Skydiving @ Snohomish, WA

I can't remember since when I had this dream.. the dream of flying, not on the plane, not in the skytrain, simply flying. It was at the background of my mind until Amany surfaced it as my birthday present.



People do parachuting for one of the following reasons:
- There's an aircraft emergency, the plane is going to crash.
- Military forces are needed in the battlefield, but there's no nearby safe airdrome.
- There's a big fire in the woods, forest firefighters are delivered to control the fire.
- Because they want to do so, period.

Since I'm not a brave soldier, not a brave firefighter, and none of my flights had an emergency, I just did it because I wanted to.

You have to schedule your jump weeks early, many people got into the habit of throwing themselves off planes nowadays. You go half an hour early, read a 20 page disclaimer about how unsafe sport parachuting is and about their being humans who sometimes make mistakes, and about their being unaccountable in case there's an accident in which you got injured or killed while parachuting. I felt so stupid signing off this document.

Then, they give you a 10-minute training on what's going to happen in the aircraft, how your body should be shaped in the air, how to open the parachute, and how to approach the land on arrival. I was supposed to go in a group of four. However, it seems like the HSBC bank decided this is too risky, and refused to authorize my payment. So, after we went out and wore the skydiving suit waiting for our plane, the receptionist ran out telling me she's very sorry but I cannot get on board before they secure my payment. I tried to explain to her that a friend of mine is on his way and will pay it for me, but she insisted and my group left without me! You believe that! How rude!

As a Muslim, I believe that Allah knows what’s better for me. So, I convinced myself that what happened is better for me, somehow. I took off my suit, and dialed my friend Emad -an Egyptian gentleman in Microsoft- telling him that my jump was canceled and asking him to come early to pick me back to my hotel. He generously offered paying my bill on the phone, and that was OK by the receptionist. Although I missed my plane, another aircraft went up just for my sake, and I was blessed a jump at the sunset, which is said to be the best time for a jump.

LET THE FUN BEGIN! My Russian instructor Vladimir was very funny. He makes his life by jumping 10 times daily, and he keeps enjoying it. The pilot of our little plane was a nice American lady. The plane went up. Ammar: OK that's good let's jump now. Vladimir: that's only 3,000 feet, we can't jump from here. After a while, Ammar: all right, that's too high already, let's do it! Vladimir: not yet, we will be jumping at 13,000 feet (~2.5 miles) altitude! Well, I have to admit it gets scary over here.. Ten minutes after taking off, our pilot said it's time. So, I opened the door, and looked down, it was really scary. I had no idea I would be THAT high. The scene, looking down through the plane's door was something like this photo to the right. I could easily see the lake of Washington, Redmond, and other cities, but they were too small. How to make sure I'm not going to reach the ground above this train rails! I put my left foot on the plane's stairs and jumped towards the tail.



It took me a while before I managed to stop rolling over. We flattened our body shapes to allow for greater air resistance giving us the feeling of flying. It was like a fire hose of air opened in your face. It was a lot of adrenaline, probably the highest rate of adrenaline in my blood ever. The thirty seconds of freefalling went like minutes-long.

Now comes the calm and fascinating part of the journey to the surface of the Earth. Vladimir opened the parachute and taught me how to use the parachute handle to turn right and left, and how to hold almost-still in the air. I liked the relaxation and control in the parachute. It took us like 5 minutes to reach the ground at the Harvey field.

Overall, the experience was incredible, was intriguing. I did it in US cuz I thought that would be more safe. However, if you're in Egypt and would like to give it a try, The Egyptian Sport Parachuting & Aeronautic Federation offers parachuting for civilians. Parachuting means to jump with the parachute. Skydiving means to free-fall for sometime before opening the parachute. A tandem jump means jumping with an instructor (like I did).

Cairo Tower

Cairo is a very touristic city. Its streets and buildings are full of stories and secrets. I'll try to make use of my temporal residence in Cairo and visit as many interesting places as time permits. To begin with, I decided to visit the Cairo Tower.

Cairo Tower is a well-known landmark in Zamalek (AKA. El Gezira) which is a small well-connected island in the Nile River, near downtown of Cairo, Egypt -my homeland.

Amany -my wife- and I arrived half an hour before the sunset to watch the day scene as well as the night scene from above the tower. Because we are not VIPs, we had to wait in a long line for the elevator, which has room for 6-8 adults. Amany found the arts graved and painted on the inside mural of the tower very interesting; they represent the different regions in Egypt with some of their traditions. In the elevator, the operator welcomed us and played the 40-second message he repeats all the day "This tower consists of 66 floors, and stands at 43 meters higher than the great Pyramid of Giza. It was inaugurated in the presence of Abdul-Nasser, a former Egyptian president, in 1961. At the 65th floor (others also consider it the 14th, because only 15 out of the 66 floors are usable) there's a slowly-rotating restaurant where you can have lunch and enjoy the panaromic view of Cairo". I have to say the elevator exceeded my expectations with the high speed and the comfortable acceleration.

By the time we reached the surface of the tower, the sun was already gone, but we still were able to view the beautiful scene. I dropped a coin in the old telescope hoping it might work, but it didn't. I thought the radius of the tower is much larger. The circular strip available for people to circle the tower is hardly 2 meters in width. At the altitude of 187m, we could see the Nile River, El Tahrir Square, El Mokattam, The Opera, October Bridge, ghosts of the pyramids, and many other things we could not identify. I tried to spot El Maadi but it was a big failure.

After taking a few pictures, we went down the stairs to reach the rotating restaurant. We prayed El Maghreb next to our table before placing the orders. I tried to be very slow doing everything in the restaurant since I wanted to measure how long does it take to make a complete circle around the tower's axis. It took us around two hours. It was a little bit more expensive than I thought, but it was worth it. There was an even longer line for taking the elevator down. But we bypassed it since restaurant's clients have the priority.

I'd like to brief you about the history of this tower. The historian Gamal Hammad says that CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt (son of Theodore) sent 6 million pounds to Abdul-Nasser as a bribe to influence Abdul-Nasser's stance of the Algerian case against the French occupation. Hence, the Cairo Tower is considered the largest and tallest "NO" in history since the president Abdul-Nasser refused to change his stance towards this sensitive Arabic case, and instead of using this large sum for improving the much-needed infrastructre of Cairo, he based this tower to remain as a figure reminding Egyptians of their dignity no matter how much they are in need.

I do recommend the Cairo Tower for everybody to visit!