I'm Flying!

Even though I may still be down and out of the running scene because of this foot, that doesn't mean I can't keep cross-training.  And what better way to work those back and shoulder muscles than to do some indoor skydiving!  I was up in Nashua doing some testing on our shiny new Cisco Nexus 7010 switches; seen here.  Oh, so shiny. So expensive.

So my coworker, who just so happens to be a competitive skydiver, says that we should head over to Sky Venture after work and do some indoor diving.  Ok, I thought.  Sounds cool, I guess.  So after struggling all afternoon with VPC and LACP issues and getting nowhere we packed up and headed over to have some fun.

After getting the mandatory briefing on what the hell to do in there we suited up and they spun up the tunnel.  At this point I had no clue what I was doing.  I've never done anything like this so I had no idea what it would be like.  It looked easy, but I knew that it wasn't going to be.  And it wasn't.  I spent the first of several times in the wind tunnel (we traded 2 minutes in/out) just trying to figure out how to float without crashing into a wall.  My biggest fear was suddenly rocketing to the ceiling and being stuck.  Although the chances of that were next to none since the wind speed was controlled and there was no way to get to the top even if I wanted to.  That and my instructor Dereck never let me get too out of control.

My biggest problem was that I kept fighting it and straining to move the way I wanted to.  That just didn't work out so well.  But finally it all started to click.  I began to relax and let the air do the work.  I could move around the room on my own, I could control my actions (mostly) and best of all, I was actually flying!  See:

Woo hoo!  Once I got that part down it was totally kickass.  Unfortunately it all came to an end too soon and after a few jumps to the ceiling with the instructor leading it was time to go.  Definitely worth the time and I hope to get back again.  And as I said, it was a great workout for the shoulders and back judging from the soreness this morning.