Homeschool Fiction

For my birthday this past week, my family and I decided to go indoor skydiving again at Sky Venture Arizona in Eloy, AZ (halfway between Tucson and Phoenix, just off of I-10). We went last year for my youngest daughter’s birthday and I wrote about it in “Fly like a SUPER HERO with Indoor Skydiving”. I’ve received a lot of requests since that article for me to post videos of that day. Since I haven’t done that, I am posting some of our time this year.

For first time flyers (which we weren’t, but since it has been so long we did the whole thing again), they show you a short video of how to fly in the wind tunnel. Then, the instructor goes over the information again and requires you to physically follow the directions on a cushioned table. Once you are in the wind tunnel, you can’t hear anything so it is extremely important that you understand the finger commands (although being able to follow them is an entirely different matter). The gear we wore was simple: knee pads, elbow pads, jumpsuit with stir-ups, tennis shoes (or similar), disposable earplugs, goggles, and a helmet. Once all geared up, you can’t help but feel like a real skydiver.

The instructors at Sky Venture Arizona are extremely kind and talented. Even though they are extremely well qualified divers themselves, every one we’ve met has been quite patient with our lack of expertise. They are fantastic! Both last year and this year we each flew for 4 minutes, in two 2 minutes chunks. At one point my goggles (and glasses) started to blow off. They patiently stopped my time, helped me out and helped me fix my goggles before I returned back in.

Tips:

• Don’t smile with your mouth open unless you want spit flying everywhere (some people like this). If you do feel some spit being blown out of your mouth, don’t try to wipe it away - you’ll fly the wrong way and it will blow away in a second anyway
• Wear thin clothing underneath the jumper.
• Secure your hair before putting on the helmet, or you will have a lot of tangles (and your hair might fly through the holes in the helmet).  We used a bunch of hair ties and we were good to go.
• Relax! Flying works a lot better when your body is completely relaxed.
• Don’t plan on looking beautiful afterwards - you’ll be dirty like you just went, well, skydiving.  :)  Bring a hairbrush and a change of clothes if you are going somewhere fancy after.
• Have fun!
• Expect to work unusal muscles (it’s always my shoulders that seem to be used the most).

We were pleased to find that we all did better this time than last.  All of us were able to fly unassisted for at least a short while.

Here are the promised videos (each is between 10-35 seconds long). You’ll want to turn your sound down - wind tunnels are loud!

• Teagan flying 1
• Teagan flying 2
• Teagan flying 3
• Teagan finishing, Zoë beginning
• Zoë flying 1
• Zoë flying 2
• Zoë flying 3
• Greg flying 1
• Greg flying 2
• Greg flying 3
• Greg flying 4
• Lisa flying 1

Here are some still images of our fun time:

Related Articles:

• Fly like a SUPER HERO with Indoor Skydiving
• Donating Hair to Locks of Love
• SOARING!
• Our interview with KGUN9 about Radical Unschooling
• Arizona Ghost Town: Pearce

By: Lisa