so that it would not control my actions. The payoff was well worth it! I had about sixty seconds of free fall, during which I reached a speed of about 120 miles per hour, before pulling the ripcord and opening the parachute. It amazes me to think that -- twice now! -- I have traveled faster with no vehicle at all than the fastest speeds that I have driven in a car. As we fell, the views were incredible and I got to experience, once more, that delicious sensation of weightlessness.

Once the chute was opened, at 5500 feet, we had a nice long descent. During my previous dive, I experienced some motion sickness during the parachute glide down. This time, I came prepared, dosing myself with Dramamine before the jump. This may have been a good move; another woman who jumped out of the same plane ended up tossing her cookies during the parachute part of the jump.

Several people at the facility asked if this was my first jump. When I told them it was my first in ten years, I was inevitably told that the technology has improved significantly in that time. For the most part, I could not tell the difference... but one noticeable change was when the chute opened. Last time, being yanked from a horizontally-oriented person moving at ~200 feet per second to a vertically-oriented person moving at ~8 feet per second put a considerable force on my thighs, thanks to the straps around them. This time, however, I did not feel any sudden pressure there when the parachute slowed our descent. I wonder what else has changed in that time...

When I made my first jump, I was an undergraduate with a severely limited amount of disposable income, so the $165 jump fee was all I could afford. Now, however, I splurged on a photographer as well. He took twenty-four shots of me during the jump and I am picking the developed pictures up today. Looking forward to seeing it.

Now, I have a decision to make: Do I want to do this once every ten years, or more often? If I pay for another jump before next Tuesday, I get a hefty discount -- $99 instead of $149 for the second jump. I don't have to use the jump for one year, I just have to pay for it. And if I do jump again so soon, that opens up the idea of training for a USPA A-class license. Something to consider...

Once I was all through at the skydive facility, I headed back to the Event Horizon. My evening appointment was not going to be nearly as much fun as my afternoon appointment. I had a long-overdue talk scheduled with PH, in a final attempt to work out the personal frictions between us. I had predicted that the talk would last less than ten minutes or more than two hours. Unfortunately, it was the former case; we ran up against a point of inflexibility very quickly and the talk was done. I am sorry that things had to end the way that they did, but at least that task -- hanging over our heads for more than half a year -- is now done. It is not the optimal resolution, but at least it is closure.

Thinking back, I find it hard to believe that all of this happened in the same day. In one day, I embarked on a new fitness program, jumped out of an airplane, and resolved a long-standing conflict. Small wonder I felt tired when I woke up Wednesday morning!

Day 23: I Am The Eye In The Sky

So. Tuesday. Whew -- what a day! Not long after coming into work, I rode my bike down to the recreation center to receive an orientation on the lab's gym equipment. Fermilab offers gym memberships for $75/year, and I'm finally making a commitment to lose weight and get back into shape, so I bought myself a membership. Not that I have a huge basis for comparison, but it looks like they are pretty well equipped here and I look forward to starting a workout program when I get back from New York.

After lunch, I left work early and drove cheshcat's Infiniti down to Ottawa, Illinois. On the way, Lucretia II and I passed the 100,000 mile mark. I took photos to commemorate the occasion (and to share with cheshcat). The Infiniti has a digital odometer, so the photos aren't quite as detailed as the ones I took last month when Pazu (my Honda Civic) passed 100,000 miles -- for Pazu, I took a series of pictures as the old-fashioned odometer rolled over from 99999 to 100000 -- but they'll do.

The reason for my trip to Ottawa was simple: I had the desire to take a ride in a perfectly good small airplane, then leave it from a height of thirteen thousand feet (about two and a half miles up). I have been skydiving before -- once -- back in September 1995. Since then, I have tried to jump again five times and, each time, I had been thwarted by bad weather. Finally, I had a skydiving appointment on a clear day, which made me start getting all excited about taking another free fall. This month is ten years since my first skydive and it was important to me to have another before a full decade had gone by.

I was not to be disappointed: I did indeed get to jump. Words fail me when I describe the thrill of leaving a plane with over two miles to fall before reaching solid ground again. Was I scared? Interestingly enough, I was somewhat nervous at first, though I had not been when I jumped ten years ago (and, back then, I had expected to be terrified). But I was able to acknowledge the fear, then isolate it so that it would not control my actions. The payoff was well worth it! I had about sixty seconds of free fall, during which I reached a speed of about 120 miles per hour, before pulling the ripcord and opening the parachute. It amazes me to think that -- twice now! -- I have traveled faster with no vehicle at all than the fastest speeds that I have driven in a car. As we fell, the views were incredible and I got to experience, once more, that delicious sensation of weightlessness.

Once the chute was opened, at 5500 feet, we had a nice long descent. During my previous dive, I experienced some motion sickness during the parachute glide down. This time, I came prepared, dosing myself with Dramamine before the jump. This may have been a good move; another woman who jumped out of the same plane ended up tossing her cookies during the parachute part of the jump.

Several people at the facility asked if this was my first jump. When I told them it was my first in ten years, I was inevitably told that the technology has improved significantly in that time. For the most part, I could not tell the difference... but one noticeable change was when the chute opened. Last time, being yanked from a horizontally-oriented person moving at ~200 feet per second to a vertically-oriented person moving at ~8 feet per second put a considerable force on my thighs, thanks to the straps around them. This time, however, I did not feel any sudden pressure there when the parachute slowed our descent. I wonder what else has changed in that time...

When I made my first jump, I was an undergraduate with a severely limited amount of disposable income, so the $165 jump fee was all I could afford. Now, however, I splurged on a photographer as well. He took twenty-four shots of me during the jump and I am picking the developed pictures up today. Looking forward to seeing it.

Now, I have a decision to make: Do I want to do this once every ten years, or more often? If I pay for another jump before next Tuesday, I get a hefty discount -- $99 instead of $149 for the second jump. I don't have to use the jump for one year, I just have to pay for it. And if I do jump again so soon, that opens up the idea of training for a USPA A-class license. Something to consider...

Once I was all through at the skydive facility, I headed back to the Event Horizon. My evening appointment was not going to be nearly as much fun as my afternoon appointment. I had a long-overdue talk scheduled with PH, in a final attempt to work out the personal frictions between us. I had predicted that the talk would last less than ten minutes or more than two hours. Unfortunately, it was the former case; we ran up against a point of inflexibility very quickly and the talk was done. I am sorry that things had to end the way that they did, but at least that task -- hanging over our heads for more than half a year -- is now done. It is not the optimal resolution, but at least it is closure.

Thinking back, I find it hard to believe that all of this happened in the same day. In one day, I embarked on a new fitness program, jumped out of an airplane, and resolved a long-standing conflict. Small wonder I felt tired when I woke up Wednesday morning!