Sunday rolled around and it was time to learn how to fly! There were eleven other people who went on the trip. The president of our hall, Alex, organized the trip for us. We took a bus to Picton, which is about an hour outside of Sydney. We arrived at the skydiving site and had to fill out some forms. An hour later we were being suited up to go. I thought there was going to be training session, but there was not much for me to do because I was going tandem skydiving. My instructor's name was Cindi and she has been skydiving for years. I can't imagine skydiving more than once, but more power to her. She put a harness on me and taught me how to land...next thing I knew we were in a plane. I am not sure why or how, but I was surprisingly calm throughout the whole process. Knowing that I had someone pulling the parachute for me probably helped ease the nerves. After about ten minutes we reached our elevation of 14,000 feet and then I was jumping out of the plane. It was definitely an experience! I think I enjoyed the part where we were floating around rather than the free falling part, but I am happy I did it. As I promised my father, I will not be jumping out of planes for a very long time.
The rest of the week was spent preparing for Inward Bound. I did not get nervous until a few hours before the competition. It is a very long, drawn-out process before you actually start running. My division began scrutineering at 7:30pm. Scrutineering is simply where the committee checks to see you that everyone on your team has all of the required items. I believe my pack weighed about 10 pounds once everything was in there. We had to carry three liters of water, thermals, rain jacket, one kilo of food, maps, compass and other various objects. Once scrutineering was over we loaded the bus at 10:00pm. We then had to put on blindfolds, so that we could not see where we were going. The bus drove us around for about an hour and a half. I chose to sleep the entire way because I knew it was going to be a long night and I get a bit grouchy when I do not have my sleep! We arrived at our destination and the nav, my friend Holly, sent each of the scouts out to survey the area. I had twenty minutes to take bearings of the road and anything that I found interesting. I found a satellite dish along the way, which made our navigating pretty easy. We were off running for the endpoint by 12:45. It took my team about 6 hours to get to the endpoint! The committee did not plan for the 50km division to get in before 7am, so when we were finished there were barely any spectators to see us come running in. The whole experience was amazing. All of the halls had tents and barbeques set up to celebrate. I was at endpoint until seven that night, which was exhausting but I had a great time cheering everyone else on. I think I will take awhile off from running, but I am ready to take on some mini-marathons and possibly some marathons when I get home.
