If We Could fly

"If we could fly"

"He climbed seven thousand feet above the black sea, and without a moment for thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightly in to his body, and fell into a vertical dive.
The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour, ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at a hundred and forty miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had been before at seventy, and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he eased out of the dive and shot above the waves.
He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his fear was under control. Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings, extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged directly toward the sea. By the time he had passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity, the wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move no faster. He was flying now straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles per hour. He swallowed, knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed he'd be blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull. But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty. "
Fellow toastmasters, we are not sea gulls, but with the technological resources that we have at our disposal, most of us had our share of the fun that seagulls have, be it a roller coster ride at a theme park or just a simple aeroplane flight. But nothing comes even close to the thrill that you get, jumping out of an airoplane to a free fall for half a minute.
Having seen the videos of a number of my friends, doing the action with a mission impossible sound track in the background and coming off victoriously, sky diving had always been in the back of my mind, as something which I have to try someday. But, I could never push myself to take the leap. What if the parachute fails to open? what if god-forbid, I had a heart attack in the middle of the air. I am not even 28.
But last month, when a number of my friends planned to go to a nearby facility for sky diving, I said to myself : "It is now or never" . If they can do it, I can do it too. After all, I will be tied with a professional sky diver who will do everything in his capacity to make sure that he reaches the ground safely and so will I. A number of ifs and buts later, 6 of us, left for a city in North California, called Lodi. It was a beautiful day, with the 11 am sun shining as bright as it could, when we reached the parachute center at Lodi. The parachute center had not-so modestly put a number of pictures of skydivers flying down, some trying hard to smile against the wind, while showing their thumbs up. As I was getting closer to the payment counter, my heart beats were racing against time as it was becoming more and more real. I finally paid $175 which included videos as well as still photographs for the dive. The place was a little crowded as it was a nice sunny sunday. We were made to sign a disclaimer that said amongst many things that I will not sue anyone remotely associated with the sky diving facility if something goes wrong.
After a wait for almost 15 minutes, our numbers were called, four of us were jumping in the same batch. We went inside where we were all given information about what is coming up next and what to expect. Kate, the lady who was taking my video and was going to jump right before me, asked me on camera : How I was feeling? I said I like roller costers. After that, All of us boarded the small aircraft which took us 15000 feet above the sea level. once we were at that height, I was tied to my instructor and at that height words were barely coming out of my mouth, I couldn't distinguish if it was because of low air pressure or just out of fear.
And then, the moment finally came. I was at the door of the aircraft and before I had the time to rethink, we jumped out. The first few seconds after the fall when I actually started falling were amongst the scariest but as we started going down, in the immense thrill of being in the free fall, all my fear disappeared. My ears were numb because of the immense air flow and I was barely able to open my mouth.
Kate was waving at me right below me and asking me to wave for the camera and in that immense air flow after trying very hard, I was able to give a weird smile with a mouthful of air. The airflow was so immense, that I felt as if my ears will come off. After falling free for almost 30 seconds, the instructor opened the parachute and for a moment it felt as if the world came to a standstill. Now, I was moving very slowly and smoothly and this was when I started noticing everything on the ground. By pulling the parachute straps, I was even able to control the direction in which the parachute goes. After doing that for a while, the instructor took control and in the next 10 minutes, the parachute came to the ground and the video was sealed with a V sign.
All in all, this whole experience was unparalleled with anything that I had experienced so far and I would definitely recommend anyone thinking about it to just go and do it. After doing this, you won't feel the same thrill in any roller-coster ride ever. I can only imagine how much fun life would have been if only we could fly.

The First Post

After procrastinating for ever, I finally started two things this week - Blogging and toastmasters' While the first one is a result of the second one, primarily because I wanted to share how my experience with toastmasters' and for that matter various other things is going, and hence the synchrony, nevertheless I had always wanted to start writing something which could possibly take the place of a personal journal which I have taken a break from, for a long while now.

Today, I delivered my first speech at the toastmasters' club which I joined recently. The objectives for the first speech are : To begin speaking before an audience and to discover speaking skills you already have and skills that need some attention. In this assignment, typically one talks about anything that concerns him. This is the time when the audience gets to know the person. I chose to talk about three festivals and the related memories which I used to love when I was a kid. But as always, procrastination kicked in and I did not start preparing until last night when I prepared the speech by 1 am, even though the plan was to have the speech prepared by Sunday. I did some mock rounds of the speech during the day and finally at 7:30 pm, stood in front a small group of people to evaluate me. It lasted for almost 5 minutes and I was surprised that I was much less tense during the speech than I had expected. Apart from some number of Umm and Ahhs, I think things were fine as was reflected by the evaluator's speech later. I was so happy after the speech, that I signed up for another one to be delivered next week. More than the speech itself, it was the preparation that I enjoyed. While writing the speech, as I was reminiscing old times when I was really young and the festivals celebrated at home with the family used to be so much fun, I could see vast difference in the perspective of things at that time vs now. Now that I have not been with my family for almost 7 years on any festival, a reflection of the events at that time and the simplicity of the way things were, makes me feel that there are so many things that we take for granted in our day to day life which we would do anything to get back at a later point of time.