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Franz Josef
With a relatively tame start to my stay in Franz Josef involving me and mascha falling asleep watching the first lord of the rings in honor of this beautiful country. Frankly frodo was a bit of a moan anyway.
My $750 day...
The morning started with beautiful clear skies making for a stunning helicopter ride up to the famous Franz Josef glacier, where we then got to amble around on top of for a few hours in our fetching snow suits, spikey cramp-ons and enormous bum bags! We climbed through narrow valleys in the ice and slid through cracks and caves for a few hours before casually catching our helicopter back down.
I booked my skydive in the next few hours to make the most of the gorgeous weather conditions and then bumped into Jen and Victor who were easily convinced to join me for my sky dive. An hour later we were excitedly wizzing to the airfield in the back of a minibus whilst filling out the usual forms signing our lives away...always best not to actually read them. Once at the airfield we got dressed up in the ridiculous jump suits and hats and excited high fives were had all around. Jen and Victor went first leaving me to stew. When they got back from their jump Jen reassuringly pointed out that she had done it and didn't die which I actually found strangely comforting. So with that in mind I jumped into the tiny tin can of an airplane with no seats or benches in side we were sitting on the floor with my gaze transfixed on the windw looking out at the snowy mountain tops getting closer and closer as I went from 5,000ft to 10,000ft and finally my target 16,000ft!!! I put on my awesome goggles, which steamed up immediately, the door was opened and my brain screamed SHIIIT! My instructor shuffled us to the edge, I still couldn't really see through my goggles, I was told to tilt my head up and all I could think was keep breathing...the next things I know my heart stopped as we fell out of the plane and pure terror spread through out my body. The next thing I knew we were falling at a constant speed and all previous instruction had gone completely out of the window and after a few moments of putting my scrambled brain back together I remembered the all important banana shape I was supposed to be in and even more important...do not swear in front of the camera if you want to show this video to your grandparents! After a while the freefall felt completely natural and I had forgotten that we hadn't even pulled the parachute. As this occured to me I was launched back upwards as the parachute was deployed. A huge sigh of relief followed and I tried to take in the wonderful surroundings whilst my instructor steered and even loosened my harness, which scared me almost as much as the jump. A few spirals and after having a go at steering it felt like the ground was approaching very rapidly and the whole experience would be over far too quickly. We landed smoothly where Jen and Victor were waiting and more high fives were had. Still buzzing we rode back to the hanger in the minibus where we all laughed at our videos with the wind speed distorting the face, nostrels and mouth to make for an all around hillarious image.
Finally a somewhat epic day ended with pancakes and a trip to the hot springs.
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Ram When my youngest dathuger celebrated her first birthday, I realized that since she had a big sister and plenty of hand-me-downs, it would always be hard to figure out a gift to buy for her. That's when I started her Josef doll collection, something that would be uniquely her own! When our local store where I purchased them had a going out of business sale, I bought all they had left. My dathuger will celebrate her 8th birthday this week and that was one doll the store did not have, and I have not been able to find them anywhere. So today I found this website and ordered three dolls that we didn't have, and hope to order the last two sets in the near future! I bought her birthstone doll at the going out of business sale and don't see it listed on the website. Now I am curious about what all dolls have been made and would love to see a list of them! My dathuger loves to win. If she won one of the dolls for her cherished collection, she would be thrilled and remember it always!