Our brave Artworker at Liquid, Chris Penny, tells us about his amazing, but rather painful, first sky dive:
After a ten minute briefing – which felt far too quick for my liking – I found myself kitted up, doing my best ‘Dangerous Brian’ impersonation. I couldn’t help but recite the Radiohead lyric from ‘Creep’ – ‘What the hell am I doing here?’
Anyway, it was too late for such questions, so with a brave half smile I was packed into a sardine tin with wings. 3,500 feet later and the plane broke through the clouds. The sun above the clouds was a beautiful sight, almost promising me that the dive was going to be fine. It took 25 minutes to reach 10,000 feet (2 miles high) and with a final check of the harness, my instructor tried to play down the fact that there was a small problem with the tightening mechanism which, of course, filled me with extreme confidence.
The door opened. It was freezing and with my legs hanging over the edge of the plane floor, I tried not to look down. Temptation got the better of me and all I could see was cloud – a wide expanse of nothingness.
After a count of three, I was out of the plane, and an immediate surreal, peaceful feeling hit me. I was falling at 120mph, wind rushing past my ears, a blurred mix of sky, cloud and rain and it was so difficult to catch my breath. I started to enjoy it. Many positive words entered my mind: amazing, fantastic, unbelievable, wow and awesome. But unfortunately, when the parachute opened and it felt like I was suddenly shooting high into the sky at a million miles an hour, all I felt was pain, with the five minute cruise to ground seeming to take an age. My aerobic somersault at the end only heightened the pain but, hey, that was incredible!
