I have officially survived my twenties
Nov. 16th, 2023 01:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: food, (arguably) illness, (arguably) heights]
(part 1)
---
So! I'm 30 now!
For my birthday, I went to an indoor-skydiving centre. I've been curious about it for many years, and a round-number birthday seemed like the time to take the plunge (so to speak).
---
When I first looked into maybe doing this someday, the closest branch was in Niagara Falls, about a two-hour drive each way. Now, there's a branch in Oakville, only one hour each way.
I left two hours before check-in: *last* time we went to Toronto, the traffic was so bad that it turned a three-hour round trip into five. There were no traffic jams on the way there, though (perks of going on an early Tuesday afternoon, presumably), and we arrived in plenty of time.
---
(The wind tunnel did, unfortunately, require taking my mask off. And they make you take it off to go into the *antechamber*, so in total it worked out to about fifteen minutes (with about 6 - 15 or so other people, depending on how you count).
Statistically, this is very likely to be fine as long as one doesn't make a habit of it (and doesn't do it around anyone who is blatantly ill, which none of them were). And four weeks after a booster is roughly the optimal timing on that front. Still kind of unnerving, to take a step out of the glorious transhumanist future in which I have been living these past couple of years. Perhaps the amount of glory in the future is partially conserved: to make *skydiving* safe, one must shift over some safety from elsewhere.)
---
The first thing everyone asks you when you say you went to an indoor-skydiving centre is "Was it fun?". And the centre itself seems designed around the assumption that people will find it fun. I expected it to be fun.
"Fun" is a category error. The experience existed outside the pleasant/unpleasant spectrum. It was so intense that there was no room left in my brain for emotions.
That kind of moment-to-moment enduring of existence is normally reserved for things that are extremely painful. It's definitely very interesting, to experience it with something that doesn't hurt.
(Or, well, doesn't hurt right then and there. My neck started feeling sore shortly after getting into the car (I took one of the naproxen pills from my utility belt), and I woke up today with additional sore areas.)
I'm glad to know what it's like. I don't think I'll do it again, at least not with that many time/money hoops to jump through. For free, I think I would give it one more try on the condition that I get a full-face helmet: a lot of the intensity was the wind pushing up against my face and into my mouth.
(Most of the rest was how you have to hold very still, or more precisely how all movements must be carefully chosen for how they will affect the way your body catches the wind (so if you are not skilled enough to choose your movements carefully, you must instead not make them at all).)
I wonder if there's some place that, like, simulates the part of skydiving *after* you pull the chute. Like that thing they do with actors for special effects, where they put you on a harness and fly you around. I think *that* could be fun.
---
No-purchase-necessary restaurant birthday vouchers I received this year, in order:
* Mr. Sub, six-inch veggie, assorted, ham, or pizza. Disappointing: the branch near the indoor-skydiving centre turned out not to carry a lot of the ingredients on Mr. Sub's website (like Mediterranean herb bread or mushrooms), and they just gave it to me cold and didn't even ask if I wanted it grilled (I did). Worth free, though.
* Marble Slab Creamery, small cone. The one guy on duty did not actually know how to read a provincial ID card, but I eventually got him to look at the actual birthdate and not the issuing date. (Not a driver vs non-driver thing: I got my dad to check his driver's license later and the birthdate is located in the same place on that card.)
They had a long list of flavours, including--of all things--guava. I couldn't really pass up the opportunity to try guava ice cream. He even offered to let me have it in a cup, even though the voucher said "cone". (Cups are much more practical to eat through a respirator, as one does when eating in a car where one just opened the door to get inside and let in a bunch of pollen.) It was good!
* Jersey Mike's, free medium sub (any price tier) and ""16oz"" fountain drink. They only had one size of cup, and my experience in restaurant work tells me that it was clearly larger than 16oz.
I got the portabella sub, stuck it in the fridge when I got home, and ate it the following day: not bad, definitely better than the other sub. They gave it to me in a bag with "Happy birthday! :)" written on it, which was sweet.
* Menchie's Frozen Yogurt, $5 off any order (and if you play your purchase-by-weight right, you can totally apply it to a $4.89 order and pay nothing out of pocket). They never sent me an email notification for it this year (unlike previous years), but I checked my loyalty account and the offer *was* on there. By the time we were approaching the area it was already 6 PM: I left it up to Dad whether to go because I had already had ice cream and was planning to let him eat this one, and he decided to just go straight home and have dinner.
* Harvey's, free personal pie. I did not see the email until after I got back, but it's good for two weeks and I expect to be in the vicinity of a Harvey's during that time, so I'll probably be able to pick it up.
---
This evening I've started trying out the noise-cancelling headphones my brother got me (yeah I *did* read that one Dynomight post, how'd you know), and *wow*. This...this feels like power man was not meant to have.
(fortunately, I am no man)
Everything is so *quiet*. I don't have to turn the (already quieter than my last one) air purifier down before listening to music or podcasts or what-have-you. I had to scramble for my pollen mask when my dad opened the door coming home from work, because I didn't hear him come up the front stairs (admittedly this is not a positive, but it's a sign of how powerful it is). I can still hear a test simulation of ""Mom watching a loud movie in the living room"", but it's substantially less loud, and unlike with passive acoustic earmuffs it's feasible to further drown them out with music.
The test song that happened to come up on shuffle was "Another Day in Paradise", and holy *shit*, it's like seeing in ultraviolet, there is like a whole bass line here that I never really noticed using normal $15 Walmart earbuds.
I *am* noticing it seems to be subconsciously stressful for reasons that I assume are related to the recurring ear clogs I had as a child (and was always worried that someday they'd hit both ears at once and I'd be nearly deaf for ~3 weeks), but I remain hopeful that I will warm up to that given time and [evidence that I can make it stop whenever I want]. And it's certainly not pressing that subconscious button as hard as earplugs do.
(did I mention you have to wear earplugs in the wind tunnel, I see that I didn't)
Ooh, what if I...
*plays a recording I made a while back of my humidifier / white-noise machine*
...yeah, that could work as a way to get to sleep with only portable + solar-rechargeable white noise. I wonder how it deals with snoring.
(part 1)
---
So! I'm 30 now!
For my birthday, I went to an indoor-skydiving centre. I've been curious about it for many years, and a round-number birthday seemed like the time to take the plunge (so to speak).
---
When I first looked into maybe doing this someday, the closest branch was in Niagara Falls, about a two-hour drive each way. Now, there's a branch in Oakville, only one hour each way.
I left two hours before check-in: *last* time we went to Toronto, the traffic was so bad that it turned a three-hour round trip into five. There were no traffic jams on the way there, though (perks of going on an early Tuesday afternoon, presumably), and we arrived in plenty of time.
---
(The wind tunnel did, unfortunately, require taking my mask off. And they make you take it off to go into the *antechamber*, so in total it worked out to about fifteen minutes (with about 6 - 15 or so other people, depending on how you count).
Statistically, this is very likely to be fine as long as one doesn't make a habit of it (and doesn't do it around anyone who is blatantly ill, which none of them were). And four weeks after a booster is roughly the optimal timing on that front. Still kind of unnerving, to take a step out of the glorious transhumanist future in which I have been living these past couple of years. Perhaps the amount of glory in the future is partially conserved: to make *skydiving* safe, one must shift over some safety from elsewhere.)
---
The first thing everyone asks you when you say you went to an indoor-skydiving centre is "Was it fun?". And the centre itself seems designed around the assumption that people will find it fun. I expected it to be fun.
"Fun" is a category error. The experience existed outside the pleasant/unpleasant spectrum. It was so intense that there was no room left in my brain for emotions.
That kind of moment-to-moment enduring of existence is normally reserved for things that are extremely painful. It's definitely very interesting, to experience it with something that doesn't hurt.
(Or, well, doesn't hurt right then and there. My neck started feeling sore shortly after getting into the car (I took one of the naproxen pills from my utility belt), and I woke up today with additional sore areas.)
I'm glad to know what it's like. I don't think I'll do it again, at least not with that many time/money hoops to jump through. For free, I think I would give it one more try on the condition that I get a full-face helmet: a lot of the intensity was the wind pushing up against my face and into my mouth.
(Most of the rest was how you have to hold very still, or more precisely how all movements must be carefully chosen for how they will affect the way your body catches the wind (so if you are not skilled enough to choose your movements carefully, you must instead not make them at all).)
I wonder if there's some place that, like, simulates the part of skydiving *after* you pull the chute. Like that thing they do with actors for special effects, where they put you on a harness and fly you around. I think *that* could be fun.
---
No-purchase-necessary restaurant birthday vouchers I received this year, in order:
* Mr. Sub, six-inch veggie, assorted, ham, or pizza. Disappointing: the branch near the indoor-skydiving centre turned out not to carry a lot of the ingredients on Mr. Sub's website (like Mediterranean herb bread or mushrooms), and they just gave it to me cold and didn't even ask if I wanted it grilled (I did). Worth free, though.
* Marble Slab Creamery, small cone. The one guy on duty did not actually know how to read a provincial ID card, but I eventually got him to look at the actual birthdate and not the issuing date. (Not a driver vs non-driver thing: I got my dad to check his driver's license later and the birthdate is located in the same place on that card.)
They had a long list of flavours, including--of all things--guava. I couldn't really pass up the opportunity to try guava ice cream. He even offered to let me have it in a cup, even though the voucher said "cone". (Cups are much more practical to eat through a respirator, as one does when eating in a car where one just opened the door to get inside and let in a bunch of pollen.) It was good!
* Jersey Mike's, free medium sub (any price tier) and ""16oz"" fountain drink. They only had one size of cup, and my experience in restaurant work tells me that it was clearly larger than 16oz.
I got the portabella sub, stuck it in the fridge when I got home, and ate it the following day: not bad, definitely better than the other sub. They gave it to me in a bag with "Happy birthday! :)" written on it, which was sweet.
* Menchie's Frozen Yogurt, $5 off any order (and if you play your purchase-by-weight right, you can totally apply it to a $4.89 order and pay nothing out of pocket). They never sent me an email notification for it this year (unlike previous years), but I checked my loyalty account and the offer *was* on there. By the time we were approaching the area it was already 6 PM: I left it up to Dad whether to go because I had already had ice cream and was planning to let him eat this one, and he decided to just go straight home and have dinner.
* Harvey's, free personal pie. I did not see the email until after I got back, but it's good for two weeks and I expect to be in the vicinity of a Harvey's during that time, so I'll probably be able to pick it up.
---
This evening I've started trying out the noise-cancelling headphones my brother got me (yeah I *did* read that one Dynomight post, how'd you know), and *wow*. This...this feels like power man was not meant to have.
Everything is so *quiet*. I don't have to turn the (already quieter than my last one) air purifier down before listening to music or podcasts or what-have-you. I had to scramble for my pollen mask when my dad opened the door coming home from work, because I didn't hear him come up the front stairs (admittedly this is not a positive, but it's a sign of how powerful it is). I can still hear a test simulation of ""Mom watching a loud movie in the living room"", but it's substantially less loud, and unlike with passive acoustic earmuffs it's feasible to further drown them out with music.
The test song that happened to come up on shuffle was "Another Day in Paradise", and holy *shit*, it's like seeing in ultraviolet, there is like a whole bass line here that I never really noticed using normal $15 Walmart earbuds.
I *am* noticing it seems to be subconsciously stressful for reasons that I assume are related to the recurring ear clogs I had as a child (and was always worried that someday they'd hit both ears at once and I'd be nearly deaf for ~3 weeks), but I remain hopeful that I will warm up to that given time and [evidence that I can make it stop whenever I want]. And it's certainly not pressing that subconscious button as hard as earplugs do.
(did I mention you have to wear earplugs in the wind tunnel, I see that I didn't)
Ooh, what if I...
*plays a recording I made a while back of my humidifier / white-noise machine*
...yeah, that could work as a way to get to sleep with only portable + solar-rechargeable white noise. I wonder how it deals with snoring.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-16 07:00 am (UTC)Out curiosity, and unlikely to be something that the wind tunnel operators mentioned, but a question that reading your description made think is: is the relative wind speed in a wind tunnel like this higher, lower, or around the same as the wind relative wind speed of actually sky diving? I have no idea how to check, and no answer, but it's an interesting question I think.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-16 02:56 pm (UTC)Search engine suggests that freefall is around 190 km/h, give or take.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-17 04:51 am (UTC)