Has anyone ever gone skydiving before?

[Team Jetfire]

In conjuctin with my inevitable midlife crises I have been toying arond with the idea of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and failing to the earth with only a thin nylon fabric to eventally save me.

Has anyone done this? Is it worth the cost / risk?

[GMfan]

Just get a sports car

[Team Jetfire]

And push it out of a plane? And who needs a sports car when I have a Chevy Aveo?

Besides I also want a Motorbike so that may take care of the whole driving something much cooler thing.

[GMfan]

Sure... get a motorcycle...

Some fun stats though for ya, 9 outta 10 motorcyclists get into an accident in their first year. Half of those are fatal. So you got a 45% chance of dying in your first year...ooooh...now I see why they call'em organ donors at the hospital!

[Nocturn]

Pff it's less than half it's no big deal

[Pascal]

Skydiving? I would probably die of a heart attack in the first 10 feet. My friend tried though, he loved the experience (except the part of having a male instructor strapped very close behind him).

[CyberMnky]

Its on my list of things that I really want to do one day. I'm not a fan of flying and the concept of jumping out of a plane scares the crap out of me but still...

[Shepp]

Honestly, I think I'd handle skydiving a hell of a lot better than bungee jumping. You're going in one direction, and once you're at the bottom, that's it.

Go through a course before doing it, and learn absolutely everything you can before doing a jump.

Now I've never gone skydiving before, mainly because I'm a wimp, and also because the opportunity never came up.

If you really want to, I say go for it. Safer than cliff diving or many other daredevil acts.

[Team Jetfire]

Yeah, I am not trying to kill myself, just try to open myself to other experiances.

BASE jumping is retarded IMO.

[Deemar]

I've done it, I'll give you a rundown. I did a course in Waterville......or Waterton......Water something in Nova Scotia. It was $260 for a 5 hour course and your first jump is included, each subsequent jump is $40 once you have your certificate. This place was pretty ghetto so they didn't do tandem, they actually let you go by yourself on your very first jump, it was crazy.

So I did the course and they took us through everything, then suited us up and crammed about 8 of us into a tiny little plane and took us up to 3500 feet. One by one, we crawled to the open door where the instructor reached around and pulled out our pilot chute. I crawled out of the plane, scared as hell, stepped out onto a metal bar and hung onto the wing with my hands at 3500 feet in the air. My instructor shouted "GO!", I let go of the wing, he threw my pilot chute out and I free fell until my chute opened and I was sitting in a nylon harness at 3000 feet with nobody to save me if I mess up. It was awesome.

I reached up, undid the handle loops from the velcro and steered my chute wherever I wanted before coming down into a field.....face first. It's very hard to land on your own without some practice, everyone slammed into the ground.