The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Last year, for my 38th birthday, Girlfriend bought me a gift certificate for an indoor skydiving experience. But I didn't really feel like going indoor skydiving. When I was a teenager, I would have been excited to do it, but now that I'm 38, that urge has left me, along with the urge to ride roller coasters, drive go-karts, drink alcohol, and have any kind of fun.

But Girlfriend's been nagging me to use the gift certificate because it expires soon. I didn't want it to go to waste either, so today I suggested we use it: that I finally go indoor skydiving.

The skydiving place was in a town called Empuriabrava. Empuriabrava is normally a 50-minute drive from Girona, but today was a farmers' protest. I don't have a photo of the protest because you're not allowed to take photos while driving, but the main road was closed, and we had to take a detour that added another ten minutes to the journey. Don't farmers have any kind of consideration to people trying to get to important indoor skydiving appointments? Anyway, we arrived at the indoor skydiving place. It was a big building on an industrial estate. A big sign said WINDOOR. What is a Windoor? A cross between a window and a door? Inside, it was spookily empty, and we had to take the stairs to the second floor to find the reception. It was a big room with a big glass tube in it, and inside the tube was a man in a red jumpsuit enthusiastically zooming around and doing backflips. I later learned his name was Augusto Bartelle. (And I just googled his name and apparently he's a professional skydiving athlete, so skydiving is his JOB??)

There was a family already getting ready to go in. The instructor (a Scottish man called James) said I could join them instead of waiting another half an hour for my slot, so I said okay. James looked a bit like a Pound Shop Chris Evans from the Captain America films.

James told me to make sure my pockets were empty. Then we all put on jumpsuits and helmets, and then James took us to the wind tunnel. Having never done skydiving before, I had no idea what to expect. I imagined everyone would get their own personal wind tunnel, and we'd spend half an hour in there flying about and having a laugh. But instead, there was only one wind tunnel in the entire building. First we had to put in earplugs, because of the noise of the wind. Then we took turns going in the wind tunnel. A turn meant spending one minute in the wind tunnel while James held onto you to make sure you didn't go flying off. Everyone got two turns, and each turn was a minute. I learned that Girlfriend had paid €79.99 for me to do this two-minute experience, which made it the most expensive minutes of my life.

Sometimes Augusto Bartelle would take a turn as well. Weirdly, he had a one litre carton of coconut milk with him, and sometimes he would take a few sips before putting it back under the bench.

Afterwards, when I tried to get my earplugs out, I discovered they were stuck in my ears. A man at reception had to tease them out with a pair of tweezers from the first aid box from under the counter.

Girlfriend asked me if I'd enjoyed the experience. I told her I had been too busy trying not to smack into walls to enjoy it. Girlfriend pointed out that James the instructor had been holding onto me the entire time.

Afterwards, we drove through Empuriabrava. I have no interest in anything that's not directly related to my daily life, so I had no idea what Empuriabrava was. My first clue that something was odd was that all the streets were in a grid pattern, which is unusual for a small Spanish town. On the satnav, the street layout looked a dinosaur's rib cage. My next clue was when I looked out the side window of the car and saw a canal stretching off into the distance with boats. Then another canal. And another one.

It turns out Empuriabrava is some kind of boat town. It has 25 kilometres of canals, which is about half the canals in Venice. The town seems to have more canals than roads. All the roads have houses on them, and all the houses face onto canals, so if you forget which door is your front door and which door is your back door, you could step out your back door by mistake and fall into a canal. Wikipedia calls it a "residential marina" and says Empuriabrava is "the largest residential marina in Europe".

Here is another fact about Empuribrava: it has a lot of parking spaces. Every single road had parking spaces along it. And all the parking spaces were free. It was as if the person who designed Empuribrava really, really hated driving around, unable to find a parking space, so he drew parking spaces along every single road. Whereas other cities would have an extra lane to drive in, Empuribrava has parking spaces.

I parked almost right next to the beach, in front of a hotel that looked like a cruise ship. The beach was almost deserted. This was January, but in summer, I imagine it fills up with thousands of people. And the beach was huge, one of the biggest beaches I've seen. The sand stretched off for miles.

We ate lunch in a place called Enjoy it. And after lunch, we walked back along the beach. The kids played at a playground, and another fact about Empuriabrava is that it has great playgrounds. There was a children's-sized pirate ship, a 360 rotating seat with hand-controlled digger (something I've only ever seen in Stafford in a playground next to my brother's old apartment), and two spiderwebs connected with a spiderweb bridge, among other things. It puts Girona's playgrounds to shame.

The sun was setting, and our shadows were incredibly long. The whole beach was almost deserted. There was one man walking along the shore and that was about it. We pretty much had the beach to ourselves. Girlfriend wanted to go home because it was getting cold, so we left.

So that was Empuribrava. I didn’t enjoy indoor skydiving, but I did enjoy the parking.