In May of 2003, Dave Guillen RD of Schwalm Hall planned a building-wide program -> skydiving. Resident's paid a minimal fee ($30) and were strongly warned that it was totally at their own risk. Not surprising, only 5 residents signed up in whole building. I was one of them.

I did not tell my parents or friends about my planned escapade lest things turned out otherwise and for fear of them trying to discourage me. The date was set for a Saturday. I made sure that I would be hungover/drunk that day in order to calm my nerves. This was not hard because being a sophomore in a small liberal arts 'dry' campus in the small town North Manchester, Indiana, keg parties were not hard to come by.

It was a long 3hr drive and I slept through most of the uncomfortable van ride. Upon finally arriving at sky-dive Chicago, we were taken through a gazillion tons of paperwork where we basically signed away our rights to sue anyone in case we dropped dead from the sky ( we also signed away the rights of our relatives and ghosts just to be sure).

The next step was suiting up, this is when my heart began pumping! This was the point of no return. Of all the crazy things that I'd done in my life, this was definitely the top one, and my mother did not even know anything about it. What if I died that day? I would be marked as the silliest Ugandan --> urology "And here lies Alan Galiwango, paid for the service that led to his death, smart, very smart indeed."
But there was no looking back at this point. We were given a quick lesson about the dangers of skydiving and strongly warned that anything could go wrong. I learned that we would be doing a tandem jump - u are strapped to a pro's belly like a baby. I was somewhat disappointed but a lot more relieved that I was in safe hands. On meeting Bill, my partner, I was relieved to know that he was confident and had been doing this for a while - I wonder if people like Bill have a death wish, I mean, it's one thing to skydive once for fun, but another to do it for a living.

So we got strapped and got into the plane. We were to go up 35000 ft - basically, very high in the sky - and then jump out of the plane. During the flight upwards, we were given quick last minute instructions. I felt like a soldier in the army getting ready to drop for combat. It was all surreal to me. At that point, I still did not believe that I was actually going to jump out of a plane because I was within its safe confines. I slowly watched as the once gigantic trees and large ponds turned into ants and finally dots as we went higher and higher.

And then the dreaded announcement came! It was time to jump. I got strapped onto Bill. I prayed to God that the straps were tight because my worst fear was some hook getting lose and dropping me to my death. One by one the jumpers leaped out of the plane like fleas, quickly shrinking in size as their perspective changed with attitude. It was one of the most scary moments of my life. I was up next. I was definitely never going to jump. Thank God I was strapped to Bill because he just yelled, "1,2,3" and off we were into the empty vast nothingness of the sky.

My first instinct was to scream and yell, but the strong gush of wind in my face not only made it impossible to breathe, but just vacuum the saliva out of my mouth, upwards into Bill's face. After I had realized that I was not falling to my death, and I was still strapped securely to Bill, I somewhat relaxed and began to enjoy the experience. It was exhilarating! Free falling, weightless, dropping towards the ground at a terrific speed, the total lack of control, the brush with death, feeling like a bird, it was amazing. I could spin, maneuver in place, pretend to be swimming in the air, it felt great. At 10000ft. I had to pull my parachute and Bill gave me the signal. I gave him a warning and pulled the chute. This was the second moment of truth...would the parachute actually work!

Of course, by the fact that I'm writing this post, you know that it worked. And then after the chaos of free fall, was the serenity of gently floating to the ground, with the beautiful scenery slowly expanding below us. At that point, I came the closest I ever will to experiencing what an eagle experiences. We could maneuver the chute left of right depending on where we wanted to go. And finally after about 10 min, we landed.

It was the scariest, but most exciting experience I've ever had. It is unfortunate that the owner of Sky-Dive Chicago died from a skydiving accident that summer after we had just gone there. But I would still recommend this activity to anyone that seeking some thrill in their life.

I am a resident assistant in Loftman Hall at Northeastern University and as part of my job, I have to plan programs for my residents. I thought paint-ball would be a fun activity for my residents to partake and release their stress. Surprisingly, a lot more girls on my floor signed up for the program than guys.

We decided to go to Boston Paint-ball today (Friday), I couldn't have picked a worse time.. if you live in Boston, you would know that we had the worst snow storm this year today. What's ironic is that it's been sunny the whole week and we've been walking around wearing shorts and sunbathing. So anyway, we remained firm in our decision to go paint-balling and together with 5 other residents, we took the orange line from Ruggles. Kris (resident/roommate) was to join us later since his class ended later on.

At Sullivan Square, it was snowing so bad and the bus to Boston Paint-ball was taking too long. There were no cabs in sight either. A friend of Lynne(one of the residents) told her that Boston Paintball was just around the corner we were best off walking. We stupidly started to walk in the blizzard and of course got lost. Meanwhile Assia's (resident 2) feet were totally frozen and hurting and she could not walk any further. At this point, my poor residents were complaining about everything (rightfully so) and I was frantically trying to remain optimistic about the whole day.

After about 30 minutes of ....nothing, we decided to head back to the station and maybe call it a day, at that very moment, a cab appeared and offered to drop us off at Boston Paintball. Meanwhile, Kris had just arrived at the station and was calling me for directions, so I dropped off the 5 residents and returned with the cabbie to pick up Kris. We failed to locate Kris despite the painfully obvious directions we gave him to the proposed meeting point ... it turns out he had got off at a different train station. I told him to find a cab and just try to get to the location.

So 2 hours after our proposed time of arrival, we finally got into Boston Paintball to begin our paintball session. There were a bunch of 8-12 year old kids playing and from the looks of it, they spent all their weekly allowance at this place. We paid and proceeded to meet our attendant/ref. Thankfully, we had a very funny and cordial attendant(had long sideburns). He quickly he explained the rules of the game -> basically, don't take off ur mask while in play and don't take off the safety of your gun until the end of the game. After his entertaining introduction, we were more cheerful and psyched about our first game. Unfortunately Assia's feet hurt so much that she could not partake. Funny side-burned attendant offered to dry her socks for her... in the microwave. We thought he was kidding but he insisted. "It's not my microwave, I don't care....what? U guys have never tried this in college? "
So like that we offered Assia's socks up for microwaving. Obviously 5 minutes later the whole room was steamy and smelling of burnt socks. Funny side-burned attendant got a tongue thrashing from his supervisor, but it was still hilarious that he even suggested that.

Eventually we got suited up and headed in for our first game. It was the Northeastern adults against the local kids.... bad idea. Since the numbers didn't match up, the attendant/ref. asked two of the good kids(I assumed they were good as they had their own sleek guns) to join our team. By their groaning it was obvious that they could tell how amateur we looked. Whatever, I was determined to put my videogame skills to practical use.

We walked to our assigned start post. Our leader quickly dished out orders, sending Mark and I to one side, the rest to the middle and he took the hardest route. Btw, our leader was the 10-12 year old kid. 3 2 1, start.

I crouch and bolt for the first plastic balloon station, I'm breathing heavy and fogging up my facemask, my heart is pumping fast, I can hear bullets whizzing past my ears and thumping the balloon. I can see the little kids at a distance firing off at me. I look around me and 3 of my residents are already walking off in surrender, they've been hit! I see my first target and go in for the kill. I squeeze my trigger and wait for the pellet to pop out, nothing! My gun was jammed! He looks up and realizes what I'm doing. Shit, I'm hit and out. I stood up and left the field. Not surprisingly, all my residents were out there.

After switching guns, we had a couple of intriguing games. The instructors were so nice to even let us have our own amateur game (no kids). It was so much fun. I didn't realize time fly by.

By the time we had to leave, we had had our fill of thrills and had no regrets at all. As we waited for the cab that I'd just called, Kris, who had used a bus to come from Wellington station(different station) told us that it was really close and we could definitely walk the distance. Upon our better judgment, we believed him and started walking again, got lost and luckily found another cab to drop us off at campus.

Despite the terrible snow storm, I definitely had fun and would recommend going to Boston Paintball (with a big group) for a fun experience. Great, professional staff, decent facilities, just plain fun.

I went to Uganda for Xmas and I am going to attempt to recall my experiences to see how good my memory is. Hopefully it will make interesting reading for me later on. First off, this was my most memorable experience -> White water rafting on New Years Day! you should do this once before you die.

Labels: white water rafting