Why my wife is the coolest

This is Dan here, (obviously) and this blog entry is all about Dana.

I know there are a lot of really great wives out there, but let me tell you why my wife is top of the list.

You may know that I am turning 30 in about 12 days. Well, for the last 18 days, Dana has been spoiling me with what she is calling the 30 days of 30. Every day of the 30 days leading up to my birthday, she has given me some present. Some of them were little and cute, like a fridge magnet, and some of them were huge and awesome, but more about that later.

What really makes Dana incredible is that she has been planning this event for nearly a year. Pretty much everything that I have mentioned liking or enjoying, she has taken note of, and put it on the list of things to give me for my 30th b-day. For instance, she knows that I like minty stuff, so last night she gave me a thing of mint M&Ms. She knows I like Superman, so she gave me a Superman pillow-case (yes, I am still a 10 year old at heart). She has basically been covertly buying little gifts here and there for at least four months, and I have had no clue about all of it the whole time. She even bought me a cool bamboo flute because, when we were walking through some mall, I saw a flute and mentioned off hand that I had always wanted one.

So the little gifts have been trickling in. Some in the mornings before work, some in the evenings before bed. All of them have been awesome and each one has made me very happy. But on Monday she completely outdid herself.

Monday, of course, was Labor Day. I stayed up way to late in the night playing games with my buddies, because I knew that I could sleep in until Tuesday if I wanted. So on Monday I woke up some time around noon (the only upside of having no kiddies). Dana asked if I could make breakfast, so I whipped us up some bacon and eggs. We had a nice leisurely meal, and talked idly about going out for a drive in the afternoon. I asked her when she would like to go, and she non-challantly said she would like to go sooner than later.

So, we hopped into the car and took off. Dana started driving to the north, which was not the direction of the places we had talked about going. I instantly realised that she was taking me someplace secret, and that this must be a birthday gift. As soon as I knew that, I tried to stop myself from guessing where we were going, since I didn't want to spoil the surprise for Dana or myself. So I really had no idea where we were going.

As we got closer to our destination, Dana started to get excited, and couldn't contain it any more, so she let the cat out of the bag. She was taking me skydiving.

Skydiving! Sometime almost 3 months ago I had told Dana that I wanted to go skydiving before I turned 30. Since then I had not mentioned it, and she hadn't talked to me about it since then either. And then, out of the blue, my wife proved once again how attentive and loving she is by making this wish come true for me. Skydiving is something I have wanted to do ever since I knew it was possible, but I never took the time or the steps to make it happen. Honestly, if Dana hadn't set it up, I likely would have never done it.

We pulled into the little airport in Loveland, and saw the Mile High Skydiving School right away. It seemed like there were almost a hundred adrenaline junkies running around the place, packing chutes, straightening lines, or just hanging around. It was really like a beach-bum scene, but inside a plane hanger.

We checked in at the office, and had our first obstacle. It seems that I am on the heavy end for a skydiver. Not that the chute won't hold me, but that I am so much larger than their dive instructors that they would have a hard time controlling my weight in the air. Eventually we got a green light, and I got suited up. Dana did not take the dive with me, even though I wish she had. I met my tandem partner/instructor Dave, and then, after a very brief instruction period, we were all loaded up on a trailer and driving out to the runway.

Right about then I became very nervous. It took all of the therapist tricks I knew to keep my cool. Ironically, when I saw the plane I felt much less nervous and much more excited. The plane ride up was great. There were about 20 of us in the plane, all suited up and ready to jump out. There was this cool instant comeraderie, everyone fist bumping and encouraging each other. Some students learning to solo-dive for the first time looked really nervous, which strangely made me calmer. Dave hooked himself up to my harness, and I felt like I was wearing a human back-pack.

It was a partly-cloudy day, and it took us a while of flying around to find a spot where we could see the ground. The delay had everyone feeling super antsy. As soon as we found a good spot, it was like a paratrooper deployment. Go Go GO! People were jumping out of the plane about one a second, some doing back flips, some just leaning out and disappearing. It was almost surreal. And then I feel Dave standing up behind me, and next thing I know I am standing in the door of the plane, wondering why it wasn't more windy there, and looking down at a very distant, unreal-looking Colorado. We were up at 12,000 feet above ground. The mountains all looked flat and wide, the roads were little grey ribbons, and the farmland seemed more like a green quilt. Dave screamed 'Ready?' in me ear, and I screamed 'ready!' back. 'Set!' 'Go!'

And then we were spinning in the air. Dave had us do a front-flip out of the door. As I flipped around, I saw the plane falling upwards away from us at a ridiculous speed. But it felt like the plane was falling, not me. For me it felt like I was lying down in a very windy place. The wind pushed against my chest so hard that I almost felt like I was being held up by it. Except for the clouds we plumetted past, I had no sensation of falling, but rather a sensation of flying. Dave stabilized us, and I had enough presense of mind to really enjoy myself. And boy did I ever enjoy myself. It was easilly one of the funnest things I have ever done. Not scary at all once we got moving. Just thrilling. Exhillerating. Amazing. I noticed that my mouth kept drying out, and it took me a second to realize that it was dry because I was open-mouthed-grinning and yelling while falling through the air at 150 mph.

Dave spun us around and gave me a panoramic view of the air over Colorado. We were so high that the mountains seemed little and insignificant. The Rocky Mountains seemed tiny. Yeah, that is high up. It was amazing. I was enjoying myself so much and was so in the moment that I was completely oblivious to Dave yelling 'pull! pull! pull!' to me, which was to be my signal to grab the pull chord and deploy the chute. Well, thankfully Dave is not terribly patient, and he pulled the chord himself rather than take the time to convince me that I should do it.

The chute deploying was, well, violent. It hurt quite a bit. Of course, we did decelerate from 150 to around 20 in about 3 seconds, but I was unused to my inner thighs taking the force of that decelration. That being said, the deployment was also fun. Once we had stabalized, Dave handed me the controls to the chute and we did some turns. Those things are impressively agile. I was tentative at first, and just did little baby turns, but then Dave encouraged me to really yank on it, and I put us into a tight right hand turn that puts every rollercoaster in the world to shame. Left turn to stop the right spin, then pull on both to hit the brakes. It takes some real muscle to control those things, but it was really gratifying to feel that sense of control. Dave tells me they are even more responsive when they are only holding one person up.

And then the landing. It was all over far too soon. I would like to say that my landing was smooth and graceful, but the truth is I just fell over, and then the chute started pulling backwards, so I couldn't even get up for a while. But I just didn't care. I was so high on adrenaline. I instantly started looking for Dana, who was standing in the staging area, and I wanted to run to her to thank her for making that experience possible. Thanks to her I am a skydiver. How many dreams can one woman fulfill?

You may notice from the picture that I am wearing my favorite Superman T shirt that Dana bought for me a while back. That is complete coincidence. I put on the shirt when I thought I was going to lounge around the house all day. The fact that I had it on for my very first actual flight was just pure coincidence.

So yeah, my wife is the greatest. Not only does she make me deliriously happy nearly all of the time, she also is an active agent in helping me fulfill my dreams. It just doesn't get any better than that.

Love you, babe, and thank you