Skydive at Sacramento

I had wanted to go skydiving for a very long time, and the first thing I did when I arrived in Sunnyvale, CA, for my internship was to seek out a good offer for either a tandem or AFF jump. Many of my friends were also excited about it. We eventually found a great $99 skydive deal on Google Offers and booked the next available date with Sky Dive Sacramento. Since there were 12 of us, our slot was on July 28th. I'd made the booking way back in May 2012.

On the day of the dive, I reached San Jose airport at 5:40 AM. We took our rental cars and headed towards Sacramento, CA. I'd confirmed our slots a couple of days earlier. Despite my requests, I couldn't get a slot for an AFF (Accelerated Freefall), so it was tandem only. We arrived at the hangar at 1404 Flightline Drive, Lincoln, by 9:45 AM, just in time for our 10:00 AM slot. Four of our 12-person group were still en route but arrived by 10:15 AM, and we started our briefing. We had to sign a couple of waiver forms. Once that was done, we paid the extra for video/photography and upgraded our jump height from 9,000 feet to 13,000 feet (costing $125 for photos and $20 for the upgrade).

At 11:20 AM, Rajath, Sangeetha, and I were the first to strap up and head for the jump. After some ground instructions and a few photos, we climbed into the twin-engine, 12-seater plane. I was incredibly excited. I was finally going to do it! Not solo, but skydiving nonetheless. We, the first wave of jumpers, reached 13,400 feet in about 10 minutes. All of us, attached to our tandem instructors, were now ready to take the leap of adventure out of the plane. The other two jumped, and then it was my turn.

My cameraman exited the plane first and positioned himself. Then we (my tandem instructor and I) approached the aircraft exit. The cameraman was off, and then we were off. It was a magnificent feeling! The air blowing hard on my face was truly an amazing experience. I posed a lot for the video and camera, had my instructor do a couple of turns, and then the parachute deployed successfully, with no need for the reserve! My instructor then allowed me to steer the parachute down to about 1,000 feet before taking back control. We landed safely and took a short bus ride back to the hangar.

The debriefing was quite brief. I received my video and photo DVD very quickly. A big thanks to the wonderful photo master who worked so efficiently and even displayed it on the 42-inch LCD for me to view. After waiting for the others to finish their jumps, we left Skydive Sacramento around 4:00 PM. We then drove to Mount Diablo for the sunset before returning home.

Next on my to-do list: SOLO!