That is how, the next morning, intrepid Anastasia came across the Hillarity Step in her bedroom and traversed it bravely, if gingerly, to get to her coffee.

I skipped the first two jumps of the day, including the sunrise. I had manifested for the third jump, but still wasn’t fully operational, so I spent it dozing off and pleading with the mattress to stop spinning.

By noon I was showered and squared away, but now the tide was too high and the winds too strong. Because of the weather, it would be the last load of the day. While I could have manifested, the conditions did not favor a beginner. Why risk years of skydiving for one more hurrah on a bad-weather day? An experienced skydiver I had come to trust advised me not to try it. Thanks, Youssef!

Ah, but do I give up that easily? I do not! I had one more trick up my sleeve, two jump tickets left, and a third mission in mind: locate the nearest tandem master willing to take me up and outsource the work of landing the parachute to someone far more skilled. Hello, Sean!

I see these bookends as poetic. A tandem got me started in the sport, and a tandem is how I cap off the most fulfilling ten days of my life.

This tandem also happened to be one of my favorite jumps. Doing a tandem as a skydiver is freaking wild! You’ve just spent a good chunk of change achieving control in an extremely unnatural environment, and now you’re about to cede all of it to some other goof. You know exactly what is going to happen and how it will feel, but now you’re just the passenger along for someone else’s ride. It’s the ultimate test of trust and acceptance to give up control, this thing you have worked so hard to attain.

Is wearing a tandem harness as a skydiver analogous to wearing diapers as an adult? Strapped in, I listened attentively to Sean’s jump briefing, silencing my recently-obtained know-how and assuming nothing. It was his jump and I didn’t want to screw it up. After takeoff, I instinctively reached for a gear check and felt my heart drop briefly when I couldn’t find my main handle behind me. I was not wearing a parachute. Wut.

At the door, Sean pulled my head back onto his shoulder just as Angelo had done in June when I did my first tandem. He then pushed us out and I yeehawed pretty much all the way down. This time around, I knew that I could steer us in freefall, so with Sean’s permission, I did a few 360-degree turns because that’s a thing I can now do on a tandem that I could not do before, and every jump should teach you something new.

Some video from the tandem jump. Thanks, Pyro!

I had my altimeter with me, and at 5,500 feet, I watched as the canopy inflated above us. That’s another thing that was new about this jump: altitude awareness and checking that the canopy was there and square, something you wouldn’t be doing as a casual tandem passenger.

The canopy ride was awesome. Sean flexed his feet so that I could prop myself up on them and fly standing up instead of suspended by my leg straps. I’m despondent that the SD card in his GoPro ran out of space just before we deployed, because I was screaming, “I’m surfing the sky!!!!” and generally going wild. Would have been fun to hear all that foolishness.

It was exactly like this, except his name was Sean and we were above the ocean instead of in the middle of it.

Final approach, too, was wonderful. Instead of minding altitude and landing area, I was free to look around and enjoy the scenery while Sean did all the hard work. We landed on our butts, but we probably could have stood up. I thought we were going to fall because of the strong wind as Sean flared, so I PLF’d the landing just after Sean’s feet touched the ground, preventing us from landing upright. Shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t my jump and I should have let Sean handle the finish, but control is a hard thing to give up once taken.

(Jargon alert! A Parachute Landing Fall (PLF) is a technique used to land safely in unfavorable conditions.The jumper tucks in her arms and head. The feet strike the ground first and, immediately, she throws himself sideways to distribute the landing shock sequentially along five points of body contact with the ground: feet, calf, thigh, hip, back.)

Aside from being a skydiver’s version of diapers, a tandem jump is literally a trust fall. Try it with a buddy. Practice letting go.