Why You Should Try Skydiving

(a friend of mine wanted me to contribute a piece to his blog Adventure Savvy?!. This is my contribution. I should probably note that I have never been skydiving).

Are you dead on the inside, incapable of feeling anything that would make you remotely resemble leading a fulfilling existence? Perhaps through your mundane, day-to-day soul-crushing routine of menial first-world tribulations, you’ve somehow lost sight of what it means to truly enjoy life. The answer could very well be something as simple as taking an absolutely unnecessary life-threatening risk and paying your hard-earned money to do so!

Sure, you could say, rent a car and play chicken with a bullet train, or bicycle through traffic going the wrong way, or hang out with David Blaine, or order a large Papa John’s pizza- any of which could potentially kill you for pennies on the dollar- but no. You need to feel alive, dammit! You need something better and bigger, with more risk and more money spent!

Skydiving is the obvious answer.

Better than watching Patrick Stewart mud-wrestle Alex Trebek- you’re jumping out of a moving airplane… on purpose. Not while its taxiing across a tarmac, either! That would never do. No- tens of thousands feet above the ground! You too can experience the very thrill of being disappeared by the Pinochet regime with the added bonus of probably being heard from again! Tired of the awkward single bar scene? Again, skydiving is the solution. Who wouldn’t leap at the chance of having some strapping young mouth-breathing, sweaty, adrenaline-addicted complete stranger attached intimately to your backside, holding your very life in their possibly capable hands? And what better way is there to truly appreciate the art of manned flight than to give up on it halfway through?! Sure, the take off and climb to altitude is great and all, but I’ll take care of the landing part myself, thank you very much. People have been plummeting to the ground for as long as there’s been gravity, after all, so why not pay homage to such a long and storied tradition?

I know what you’re probably thinking by now- “well this sounds fine, but why not just try bungee jumping?” Please. Bungee jumping is for pansies. Do you want to feel the spark of life in your otherwise cold, dark and dead soul? A bungee cord that has been carefully measured out and can hold hundreds of pounds suspended over a giant air bag, all of which has been inspected rigorously hourly, operated by cut-rate professionals and all for a palsy sum of something like $30? Sounds about as exciting as watching your toenails grow while listening to Yanni.

So get out there and breathe some new life into your ever-dismal, increasingly pathetic existence! Pony up a good percentage of your weekly paycheck, strap yourself to a complete stranger who can’t hold a normal job, get aboard a tiny little aircraft held together with duct tape and snot, and go ahead throw yourself out thousands of feet from the ground. After all, if you’re not staring down your own mortality in the face, you’re not really living at all.