Skydiving.

It's about more than jumping from an airplane.

It's about trust, overcoming fear and creating community.

My name is Kara Menke.

I have been here at Skydive West Plains for basically my entire life.

My dad has been running this business for about 38 years.

We're going.

Skydiving is putting your trust in one of our experienced instructors, who have gone through the certification process and made hundreds of jumps.

Were on our way to the plane.

How are you going?

Feelin good.

You ready for this?

Ready as I'm ever going to be.

You're getting in a beautiful aircraft and going up to 13,000ft.

Everything changes when the door opens.

You strut up to the door and stand at the edge of the door and think.

How the heck did I get here?

And then we push you out.

You're in freefall for about 6 to 7000ft.

And then we pull the parachute out and all of a sudden, everything slows down.

Wow!

Oh my God!

Yeah, buddy.

That was incredible!

My god.

You go from the rush and the thrill of going 120 miles per hour in freefall, to this peaceful, beautiful scenery under canopy where you just get to soar around with your instructor.

And then you come in to land on our soft green landing area and realize that you just had the time of your life, and you can't wait to do it again.

Skydiving.

It was my 65th birthday.

I decided I wanted to do something that was way out of my comfort zone.

Hi, I'm Gary Stokes.

President and general manager of KSPS television.

When you're going up, everything is running through your head.

Once you get to that spot where you've got that person behind you saying, okay, here we go.

You go out and there's that rush.

Everything that you would normally think about is gone.

Your world will change.

The people who are there and who are making sure that you're going to have a good time.

But they're also thinking about safety.

I trust the people there.

And as long as they continue to do what they do, I'm going to keep coming back.

Safety is the top priority in skydiving.

Every parachute is carefully packed and inspected, with all reserve chutes being packed by FAA certified riggers.

Tandem instructors must complete rigorous training, logging at least 500 jumps and earning their certification from the United States Parachute Association.

Modern skydiving gear includes automatic activation devices that deploy parachutes if needed.

And while skydiving will always carry inherent risk, the advancements in training and technology have made skydiving safer than ever.

You're going to be afraid of your first skydive.

Even the most bold human is going to stand at that door and have that moment of, “Oh my God, how did I get here?” But pushing past that fear to get to experience this incredible thing is what it's all about.

Being able to watch what others are doing.

You get a sense of, okay, so this is how it works.

I'm not worried about this because the person you're with wants to make sure that we're both enjoying the ride.

There's a lot of people that come out for the thrill of the skydive and then realize that it's really the community of people that keep you in this sport.

It's really interesting to watch people develop these relationships here, because we're all going through similar things in life, just going about it, different ways.

We decided to do this because it was a bucket list thing for us, and it was jumping out of an airplane.

Amazing.

Yeah, we did it for our 17th wedding anniversary.

There's a suspense that builds in your chest the whole way up.

It was awesome.

It was a blast.

It was great.

By the time you get to the ground, it's the most exhilarating thing you've ever done.

I say the word “extraordinary” a lot about skydiving, because it's just the truth.

The feeling of stepping out of an aircraft is bizarre, when you first think of it.

There's just so many different aspects of it that you can't replicate anywhere else.

Yeehaw!

Ha ha ha!

That feeling of kind of being, you know, super human.

Where else are you going to get it?

It's emboldening.

It makes you feel alive like nothing else in the world.

And that joy is irreplaceable.

It's just it's too cool.