In India, working for IT MNCs is usually associated with hi-tech work, flexible / long work hours, and the most important of all fat salary packages. Apart from these attributes there is the possibility of an all-expenses-paid foreign trip to some of the dream destination countries such as US, UK & France. At times such business travel is required for visiting clients if you happen to be in a services company like Infy. And some times it is done for collaborating with the cross-geo team mates if you happen to be in product companies like Cisco & VMware. The later was the case with me after I joined VMware from Cisco last year! I had a chance to visit the company HQ in Palo Alto, California for a couple of weeks in April this year. Since I had visited the same part of valley i.e. San Francisco bay area for more than a couple of times before, there were not many places of interest left to visit on my list. I have seen most of the popular tourist spots in the beautiful city of San Francisco, spent great weekend times at the wonderful Disneyland and Hollywood studios in Los Angeles and driven down the scenic roads down the pacific coast for hours. So this time I wanted to do something different, that kind of experience which is hard to get locally and that which you can not do when you are travelling with family :-) Thus having see the ZNMD movie, the idea of doing sky diving was born in my mind!
A bit of research on the internet revealed a good sky diving school in the bay area and the weekend spot registration over a phone call was real quick. The dent was 300 bucks for a 15K feet fall + 75 bucks for personal video shoot. After I shared the idea with my co-traveler colleagues from Pune, one of them got excited and signed up for this adventurous experience of a life time. So the next day we made reservations with the folks at Sky Dive Monterey Bay over the phone. We set out on a Sunday morning hoping that the weather conditions would be perfect, and reached the Marina airport to find a large group of enthusiasts already queued up take take jumps in batches of 5/10. After completing the paper work, each of us was assigned an instructor and a cameraman and we were briefed by a 60 year old veteran skydiver on how it is done. While the other batches were flown up & dropped down in front of us throughout the morning, we decided to grab a quick lunch at the nearby town and were happy to find a great family run mexican deli where we ate sumptuous portions of nachos and fajitas. After coming back to the base camp at the airport we were taken to the air strip by a bus where we waited to board the mini plane which was continuously making trips to throw people out of its belly every half an hour. It was fun to watch the expressions of the folks who landed after the dive in the lawn in front of our sitting area. Finally our turn came and before we knew the plane was in the air ready for the drop out.
My instructor Jason Inamura was a cool man whereas the video shooter was a super enthusiastic person. Both were jumping out of the plane 10 times a day, but each of them had a different air of personality around them. One common thing between them and all of the jump masters doing the tandem jump was the fact that they were enjoying their jobs to the fullest. As the red light in the back of the plane went off and the green light glowed, I could sense that the moment of truth had arrived. I was the 2nd person to get thrown out of the fuselage as the speed of the plain appeared as if it was coming to a standstill. We quickly walked to the exit door and off we jumped in a jiffy. And man what a view it was!!! On one side there was the serene blue water sparking up to the edge of the infinity and on the other side there were lush green farms in all sorts of shapes giving way to tiny lines of roads connecting herds of villages spread across the landscape.
Those 60 seconds were some of the most magical moments of my life. Floating out there like a bird with no worries just taking in the view was something I can't explain in words. The only sad part was that just like the instructor had said earlier during the briefing, the fall did not last long and Jason pulled the trigger right when I had started enjoying the views after giving a few poses to the cameraman who was continuously circling around us. The rest of the journey down as pretty fast as Jason got me ready for the landing. He even gave the control of the flight in my hands which was a unique experience watching the flight turn left & right with just a tilt of hands on either sides. The landing was much smoother than expected and the cameraman was there ready to cache my experience in the disk. Overall it was an out of the world experience worth every penny spent. And I would love to do it again on the next opportunity with my wife wanting to jump out with me this time :-) So here it is the flight that lasted not so long...
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