When the parachute opens, the sensation is quite dramtic! I felt like we had been dropping on the end of a large rubber band and all of a sudden it was snapping us back to the heavens. After that initial jolt, everything settled down and we begin gently floating down. In the meantime the cameraman has already left us behind and is still dropping. He opens his chute late in order to land before we do so he can get pictures of our landing.

The instuctor does a little manuevering, tugging on the parachute shrouds, to get us into postion. As we began to approach the landing strip, he let me grip the shrouds and do some steering on my own. This was the relaxing part of the trip down to earth. Carol had jumped out before me and I did get to see her land.

The landing is a little tricky because the person strapped in front of the instructor must lift his legs up and get them out of the way so that the instuctor can land on the ground first with his feet. If my feet hit first, we could both go tumbling over. Notice in the picture my that I'm doing my best to keep my legs up as high as I can. They are the pair on the left, which are not much higher than the instructors feet. But it was good enough as he touched ground first and we made a pretty good landing. Carol had landed close by and came over to greet me. We sat together on the grass for a while, catching our breath and sharing our thoughts on this amazing adventure we had just been through. It was a wonderful experience.