Jumping out of a plane is highly advised

So I went skydiving. It was awesome.

I always wanted to skydive here in Australia and I finally just grabbed a couple people and booked it. It's with a company called Skydive the Beach Sydney and it drops you at 14,000 feet which is the highest a person can skydive. Jeff Crimmin who was a good friend from my high school was studying abroad in Scotland and decided during his reading week for finals to make a stop over in Australia - random but great! So he got in touch with me to say he wanted to visit Sydney and see if we could get together. I asked if he wanted to go skydiving while here, he said yes - perfect opportunity to fulfill one of my dreams. I only booked it one day in advance so the only time slot they had open was 6:30 am but I was too excited to turn it down. We woke up groggy and took a taxi (turns out the place was a lot closer than we thought). I decided to upgrade my dive to include photos and DVD and t-shirt (a lot of money extra but SO worth it). I met my guy Dan who I was going to be jumping tandem with. He had a video camera attached to his wrist so he could film the whole experience. He pulled me aside so could do the intro to the video which was pretty cheesy and he also asked me questions that I didn't know the answer to!? He was like "Brenna, what are we doing today?" and I said "doing what my Dad says - jumping out of a perfectly good airplane" and he said "oh you must be crazy girl"...all I could answer back laughing was "um......no not really" It's so awkward on the video and it makes me laugh everytime cause I was just like speechless and he was all up in my face with the camera. I forget what else he said that was awkward...oh I remember now. I was like "sorry Jean Marie and Big Dave, you don't know I'm doing this so my apologies" and he was like "don't apologize, you're gonna love it!"....It just was awkward...I think you need to see the video...but besides that I was pretty calm getting my harness on and boarding the bus to the airport. We boarded the airplane and my nerves surprisingly weren't an issue. I think I was too busy laughing at Jeff. He got assigned to jump with "the veteran" - this old man who had been working for the company for 36 years. Jeff also didn't purchase a video but the guy decided he was going to film him anyways so throughout the whole process the guy was up in Jeff's face, filming him and asking all these questions. Jeff's face was priceless because there was no reason why this guy was filming him, but for some reason he kept on doing it. (Jeff ended up buying the video at the end so, I guess it worked out in his favor). When Dan started strapping us together and the green light that said "1 mile to go" flicked on, that's when I got nervous. I was the third one to jump out so I got to see the door open up, and two people jump out. I think that was the sacriest thing - knowing that I was going to be doing the exact same thing that they did. So scary. But finally we jumped out and it was such a speechless moment - literally. As soon as my mouth was open, air filled in and the whole thing was dry. But free-falling didn't even feel like you were free falling, it just felt like you were above the ground soaring because the earth didn't look like it was rushing towards you. When you pulled the chute, that was really cool too. Dan let me steer the parachute and he pointed out all the little places. I also didn't tell my parents about this little adventure because like the good daughter I am, I didn't want to worry them. But I uploaded pictures and I changed my facebook picture so through the grapevine they found out sooner then I could tell them - whoops! But hey, Jean Marie, I'm alive - no worries!

Dan and I on the plane getting ready to take off!

Worst moment right here, knowing that you have to jump out of that plane.

Self - explanatory

Being able to steer the parachute, so cool.

All done and back on solid ground. So so so so cool. Two thumbs up.

These are also some randoms from Tasmania. I forgot I never posted photos and those are so much more interesting than my words so here are a few.

This was the group that went a couple days early so we took a drive down to the Southern most tip - this is the first stop we took for scenic pictures. Nikolai, myself, Amanda, Adam and Matt.

The view at Fisher's Point.

We were late enough to see the sunset as well.

The whole group at Cadbury Chocolate Factory. We had just picked Mali up from the airport so now the whole gang is together!

This was our first view on the hike so I thought this was Cradle Mountain, but that was a mistake because Cradle Mountain is so much cooler.

We finally found it! Cradle Mountain - yeaaaa

This is what we hiked. You can see the path on the right hand side, it looks like somebody just traced a tan pen on the mountain. If you see that bump on the right, the heighest peak - that would be the summit. It took a long time to get there but it was probably the best hike that I've done.