Indoor Skydiving

Doesn't sound like a good idea, does it? Well it is! It's also not quite what it sounds like. It approximates skydiving in that it's quite windy, but it doesn't really involve the sky at all. Or diving for that matter. Really it's all false advertisement except for the indoor part.

To put it simply, there's an enormous fan blowing air straight up into a small wind tunnel. The force of the wind is actually enough to suspend you in the air. It's supposed to feel pretty similar to skydiving. I wouldn't know since I've never skydived, but I can say that indoor skydiving is a blast! I went last weekend and it was really fun. It was very short and very pricey ($55 for 2 minutes!), but Steven and I had been wanting to try it for a while, and in a bad economy like this one, I fear things like indoor skydiving might have some difficulty surviving. Silly me though. The place was packed! And the receptionists were on the phone constantly taking reservations for future appointments. Crazy.

So we shelled out the bucks and got to fly around in the wind tunnel for a little while. There was an instructor with us and once we started getting the hang of the tunnel, he started spinning us around in the air. It was pretty cool. One word of caution though: the wind blows so hard that it was a little hard for me to breathe through my nose. What option did that leave? Breathing through my mouth, which of course meant keeping my mouth open. Which, as it turns out, meant getting my saliva blown onto my face where it pretty much instantly dried. Not a problem if you have nice breath. But let's just say my experience inspired me to eat some mints.

It was a lot of money for a short time, but I have to say I'm tempted to go back. The second time is cheaper and you're able to control your own movements more (instead of having the instructor position you). If you get good enough, you eventually move up to the really high speed winds and can do barrel rolls and other really crazy flips. I think the second visit is $40 and it gets even cheaper from there, but that's still a lot, especially considering how little time you're actually in there.

Perhaps one day I'll go back, but for now I'll just call it another interesting experience under my belt and move on. I do have one extra special memory from it though: after we were done, Steven told me that I looked so cute in the wind tunnel with my little wind blown smile (getting spit on my face and not really caring) that he fell in love with me all over again. He's a real romantic that one. I told him as much, and he just said that he says what he's feeling. And that's why he's such a romantic. He's the best.