Skydiving #2
Skydiving #2 was a success~ I felt much better this time becuz I had more hours of sleep (~5 hours) and I wasn’t nauseous from the 360 turns! I was aware of what’s happening the entire time. The learning objectives are straight forward I thought. Basically learning some simple terms and procedures. I am just going to recite the entire jump to help myself remember it. First we get on the plane, when it’s time to jump which is about 13,500 feet, we move ourselves to the door, facing forward toward the propeller. I then turn my head to the jump master which is behind me and ask “ready?”. Funny when I did that, cj and kc who were behind me saw that I didn’t have my goggles on. dohhh it wouldnt be funny if I had jump out of the plane falling at 120 MPH without the goggles. Anyways I put them on and restart the jumping sequence. I had my hands on the harness and asked the JM “ready?” and he goes “READY!”, then I have said out loud “PROP, UP, DOWN, ARCHHH” while physically doing the up, down and then step sideways out of the plane. We arch to keep ourselves stabilized in the air. Once out, the JM will deploy the pilot (a tiny chute) which is to maintain our falling speed at 120 MPH. He will then tap my shoulder twice which I’ll release my hands from the harness to the side and assume the normal falling posture. I’ll check altimeter for altitude, then practice grabbing the ripcord 3 times to familiarize myself with the where about of the ripcord handle. The right arm will reach to the back hip where the ripcord handle is located while the left arm extends to the front of the head to counter balance. The JM then will show me 3 hand signs in which I have to perform accordingly. First is the toe tap the feet, second is to extend the legs and third is to bend the legs. Once that’s done, I check the altimeter again for altitude. Now I think about it, I don’t quite remember what altitude I was at each check point. I just remember it shouldn’t be below 65,000 which is when we need to deploy the parachute. After checking the altitude, I proceed to make a 90 degrees right turn by doing the butterfly move with my right arm. The more you move your arm, the faster it turns. To stop, bring the arm back to original position on the side. To counter the rotation and help with stopping the rotation, use the other arm. Assuming I am wearing the altimeter on the left wrist. At first I tend to bring the left wrist to the front of the head for the reading of the altitude, that is incorrect. The proper way to check altimeter is by turning the head to the left side keeping the arms unmoved. I then did a 90 degrees turn to the left and check altimeter. We are constantly checking the altimeter is becuz we should always be alert of the altitude we are at (one of the objectives). I did two more turns, one right and one left because we had some time before hitting the 70,000′ mark. Once at that level, I “lock on” by starring at the altimeter until it hits 65,000′ and I signal parachute deployment by waving both arms toward the head twice and then pull the ripcord handle. I gotta say the handle was tight, I tried to pull twice and the JM had to help me out 
The JM said to make it easier we should use the bicep to pull. After we deployed the parachute, somehow we started spinning and i hear my JM said “oh shxt”. Then he told me our parachute lines are twisted and told me to look up to see it. i looked up and IT WAS twisted and i was like “oh shxt!” but good thing the parachute was still fully opened and working. I think we just can’t control the direction(i am not sure i should find out next time) The JM told me to keep swinging my legs to the left to unwind ourselves and eventually we rotate out of it. whew~ I am glad this happened while on tandem. Now we know what to expect and what to do if something like this happens again. So just remember the parachute will still open fully, so dont panic, just unwind and it’ll be ok. We did the 360 turns, left and right turn. We were going against the wind so we can pass the drop zone and then make sort of a U-turn and ride the wind down to the target drop zone. We lift our legs forward and up before touching down and right about a few feet above the ground, we do a flare, which is to pull the two direction handles down simultaneously in 3 steps, one to chest, then stomach and finally between the inner thighs. This will stall the parachute so it’ll stop moving forward to help us land smoothly. Whooohooo we have completed our second tandem jump and received our little blue log book for keeping track of our jumps for licensing purposes. My JM was pretty satisfied with our jump. He said I did all the required maneuvers well and there’s nothing to correct! Hope you got a feel of skydiving after reading this blog entry. Now go try it!!
As for the body, everything was feeling alright, nothing strange, and no pain. The numbness in the toes were the same on ground, at the altitude of 13,500, while falling and gliding. It didn’t interfere with the jump.