A View From Above Sunny Central Florida

Because I firmly believe that there are doors on an airplane for a reason, I would never go skydiving, but the Florida Skydiving Center in Lake Wales has seen thousands of people come through their door who don’t feel the way I do. If you are looking for high adventure in Polk County, that is definitely the place to go. Our new adventure correspondent, Ashley Hall, who lives and works in Lakeland, recently visited the Florida Skydiving Center for her first ever sky dive and here is her story:

My adventure at the Florida Skydiving Center began at 4:45 a.m. on what seemed to be a cloudy with a chance of showers day.  I live in Tampa four days out of the week so I had quite a drive to the other side of Polk County on the day of my dive.  The cool part was that I was able to being 4 friends from Tampa with me so they got to experience a little bit of Polk County that day as well. We arrived in Lake Wales at the Florida Skydiving Center around 7:45 a.m. & were shocked to see how many other people were arriving to sky dive that day.  If I had to guess, I would say that well over 100 people jumped that day, many for the first time.  The staff members were very helpful and once outfitted with gear for my Tandem jump I was ready to take off with my videographers in tow. For me, the best part of the jump was the actual exit from the plane.  And, I can definitely say that I never even thought for a second about how fast we would be going during free fall.  My free fall was at 128 mph for 52 seconds from 15,000 feet!  It was amazing.  I was in disbelief that I was never afraid.  I just kind of got in the plane and jumped out. After free fall to 6,000 feet my instructor pulled the chute (because I couldn’t find it) and we floated in and out of clouds for the next 7 minutes.  After some maneuvers with the chute, I am not going to lie, I got a little queasy.  Actually, I was very queasy. As we prepared to land all I could think of was “I was never good at sliding in softball, so this should be interesting.”  Despite my uneasiness, our landing was great! Now, days later, I am planning another trip to the Florida Skydiving Center.  Some of my friends that jumped that day are planning to attend the Accelerated Free fall instruction so they can become certified and jump alone.  I am not so sure if that is for me, but who knows, I never thought I would skydive to begin with. I highly recommend skydiving at the Florida Skydiving Center at least once in your life!