Breaking wind

Indoor skydiving is a bit like putting your head out of a car travelling at 100mph or so... Essentially, it is a big hair dryer pointed upwards, allowing people to balance on the stream of air to simulate the feeling of skydiving. It’s pretty awesome stuff and a surprisingly nice feeling (not really like putting hundreds of angry wasps in your clothing, more like getting an overly aggressive body massage. Hmm...), which is why we took a bunch of tunnel virgins and initiated them into the world of human flight (or falling!). We descended on to AirKix in Milton Keynes in force, a whole 24 of us, and everybody got a little over two minutes in the tunnel, which is sort of equivalent to the freefall time of three skydives. People spent most of that time grinning wildly, as spittle dribbled up their face! Everyone managed to get stable, belly down and arms out, with the help of the instructor and when the instructor felt they were ready, people got to float around the tunnel on their own. There’s no talking in the tunnel as the wind whips the words from your mouth (both physically and mentally) so there are a set of hand signals the instructor gives to you that become surprisingly hard to remember when falling at speed! The most common hand signal used was “relax!”, which, at first, is quite a challenge for someone new to the sensation of falling. By arching your back and throwing your limbs out wide, you can control your fall and small movements make a strikingly large effect on the movement of your body. It may take many hours to master this and become a pro, but we all got 2 mins on the way! By next year, I want to see back-flips and all kinds of crazy tricks, guys... Sadly, such an awesome pastime comes at a cost, but SportImperial gave us lots of money to make everything really cheap. Don’t worry if you missed out on this trip, we are running more subsidised wind-tunnel trips for those interested in living life to the full! Get out there and find something that takes your breath away. Just like what indoor skydiving definitely did to all of us on the trip. We all had incredible fun with our clothes on and many of the beginners are now interested in doing the real thing from a plane. Anyway, a big well done to all the beginners for your first freefall! The beer’s on you!