Skydive Lake Wanaka

Finally got this converted into something upload-able on Youtube (or rather, Kings did)…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMdLPaP3kxM]

Rockstar was about 3 months shy of his second birthday, when I did this (note the other mummy in the background who was also gearing up for a jump), and 6 months later I quit to raise him fulltime… For a couple years I’d had to give up wakeboarding (the summer I was trying to teach myself to jump was the summer I was unexpectedly pregnant – and falling hard on the water since I was learning… Praise the Lord I kept the pregnancy) and then chanced upon the skydive and thought Ah. No Need To Practice Or Train For This. (Didn’t hurt their motto is Adrenaline Is Legal.)

The night before, I slept better than I had in awhile (I’m a very light sleeper normally) – I just really wanted to do it. When I got back to work after the baby I’d made it clear that while the P/L target was fine, I wished to have as little erm, leadership responsibility (read: potential politicking) as possible because I didn’t want to bring the stress home.

(I don’t consider $$$ targets very stressful, I live for the thrill – I always believe you need a bit of that kind of challenge in order to be your personal best… The problem was since my late-ish 20s before Rockstar I had almost always either been heading small teams/ projects/ been a ranking senior. I wanted, needed more “good stress”, more challenge, but couldn’t get my fix without also taking on the bits I was trying to avoid. Not with the financial crisis causing a lot more upheaval than usual… So I wanted, needed to jump out that plane. 15,000 feet. The higher altitude jump.)

Kings didn’t sleep the night before (and he can usually sleep in any condition), he has a serious problem with heights. He spent the night researching accident rates on skydiving in general and the company I was using in particular. But he said nothing to me.

On the hour-long drive out to the airbase, my husband asked me very casually once again why I really wanted to do this. On the hour-long drive back after the jump was when he finally told me how terrified he had been.

He hadn’t said a word before because he knew then I would not have jump.

It’s why I’ll never jump again.

ps: Did anyone notice it was Kings, not me, who kept trying to convert the video?