SNAKES ON A PLANE.

Okay, so there really weren't any snakes on this plane. I just couldn't think of a better title.

First of all, I'M ALIVE. And yes, skydiving was INCREDIBLE. Definitely ranks up there about second to my salvation. The ride up there was really fun... even though we got stuck in insane amounts of interstate traffic once we got to Georgia. We were supposed to get there arond 10am, but we rolled in at around 12:30pm. We then registered and basically signed our life away (one of the sections of the waiver literally said "You may be dismembered, decapitated, electrocuted, etc... but you can't sue. Sucks for you."). Then we waited around for a few hours... and FINALLY at around 4:30 they started calling our names and we got suited up. Katie Roach and Bonnie Japp went first, then on the next plane it was me, Ashley Adcock, John Douglass, Zach Varnell, Andrew Thornbury, and his friend from ROTC. The last guys to finish us out were Kevin Harris and Daniel Jinks. Even though we were sad we couldn't all go together, it worked out great for getting to watch everyone and take pictures.

In case you're wondering what skydiving feels like (mainly because you're too scared to go and you just want to live vicariously through me), let me tell you. It's cold. After I did my two backflips out of the plane and I started free falling, wow... all I could think of was how freezing it was and how it was hard to breathe. The air rushing in my nose and lungs was so cold and so forceful. It was insane. And you can move your arms around, which causes you to spin all crazy-like. I could feel my chipmunk cheeks doing some serious flapping in the wind. Once we deployed the chute, it was so peaceful and quiet. You could look out and see Atlanta and some mountains in the distance. I was in awe of all of God's creation. We got to go in the late afternoon, too... so the sun was casting these incredible shadows on everything. Then we steered the chute and did some spinning tricks before the tandem instructor took control to guide us down. The landing wasn't difficult at all (but of course I wasn't the one in control of it... if I'd been steering, we would have ate it... hard). We just stuck out our feet and slid on in. Nice and easy.

And then that was it. 145 bucks and 5 minutes later, I had backflipped out of a plane at 14,000 feet and lived to tell about it.

The ride home was also really fun, especially because we stopped by Zach's parents' house in Chattanooga for some home-cooked grub. It was delicious... my favorite part was the homemade chocolate ice cream. Mmmm.

And if that isn't enough, we might go skydiving again in the spring. Yesssssssss.

Check out John Douglass's video that he took himself. Crazy.