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Get Bigger

My ribs after their rough encounter with the side of the tunnel
I recently went to the wind tunnel in Raeford, North Carolina to perfect (ha!) my skydiving skills.  In classic Bobbi style, I not only do not arrive the proscribed thirty minutes early, I am over an hour late for my booked ten minutes, ten minutes I have been informed will be used by someone, not me, although I will be the one paying, if I'm not there, STAT!  So I run in, late and flustered, and get debriefed on the way in to the tunnel.  I struggle with my ear plugs as I shrug on my jumpsuit and then put my helmet on, yes, backwards at first as always.  Knee pads are in place and I have no idea what Greg is trying to tell me, something about crossing my arms, falling in, and grabbing the net once I get inside.

Thank God I begin to doubt my ability to comprehend Greg's charades, and I ask him to clarify about grabbing the net.  Apparently, I am NOT supposed to grab it; he smacks my hands as a reminder.

I watch my boyfriend, Josh, flying around in the tunnel making it look easy, and then I watch Jason fly head down, making it all look really easy.  All too soon, it is my turn.  I step into the door, cross my arms, and fall in.  Immediately, Greg wants me to start executing turns, and I, of course, can't remember how to do so seeing as how I have only turned once in the sky and then I looked the wrong way and had two instructors holding on to me so the input was way muted.  The first two minute round flies by as I scream inside my head, over the noise of the recirculating wind, wondering what the hell I have gotten myself into this time and why everything has to be so hard.  And scary.

The next time I go in, we work on turns again, and somehow my hips get crazy, and I almost go into a side spin on my own.  Phenomenal!  I didn't have the luxury of instructions before my coveted and much anticipated tunnel time; therefore, I don't realize that by trying to turn my body to avoid the walls, I am doing the opposite and propelling myself quite solidly into them.  I also learn this time that I can use my arms to pull myself out so that I am not getting thrown out like an undignified baby.

Round three and I am finally getting turns.  But something weird happens.  I am kicked out after only a short while.  Come to find out, it is because my glasses almost got loose and were almost gone forever! Gulp.

Round four and I really have turns.  I even get off the net a little bit.

Round five.  My final two minutes.  The speed is turned up.  Something crazy happens.  Who knows what? I am catapulted into the air what feels like twenty feet.  I slam into the wall, laughing all the while, thinking that it didn't hurt so bad after all, and then I crash back down onto the net.  Everyone looks horrified.  I am kept low and practicing turns for the remainder of my time.

Wow!  We watch my video later, and I am told to get big, to take up more space.  As a female who has spent her life feeling too large (at nearly five feet ten inches that is easy for me to do), it is against my nature to think big or to make myself bigger.  I have spent a lifetime trying to appear smaller.

But think big I will do!  I will perfect my body positioning so that the wind doesn't toss me about like an unanchored buoy.  I will be big like a cat, catching air and belly flying...

Now I just need some blue skies to practice in!

(Thanks, Greg, from Triangle Skydiving Center, for waiting around for me and for patiently coaching me).



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