Firestorm Fan

Last week I went skydiving and Firestorm came with me! Skydiving is something I’ve wanted to do my whole life. Since I was turning 40, I figured now was a good time to scratch this off the bucket list!  My wonderful wife was kind enough to arrange this for my birthday!  Thank you, Gena!

We booked the event with Skydive Jacksonville. Several of my family members made the trip to help celebrate the occasion — or collect my remains if it went horribly wrong! Those making the trek included my wife, daughter, stepson, father, stepmother, sister, and brother-in-law.  It was so nice of them to travel just to see me jump!  I wore my Superman t-shirt for the occasion.  I considered wearing my Firestorm shirt, but if you are flying you gotta go with Superman, right?  I did carry a small Firestorm action figure in my pocket (the DC Universe Action League Firestorm, based upon the Brightest Day costume design), just so I could say Firestorm made the jump with me.  Check him out below!

I tandem jumped with a great guy named Kevin. Kevin was so pumped and energetic; you’d never guess he had skydived nearly 3,000 times! Also, his son jumped with us and it was fun jump with the father/son duo at the same time.

I thought I’d be nervous before the jump but I wasn’t at all. I felt supercharged and really excited! I was amazed the plane ride was so smooth. Normally when I fly my stomach momentarily drops during takeoff, but this was smooth as could be — probably the smoothest airplane ride I’ve ever had! We climbed to 12,500 feet (a little over two miles in the air)! I was able to see all of Jacksonville — even the coast — in the hazy distance. As we opened the door of the plane and prepared to jump, I felt only excitement – no fear! Below you’ll see a photo take just after we jumped. It may be hard to tell in the photo, but I’m cheering with excitement!

We free-falled (free-fell?) for about 7,000 feet over the course of 45 seconds. If I’ve done my sums correctly, that means we were falling at over 100 miles an hour! Surprisingly, the jump wasn’t scary at all. It was very smooth and the pressure of the wind made me feel supported instead of out of control. I did a few Superman flying poses — c’mon, you should have expected that.  It was very, very loud and I could barely hear myself cheering.  Then the parachute was deployed; also much smoother than I expected. It suddenly became very quiet and Kevin and I could talk in nearly normal voices. It was absolutely breathtaking! The video and pictures don’t do it justice.  We sailed the remaining distance over about five minutes, doing some fun spirals and spins!  For the landing, we came in fairly slow over the field we started from and slid to a halt on our bottoms.  I will admit I hit the ground at just the wrong angle and bumped my tailbone pretty hard.  It’s still sore a week later, but it’s slowly getting better.  That was the only downside to the jump!

I had an absolute blast and look forward to jumping again! It was a fantastic way to celebrate my 40th birthday! If you’d like to watch the video, check it out below!

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