Last week me and my girl went over to my friend Ricky Whittle’s place. He gave us a tour around his pad, showing off his incredible view of Los Angeles. While talking, we agreed that we should hang out more often and do something together.

“Let’s go skydiving next week!“ said Ricky, turning the heat up an unexpected notch.

Before I even had time to breath out, my girl was already setting up dates with Ricky. I felt like I was being thrown under the bus – or in this case thrown out of an aeroplane! One thing was certain. It was too late for me to back out now.

Ricky was already clowning me saying that I couldn’t make my girl jump and not jump myself. I had never considered jumping out of a plane, and most certainly not by my own will.

The saying “white men can’t jump” can be flipped on it’s back here. Black men don’t jump!

A couple of days later I receive a text from my girl saying that our slots are booked, paid, and we are set to jump the following day. After what seemed like an endless 3-hour drive to San Diego with Ricky telling us how big of a carnivore he is and that if we’d land on an island, he’d eat us before eating a fish, we finally arrived in San Diego.

Once at the sky diving lodge we were handed paperwork to fill out. I started reading through it and Ricky looked at me and said “don’t read through it, it’s a 100 page document – we’ll still be here tomorrow!”

I replied that I needed to make sure what I was signing up for, and Ricky laughed it off saying “Bro you’re signing away your life, that’s what you’re doing!”

I wasn’t too comfortable signing it but I figured, if the parachute wasn’t gonna open there wouldn’t be enough of me left to sue anybody. So I signed.

As we got strapped up, I noticed Ricky getting more and more excited to throw me off the plane, so I made sure to check my security straps twice. You never know with Ricky – the smart ass might have planned something.

As we were in the plane taking off I felt my girl’s hand clawing me. I guess her big mouth didn’t make it onto the plane. I held her hand until we were about 13’000ft and we started sliding towards the open door of the tiny plane. It was shaking so hard that it felt like all the screws keeping the cabin together we’re about to pop out. Our instructors, tied to the back of us, reminded us to jump low or they’d hit their head on their way out, and, well nobody wants to free fall with a passed out instructor attached to them.

Ricky went first, cannonballing out of the plane like he was jumping into a pool. Once he’d gone it was my girl’s turn. I kissed her and there she went – flying down like an illegal package being dropped. Then it was my turn.

I approached the window, fist bumped my amazing instructor Mikey and took a leap of faith. The first few seconds were hell. Our jump twisted us so that I was falling 200 feet per second backwards. All I could see was the airplane getting smaller, as was my hope of surviving this.

I was finally turned around and enjoyed taking photos during our last few seconds of free fall before the parachute opened. Once safe and held up by the chute, I experienced one of the most amazing things life has to offer.

The view, the silence and the peace was incomparable to anything I had ever felt before. I felt close to my brother, Winston, who passed away. I felt like sharing this with Mikey and when I did, I experienced extreme relief and I thanked him for having changed my life.

Mikey replied by saying that this was the biggest compliment he had ever received and confided in me that he lost his best friend the day before due to a parachute malfunctioning.

I was grateful. To God for allowing me to live this incredible adventure and to Mikey for accompanying me on it. That day I bonded with a complete stranger and before leaving, we promised each other that this was only going to be the first of many jumps together.

#mmlove