Author’s Note: While the activities of this blog post originally occurred in 2015, it has taken me quite a while to get my life together enough to publish the post (to be fair, the post was mostly written, I just didn’t upload the pictures). However, in honor of Andy’s birthday (January 21st), the birthday blog post is finally complete and ready to share! Happy Birthday Boy!

A couple months before Andy’s birthday the two of us were casually talking about our bucket lists. My bucket list is full of “reach-for-the-stars” kind of things: becoming fluent in a second language, living in Italy for a year, running a half-marathon in each state, etc. Andy’s bucket list, on the other hand, is all very achievable. Being the good girlfriend I am, it was during this conversation that I got the seemingly brilliant idea to go all “A Walk to Remember” on him and help him cross some items on his list. So I did my research (aka googling and consulting with friends) and a couple days before his birthday I bought a voucher for the two of us to go skydiving in New Market, Virginia.

Even though Andy’s birthday is in January, we decided to wait until May to use the voucher because the weather would be warmer. On Saturday, May 9, 2015, Andy and I packed the car for our skydiving adventure. We were planning on camping Saturday night and going hiking on Sunday, so we stopped by my parent’s house for a couple sleeping bags and a tent. We arrived at Blue Ridge Skydiving Adventures around 11:30 AM, even though our appointment wasn’t until 1:30PM.

Before arriving both Andy and I were pretty calm about the whole situation. It wasn’t until we actually got out of the car that Andy started to get super excited and I started to go into panic mode.

We walked in to the main office, introduced ourselves and immediately begin filling out forms. Oh, I’m sorry, did I say filling out forms? What I really meant was signing away our life.

Of course, being the crazy millennials we are, we still signed the dotted line and placed our life directly in the hands of Blue Ridge Skydiving Adventures. After all, we didn’t drive over two hours to back down!

Once we finished our paperwork, we received our “ground training.” Crazy Larry (yes his actual name), one of the tandem skydivers, taught us what to expect, what we needed to do when we jumped out of the plane and how we should hold our body. He talked for a good 15 minutes. I felt really good the entire time. Nothing he said sounded that difficult. I’m a smart person and I felt confident I could handle the situation.

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It was only after the ground training was over that I realized I was in trouble: I didn’t remember a single thing he said. Yep, I was definitely going to die.

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I began to ponder my life as we began our long wait to go up into the planes. (Have I mentioned that I’m really not a patient person?) We had three tandem jumpers in front of us and four solo jumpers. There was only one plane running and it was tiny. I’m talking so tiny that just looking at it made me feel claustrophobic. Apparently it fit five people, including the pilot, but I had my doubts. During our wait period Andy was a mix of hyped and impatient. I was becoming increasingly anxious. I needed to get in that plane soon or I was going to chicken out. Andy sensed my nerves and suggested we leave to go get lunch because we still had an hour before it was our turn. We left and went to Andy’s favorite restaurant: Subway. (Subway Meal #1).

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When we returned from lunch is was almost our time. Our two tandem skydivers, Henrik and Crazy Larry, geared us up. We were looking quite attractive if you must know (check out my egg head!!).

Around this point, they started walking us to the airplane. Yeah remember that tiny thing? On closer inspection, I think it is better referred to as a closet with wings and an engine. This is when the panic really started setting in.

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Wait wait wait. You want me to get in a tiny aircraft looking thing, fly to 9,000 feet and then jump out? Yeah, I think not. I remember this childhood life lesson…just because my friends jump off a bridge, does NOT mean I should jump off it too. 

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Well, rational Julia certainly lost. I got in that airplane and began the 20 minute ascend to the spot I lovingly refer to as hell, also known as our jumping point. Now, I will admit that the scenery was quite lovely outside. If I wasn’t certain it would be the last thirty minutes of my life, I might have actually enjoyed the ride. As we started getting closer to the top, the pilot kept issuing these ominous warnings: 5 minutes..2 minutes…1 minute. I kept trying to tell myself that I would be okay and that it couldn’t be that bad.

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SPOILER ALERT: IT WAS THAT BAD.

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We had decided that I would jump first. The minute the pilot stopped the plane and opened the door I entered full on survival mode: I have too much to live for!!! I can’t go like this!! My poor parents would never be able to handle it.

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I think it was around this time that I froze. Like, I actually froze and my body just stopped working. My tandem jumper, Henrik, was trying to get me to step on the 1″ x 2″ platform that overlooked my jump towards death. My body said, “oh hell no, you’ve got to be crazy to think I’m going up there!”

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Henrik is trying to push me out the door, but my legs were NOT going. So he starts trying to pull me and convince me to go and I’m like, no way Jose. Finally, Andy notices the issue, grabs my leg and throws it out the door. What a sweet boyfriend (in case you can’t tell…this is incredibly sarcastic. It was NOT sweet of him to throw me out of the plane. k glad we’re all on the same page).

As I stood on the platform looking down, I somehow convinced myself that if I didn’t jump, I would never make it back to land. I don’t remember the actual jump, but I remember the sheer terror of free falling. Here I was, falling through the sky with some random guy on my back and I was trusting him to pull a parachute to save us. Yep, I’m a goner. I think it might be appropriate to mention at this point that I kept screaming throughout our free fall “I’M GOING TO DIE. WE’RE GOING TO DIE. IT’S OVER. WE NEVER GOING TO MAKE IT. I’M GOING TO DIE.”

When we looked at our videos later, during the freefall Andy was screaming in a happy, time-of-his-life kind of way. In my video, I look petrified and they actually muted my screams of death. Instead, they played rock music. Sigh.

Once Henrik pulled the chute, my brain began functioning again. Instead of telling me I was going to die, I decided that I needed to get to the ground ASAP. Casually sailing in the sky at 5,000 feet just wasn’t cutting it for me. I needed ground and I needed it fast. I think Henrik tried to get me to smile for pictures throughout our fall. Clearly, as you can tell by the pictures, I ignored everything my days as a sorority girl taught me and did not even try to look attractive.

When we finally landed, I couldn’t get away from Henrik fast enough. Meanwhile, Andy over here is having the time of his life. He did spins in the air, loved the freefalling and said it was a great experience.

Even though skydiving was not my most favorite activity, I am happy I did it. (Although mostly I’m happy that I can say I did it and it’s done and I don’t ever have to do it again.) The staff at Blue Ridge Skydiving Adventures were incredibly friendly, helpful and kind. If I had to go skydiving, I’m glad it was surrounded by wonderful people and so close to my second home: JMU.

After we (mainly me) regained our footing on land, Andy and I set out to gather the necessary materials for our camping trips: sandwiches (Subway #2), beer, cider and chips. Earlier in the day, I had googled nearby campsites for us to stay that night. Andy, being Andy, had different plans.

I kid you not, Andy and I are at Subway and he looks up and sees two towers in the distance.

Andy: “Girl, why would we go to a campsite when we can sleep under towers?! Let’s go camp there!”

Me: “That’s ridiculous, we don’t even know if we’re allowed to camp there or what the grounds are like.”

Andy: “Come on, don’t be lame! Let’s go!”

Annnnnd this is how we began our journey to camp underneath towers (as if Andy doesn’t already spend enough time with towers!). Yes, this is actually my real life.
The “seemingly close” towers turned out to be a good 45 minutes away, followed by a steeply inclined 5 miles where we couldn’t go any faster than 7 mph. When we finally reached the entrance to the towers, we found that there was a gate prohibiting us from entering. Although Andy was certain he would be able to unlock the code to the gate, after multiple tries we decided to move on to Plan B.

It was around this time that we noticed there was only 45 minutes until the sun was going to set. We made the immediate decision to set up our tent at a nearby field. (Please note that I am leaving out some key details of this story because I don’t want to get a call by the police one day…See – intelligent Julia is back in action!)

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Our first task once settling down was to set up the tent. As I mentioned earlier, we had borrowed a tent and sleeping bags from my parents  that morning. We dumped the contents of the box on the ground and began putting together the poles to set up the tent. All was going well until we couldn’t find the slots within the tent to attach the pole to. We soon realized we had a serious issue.

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We. Had. No. Tent.

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I repeat: We. Had. No. Tent.

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Apparently, the box my dad gave us has all the poles to the tent and the tent cover…but no tent. Yes, this is what you called being prepared to go camping 🙂

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Strangely enough, Andy and I did a pretty good job of problem solving. Using the tent cover, the poles, binder clips and paperclips we made a small, cozy (and slightly open) tent.

 

While I put the finishing touches on our home for the night, Andy determinedly set out to make a fire. No, it didn’t matter that we had nothing to eat over the fire, he wanted to prove his manliness. (Maybe he didn’t say that…but that’s my interpretation). It was a struggle to say the least. All Andy had was some sticks, leaves, matches and gum wrappers. And no, neither of us made it very far in the boy scout & girl scout survival lessons. He was about to give up when he went back to search the car and found mapquest directions his Mom had printed out a couple of weeks back. I honestly, didn’t even know people still used mapquest. However, that proved to be the key to success. The fire was soon blazing!

 

After sipping on our brews by the fire, we decided to call it a night. As we were getting ready for bed we looked up and we’re actually starstruck (hehe…see what I did there?). I have never in my entire life seen so many stars. Maybe I am too accustomed to the Northern Virginia lifestyle, but seriously, is this what the rest of the world looks like? It almost made me want to be a nature person. And then I remembered that whole peeing in the woods thing and I quickly changed my mind.

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The next morning we woke up, had breakfast (Subway #3) and went on our way to explore the mountain. I think at this point, it became very clear that an outdoor lifestyle was probably not the best option for me.

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“Wait you want to go where? You want me to do what? For how much longer? Do you know there are mosquitoes out here?!”

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Andy was not amused.

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We compromised and spent the next couple of hours exploring, but we decided to head back home around lunchtime. While I was sad our weekend birthday excursion was over, we did end on a good note: WE DIDN’T HAVE SUBWAY FOR LUNCH!!!!! #success