It Starts With a Tandem Skydive

That first minute of freefall can change everything.

The people that come to our counter prove that to us, over and over again, every day.

They don’t always decide to skydive because they’re superbad awesome amazeballs rad adrenaline junkies who just live for the thrill. Actually, we don’t see that very often at all.

Most of the time, the people who come to the counter are the kinds of people who could easily be mistaken for “normal.” They decide to skydive because they’ve been trying to figure out what to do about their comfortable, dead-end office job. Or they just received the news that their cancer is in remission. Or they just broke up with their significant other, and they want to be lifted up by that butterflies-feeling again. Or they’ve summoned up the chutzpah and they’re planning on proposing. Or they just lost a lot of weight. Or they just graduated, and their whole life is stretching out in front of them in a really daunting way. Or they just have this nagging feeling that now is the moment to grab that ol’ Etch-A-Sketch called Life and give it a good, vigorous shake.

Adrenaline-junkiness is usually no part of the equation. The unifying quality of our first-time skydivers is generally a quality of seeking; of curiosity about what’s possible; of a love for life that aches to include every possible experience.

That first minute of freefall does the trick.

It shakes them out of the stupor of day-to-day living; it launches them headlong into grasping for the freedom that comes with making a skydive for the very first time.

Another unifying quality, of course, is bravery. Our customers are brave.

A tandem skydive isn’t easy. Even though it’s actually very statistically safe, it’s scary. It requires a person to put aside his or her baseless assumptions; to look at the actual numbers and evaluate risk scientifically; to pay attention to instructions and participate fully in the experience. There’s a sense of ownership–of responsibility–that doesn’t happen in the context, of, say, a roller-coaster ride. The feeling of showing up in this way is really empowering. We celebrate with our customers when they land after that first jump. We have to. We’re proud of them.

After all: We had a first jump, too–as did every professional skydiver; every world-champion parasports athlete; every wide-grinning weekend warrior hobbyist on the dropzone. We remember what it was like to see sky from that angle for the first time.

So we’re not surprised when you come back to us and say: That first minute of freefall changed everything.

We know.