There comes a time in everyone's life where they think to themselves that it would be a good idea to throw them themselves out of a plane. No? Well when we moved further down the west coast from Franz Josef to a beautiful town called Wanaka, for some reason that is exactly the thought we had. I'd never really been keen on doing a skydive, although Chris always had and was actually going to do his over the glaciers of Franz Josef, had it not been for the weather. But I had gradually been talked into doing one as we went along by various people we'd met and decided to do it in Wanaka with Chris. We didn't have too long to think about it because as soon as we got to Wanaka we checked into the hostel and were taken straight over to the airfield. Now at this point we were feeling fine. You read the various forms they give you, read things like "risk of death" but you just find that funny and are not feeling too bad about it. When you get into the plane however, I would challenge even the bravest of people not to be feeling a fair amount of nerves. The plane is probably the worst bit. I was thinking things like "this is it Tom, this honestly can't end well". Apparently thats natural. To be honest though, at that point, nothing feels natural. You're about to jump out of a plane!

As soon as you get to the point where they tell you what to do and after looking down at a 12,000 ft drop where all you can see are fields that look like they were all part of some quilt from that height, your heart is in your throat but your head is fully focused on doing it right (at least it was for me) so I put my head back, pushed out my hips and put my legs back as the instructor strapped to me pushed me out, at that moment my mind instantly changed to thinking "oh god I just fell out of a plane, this equals death, right?" that lasted for about 1 second whilst spinning out of the plane, watching it disappear. After I felt the wind push against my face and the sheer pressure of it feels like you're almost flying, then after about what was apparently 45 seconds though felt like 5 of falling and shouting various words of ecstasy (how could I not add cowabunga into the list) the parachute was released. For me the parachute being released was the worst bit as it pulled the harness on my hips right up and was slightly painful, but only for a couple of seconds, then it was just an easy landing, lasting about 3 minutes. It felt like I was sitting on the air, observing my kingdom of beautiful mountains, lakes and some cows. Weirdly, for the first time in my life I got the feeling of things being far away looking so close, that was fun (I tried to grab a cow- for the more stupid of you, I failed) I was then told to lift my legs up, thinking I'll have them up for about 3 minutes but suddenly the ground got ridiculously close so quickly and we landed. After landing I was quite shook up (in the good way, the adrenaline way) but looked for Tom seeing as he came out of the plane after me, I couldn't see him anywhere and waited for a couple of minutes to later find out that he landed before me (strange, considering I'm a heavier guy and went before him).