Why We Love Skydiving

You probably think we’re going to say something about adrenaline. Right? Well: Nope. What we really love about skydiving has nothing to do with the rush. The benefits of skydiving reach so far beyond the little squirts of an adrenal gland, it isn’t even funny.

We’ve decided to set the record straight with a handcrafted love letter to the sport of skydiving. How do we love thee, skyjumpin’? Let us count the ways.

We love being part of peoples’ life stories.

Lots of people who come to the dropzone aren’t making a skydive just for flips and wiggles. Au contraire, mes amis. Many of these new jumpers are going through major transitions in their lives, and they’ve made the eminently wise decision to mark that transition with a skydive.

Over the course of time, being on a dropzone exposes you to a lot of people in transition. Amazingly, no matter how often it happens, it always feels amazing and fresh to watch. We’ve celebrated cancer going into remission. We’ve high-fived the heck out of new graduates. We’ve been part of marriage proposals and we’ve eulogized divorces. We’ve cheered on grandmas who do their very first jump on their 90th birthday. We listen to some pretty amazing stories from some pretty amazing people, and the chance to be a part of these major moments never ceases to bring us joy.

On a more personal note: Quite a few of us came to the sport, in fact, in a similar moment of great change. Whether that change seemed to be positive or negative at the time, a bit of freefall had a galvanizing effect, spinning the straw of existential uncertainty into gold. We found a home in skydiving, and we share that home with some of the most incredible people on the planet.

We love introducing people to the wild blue yonder.

This, too, will never get old: taking someone who has never made a skydive and showing them what it means to fly. Even better–and this happens more often than you’d think!–we adore the jumps we get to do with people who have never even been in an airplane before at all. Watching their faces as they see the planet from that perspective? Priceless. And then, when they get into the door and we watch all the feels wash over their faces? We get almost as excited as they do, and we do this dozens of times a day, every day.

We love watching the transition from fear to wonder.

Sometimes people show up terrified. Like: terrified. When someone arrives in the office and you can tell they’re pretty sure they’re going to die today, you know you’ll need to address those fears in a logical, well-reasoned, systematic, gentle, professional, accepting, patient and deeply kind way. That is a long list of adjectives, my friends.

But y’know what? The customers who arrive green with fear are our favorites, because we get to use all of our tools to help them overcome their terror and reap the resounding benefits that skydiving has to offer them. When these guys land, they are practically exploding with joy. And it’s a beautiful thing to know that they’re going to be using their new risk-management tools to great effect in the rest of their lives.

It’s true, y’awl: Skydiving + Us 4eva. We fall more in love with this bewitching sport with every passing year. You’re going to love it, too, for all these reasons and more. You’ll see!