Oh my goodness. I just had the best iFly session yet!
After having a great fourth session, I bit the bullet (well, my wallet did) and bought a ten pack of flights. Essentially that gives you 10 minutes of flying time, which breaks down to five flights of two minutes each, or six flights of a minute and 40 seconds a piece. I initially had a twinge of buyer’s remorse because my newbness and imposter syndrome were raging pretty hard, but the instructors assured me it’s a great way to really dig into your skill set without that feeling of “Oh, I’m finally starting to get a skill and…what? Time to go already?” that I’ve experienced a few times already.
Similar to my last visit, we worked again on flying up/down, left/right turns, as well as flying towards and away from things. There are a variety of stickers with numbers on them that are scattered around the flight tube at various heights, so my instructor had me work a lot on giving them high fives. In my previous flights, I had kind of crashed into them at diagonal angles and almost fell out of my flight pattern and onto the ground. He reminded me again that a better strategy is to fly up or down to line up with the target, and then fly in a straight line to it.
I know I’m still a little wobbly, but I felt much more under control this time around – fewer slams into the stickers, and even some smooth touches!
I feel like my progress during this visit was absolutely boosted by the fact that I was able to do five or six flights in a row. I was in a group with another family of new flyers, so the instructor had me go first, then let two of the family’s members go, and then me again. It was just the right amount of time between flights to rest and think about what I needed to improve on next time. Speaking of rest and reflection, I didn’t realize until this visit that the big monitors in our seating area not only have a live video feed of the current flyer, but an “instant replay” of the previous flyer. Watching those playbacks really helped me zero in on moments where I thought my arms and legs were doing one thing, but were clearly doing another.
Perhaps my favorite part of my flights was a few new skills I got to try for the first time! My instructor showed me how to enter the tube solo. I described it to a friend as “Raise your arms to the sky, look to the heavens, suck in your butt and do a trust fall….with nobody there to catch you.” It is definitely a weird feeling, and I had to fight my body’s urge to tuck my legs under me to break my fall. I also got to try a tube exit, where you have to line up your flight height first, then slowly move forward to grab the exit door before lowering your legs to the ground.
On my final flight of the day, my instructor surprised me by introducing me to the belly side slide without notice. It’s a move that made me feel pretty insecure in the air since you have to take one hand and one leg slightly out of their neutral position, and then also lean to one side to fly left or right. I explained this move to my oldest son as “strafing in Fortnite” and then he knew what I was talking about. I’m excited to work more on this movie
I definitely feel like I got a significant amount of practice with my level 1 skills. So at the end of my visit, I signed up for another 10-pack of flights without hesitation. Now, will I have to take a second mortgage on my house to afford this iFly passion of mine? Yes. Will it be worth it? I hope so!