Hold on to your seat, this is gonna be a good one...

I woke up and immediately peeked outside to see what the weather was like because today, today I was going to fulfill another life goal; I was going skydiving! The clouds were prominent, but there was a promise of better conditions at Fox Glacier... After driving the twenty minutes to Franz Josef to Fox Glacier, the clouds still looked pretty low. Is this a sign? Should I really be doing this?? Didn't I see on the news last night that a skydiver passed away after her chute failed to open? Yes, I did, but that was because her psycho-lover she was having an affair with tampered with her release mechanisms and is now resting in jail. I end up thinking that if the company is still up for it, then I'll do it. Upon arrival at the skydiving barn - not a completely reassuring sight - I met my fellow skydiver, Patrick, who looked absolutely scared to bits. "Have you done this before?" he asks me, with a slight shiver to his voice. "Nope, but it's gonna be awesome!" I say with eager delight. The pilot and the manager are standing right beside Patrick and I, inspecting the plane for the source of the "weird noise" they heard during the last flight. Umm.... once again, not the most reassuring situation for us, until the pilot eased our minds by saying, "Well, if the plane goes down, at least you've got parachutes!" Heh. Heh. Freakin' pilot humour. So Patrick and I get squeezed into the cockpit of the ultralight plane. Ladies first - to jump, not to enter the plane. I'm squished in front of Rod, my trusty skydiving partner/lifesaver. Up, up, we go! The pilot graciously releases all the controls during flight and takes our photo from the front corner of the cockpit. Thanks, man. I'm slightly confused by my lack of jitters. I can feel Rod's breathing rate is much faster than mine. Is he scared? It must be just another jump for him, but maybe this is something you always appreciate with a little pre-jump jitters. So, why am I so relaxed? Maybe it's because I'm taking in the amazing scenery - oh, yes, the clouds parted, by the way. Here are the peaks of Mt. Tasman on the left and Mt. Cook on the right. The glacier has a whole new meaning for me now... How lucky am I to be here, flying up to 12,000 feet and absorbing such immaculate beauty? All of a sudden a helmut is popped onto my head from behind, the straps joining me to Rod are tightened, and some rather tight goggles are placed over my eyes. I know it's absolutely time to go when the big window opens up right beside me. "Legs out, cross arms, body in the banana shape, keep eyes open" are the instructions running through my head over and over in hopes that simple repetition will lead to the appropriate body movements at the crucial time of leaving the safety of this airplane. I have this ability to 'let go' during times where I need to do something scary. I don't think about what I'm about to do, I just breath in and then do it. So, once my body was more outside of the plane than inside, we suddenly dropped and did a big sommersault. I don't remember following the instructions as much as watching the plane drop from me, or rather me drop from the plane. That was the best! There was no falling sensation, really. You know the creepy stomach falling feeling? Yeah, none of it. There's just a lot of cold wind stretching my facial skin in all shapes as I smile wildly during my 200kph vertical drop. With banana shape well mastered, we turn towards the mountains and glaciers, and I watch how quickly we are falling relative to the few clouds nearby. Holy moly on that one. Heck. Then Rod makes a small change to his hand position and we turn quickly to view the open ocean and sweet coastline. Are we still falling? or are we stationary? In that fraction of a second, it was difficult to tell. Then "SSHwooop!" the parachute successfully opens reducing our speed to that which makes conversation possible. Rod is stoked, and I have to say, so am I. How awesome was that? and now we get to glide all the way back down to the sheep. But first, Rod asks me, "Dee, do you like rollercoasters?" You bet I do. So, Rod let me take hold of the control handles/ropes, and we pulled down to make a hard left spiral down, followed by a hard right spiral and then pulled both ropes down to stall and then continue gliding once again. I immediately want to make "learn to paraglide" the next thing on my life goals list. All of a sudden it was all over as we butt-scooted the landing and I started to tell Beth, "It wasn't scary at all! It's awesome!! You gotta do it!" Instead of taking my advice, Beth got into the car and we headed to Gillespie Beach to see some big, and I mean BIG waves. And to end my exhilarating day, I spent a few hours on the breezy beach in Haast doing yoga before the sand flies gathered their most annoying troups to torment me during my meditation.