“It was awesome,” Michelle said afterwards.

“It was the most wonderful thing ever.”

Amy Freitag of Danvers just turned 50.

Now that her kids are grown, “I decided it was time to do something for myself,” she said, as she prepared for her first jump. Her husband, John, was with her. He made his first jump here in 2007. “The worst part was getting out the door,” she said afterwards. Everyone agreed on one thing. You can’t explain what your first jump feels like. You just have to come out and experience it for yourself.

The club has been based out of Taylorville since 1986, when it moved from Hillsboro. It formed 35 years ago in Sparta. There are currently 12 members. Chad Donnel is the club president, and Dean Baxter is the chief pilot.

The Mid-America Sport Parachute Club is open weekends from April 1 through Oct. 31. Call 217-824-5867 or email [email protected] to schedule a jump. The website is http://www.skydivetaylorville.org. The club offers tandem, IAD (Instructor Assisted Deployment) and AFF (Accelerated Free Fall) classes. Tandem jumps start at $200 and IAD jumps start at $175, which includes the four- to six-hour class. The AFF training program costs approximately $1,500, with seven jumps starting at $300. There are between 100 and 150 tandem jumps and 50 to 75 IAD jumps annually. Twenty-five students have completed the AFF training program.

Roberta Codemo of Springfield is a freelance writer. A former reporter for The Hillsboro Journal, her work has appeared in Illinois Times and the State Journal-Register. She may be contacted at [email protected].