I have a long history of giving Aaron fairly lame birthday presents. It is also very hard to surprise him since he can borderline read my mind, and has a habit of noticing confirmation emails. This year he turned 30 so I wanted to do something bigger than normal for him. When I heard about this indoor skydiving place about an hour away, I decided that it was the perfect thing. I booked it months in advance and only told him that we had birthday surprise plans the morning of Memorial Day, which happened to fall on his birthday this year.
The night before, he said "please just reassure me that the surprise isn't sky diving." I got a big kick of saying "It isn't sky diving per se." I ended up telling him when we got in the car because he did see something that said "SkyVenture Arizona" on my phone the night before, and he was nervous. It turned out to be awesome! It was just the right blend of the adrenaline thrill with no actual danger.
Suited up and ready for flight!
Sky divers, or court jesters? The outfits work great for either.
You enter the wind tunnel by leaning forward with your body straight. You just fall into the wind and then you're flying. So cool!
Bending and straightening your legs has a huge affect on your movements. Luckily the instructor guy was there to grab us if we started drifting up too high.
Aaron is less back archy than me
They had us wear ear plugs under the helmet. Even with that, it is still deafening. Total sensory overload. I couldn't really tell when the instructor was grabbing the handles on my back with all the wind blowing full force on every inch of my body.
We had two 2-minute sessions. That doesn't sound like a lot, but 2 minutes seems like forever in free fall.
The first round consisted of us figuring out how to hold the hovering position. If you don't have enough surface area exposed to the wind, you will fall down to the net.
I was the first one to go in the second round. He said something about "taking me up" for the last thirty seconds, but I didn't understand what that meant. I may have panicked a little bit when I all of a sudden started flying way up to the top of the wind tunnel. When we got to the top, I realized that the instructor was holding onto my back and controlling the up and down movements. It was SO COOL. I couldn't wipe the huge smile off my face, which meant that I had slobber all over my face and goggles when I got out.
Post-flying adrenaline rush
The wind tunnel was part of a campus out in the middle of nowhere that has a flight school and also does real sky diving. Since it was Memorial Day, there were waves of 20 or so people falling from the sky every 15 minutes. We ate our picnic lunch at a table by the landing area. We didn't see a single person fail to stick the landing. They just gently jogged a few steps as if they hadn't fallen from an airplane. Craziness! It was cool to watch, but I have no desire to experience it for myself.
For dinner that night, we went to dinner at Red Robin. Elliot was thrilled with the free crayons and kids menu that he could color on. Clearly we don't go out to eat much. They also had these chalkboards with some old school games to play. We had a couple delicious burgers, and our kids happily devoured the bottomless sides of french fries and broccoli.
Aaron was not happy that they sang happy birthday to him, but he got a free ice cream Sunday out of it
After that, we invited a few friends over to eat this lovely peanut butter cheesecake that I was quite proud of. Just look at the shine on that ganache!
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