Page 38 - Panama City Living Magazine

ADRENALINE
Austin Crandall took third place in the U.S. Indoor Skydiving Championships for both Freestyle and Dynamics in 2019. He is a tandem instructor at Skydive Panama City.
38 • March—April 2020 • www.PanamaCityLiving.com
For all the adrenaline junkies who have not been skydiving, if you should choose to jump into the blue, it’s my hope that you do it at Skydive Panama City. I found this to be a place of sheer positivity, where negative feelings are chased away by joy, and there is mutual admiration and encouragement all around. If you get a little nervous when you start to feel the adrenaline build, you can ask owner/operator Tony, who I’m told has upwards of 8,000 jumps behind him, and he’ll tell you his crew has your back. When you’re falling from an altitude of anywhere between 14,000 to 8,000 feet at average speeds between 120 to 130 miles per hour you want to know that you are in good hands, adrenaline junkie or not. Statistics show your chances are much better than average that you will go home with a smile.
Find out more about Skydive Panama City at xtremeskydivers.com If you would like to know more about the sport of skydiving please visit uspa.org
See more photos online at
My last encounter of the day was with Austin Crandall, a TI for Skydive Panama City, who wore a big smile and one red shoe and the other blue, which, I found out, speaks of his philosophy of competitive skydiving. Austin took third place in the U.S. Indoor Skydiving Championships for both Freestyle and Dynamics. In 2019, he was a video winner in the Million Dollar GoPro Challenge. Just watching his video footage in the freefly cham- ber and in the sky is an adrenaline rush in itself. I asked Austin about his shoes. “Oh, the shoes? Well, there’s a comedian I like, his name is Bill Hicks, who did a rant on the difference between love and fear, like the philosophy of it. The red shoe rep- resents fear, and the thought that living a life of fear would make you live negatively and closed off. The blue-colored shoe represents love, respecting one another, living a life being caring and kind.” In my brief time spent with Austin Crandall, the smile never left his face.
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