The most expensive 2 minutes of my life

As I said in my previous post, I have a lot to write about. It won't necessarily be in chronological order because, well, my brain doesn't work like that.

Today I'm concentrating on the most expensive 2 minutes of my life. Now, you can argue that the most expensive 2 minutes was when I signed the documents to buy my house. And you'd be right technically. But what I'm talking about is the 2 minutes I purchased a service.

I've always wanted to skydive. Not enough to actually pursue doing it, but I'd be totally up for it if someone else would initiate it. Most things I'm fine doing by myself: going to a movie, walking, concert, traveling, etc. But there are some things that even I won't do alone. Skydiving is one of them. It's okay, call me a chicken.

An indoor skydiving place opened nearby called iFly (what's up, iFly worker who has to check out this post to see if I say anything inflammatory!!!). I see it when I drive up that way, but I didn't really check it out online. Again, skydiving (even indoors) isn't something I would necessarily do on my own since my husband is not one who's that much of a thrill seeker. I think he gets nauseous even thinking about amusement park rides.

But one of my friends brought up that she wanted to go. I was like, "Heck yeah!"

Life's been busy lately. Not necessarily an excuse, but I'm just giving context. My friend gave me instructions on how to sign up - she even told me what appointment to sign up for. I followed her instructions while I was at the grocery store. Reservations made, and then I moved on to the next thing. So it turned out that I didn't explore their website before going. I know the iFly building is tall, so I presumed they took you up to the top of the tall building with a parachute and then dropped you. Right?!

Not exactly. What fascinated me about iFly the most (holla, iFly worker!) is that they have a freaking incredible business model. They crank people through in such a way that they pretty much guarantee that they make $1,800+ per hour in revenue. I was trying to calculate their estimated profit while I was there, deducting for rent/salaries/expenses/etc. That kept me busy for a while.

Wait wait wait, I'm supposed to be talking about the experience. That's what the iFly worker is wanting me to concentrate on, not their business model. (But I would definitely want to talk about their business model if they would like.)

The experience was okay. I suppose I was expecting something different, I was expecting it to last longer (no jokes....), my mind was focusing on their business model when I was supposed to be thinking about how cool it was. Everyone else there seemed to be SO jazzed about the experience, including my friend, that it's kind of isolating when you aren't at that same emotional/excitement level. It's hard to describe, but I've often encountered that sort of feeling in a big group when everyone else is in a different mental place than you are.

iFly has you jump in this wind tunnel cage that simulates the free fall when skydiving. You do two 1-minute sessions in the wind tunnel.  Not much can go wrong. You could fall...two feet to the bottom of the cage. You might run into the glass of the cage while "flying." That's about all that can go wrong, so it's not terribly risky (probably good for their liability insurance). Their website does have lots of information and explains it pretty well if you want to see a better description.

It's not very long. It's not very risky. It's expensive (if you look at it as a cost per minute of actual flying). The iFly worker would tell you it's really an hour and a half. Well...they want you to watch other people do it for half an hour, they want you to get half an hour of "instruction" and then get your equipment on, and then you sit with your group for half an hour rotating one-minute shifts in the wind tunnel.

Would I do it again? Hmm...if I found a Groupon and someone else wanted to do it too, then I might do it again. Would I do it alone? Nah, it wasn't SO cool to do that I'd even do it alone. Would I do it for full price? Nah, it's not that awesome.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has done this and actual skydiving to see how they compare.