Oh my God, can you even believe I did this??? This was insane. It was invigorating, strengthinging, awakening, beautiful, and an out-of-body experience all at once. One of my co-workers, Todd Blanchard, jumps often, and offered to take a bunch of people along with him on his next trip. In the end, five brave soles, myself included, joined him for a morning at the Byron airport and bay-area skydiving.

We left SF at 7 a.m., arrived in byron around 8:30, and began signing our lives away and suiting up shortly there after.
Crystal, Mieke, and Todd went in the first flight, then me, Annard, and Stephan when in the third flight. Todd went again on the fourth flight, and then we went to the RoadHouse bar near tracy to get beers and corndogs. Except for Todd, we all did "tandem" jumps, where we are each strapped to a very experienced skydiver who does all the work, like pushing us out the door of the plane and opening the parachute. It required pretty much zero training and just a little bit of stomach control. In the end, it all rocked!!!

See the QuickTime movie: small (11 MB) and large (40MB) our server pipe is small, so please be patient!

Click here for the complete set of thumbnails from the trip.

^ Todd (in yellow), and Mieke get ready to jump. Annard (left) is in denial.

>> Stephan shows off his suit :-)

Here I am after a successful flight. What a rush!

Here's a shot of the whole hangar where everyone gets ready & folds their parachutes.