I'm free, free-fallin' ... at five feet

Every tilt of my hands or knees made me move in unpredictable ways: sometimes toward the wall, where I could push off gently with my arm, sometimes up a few feet and then down, like an elevator that didn't know which way to go.

I learned to tilt my shoulders as if turning a big steering wheel, which made me spin slowly like a disc.

One by one, the people watching slid past my view. Their smiles made me feel I must be doing something right.

I barely had a chance to rest while Zia took his turn. But it was enough time for my delayed reaction to kick in: THAT WAS REALLY AMAZING! THAT WAS FUN! Those blurbs on promotional materials sound like clichés, but they're truly the first words that come to mind.

Describing it is like trying to describe swimming to someone who's never been submerged in water. The wind is an invisible force, but instead of feeling blown away by it, you learn to relate your body to its resistance.

Once Zia assumed his neutral position, Selwyn decided to give him a little taste of what a more experienced person can do. He grabbed hold of Zia and flew the two of them high up into the tunnel, spinning them in fast circles.

After we had both finished our turns, Selwyn motioned for the control person, or "driver," to crank up the wind speed so he could demo his cool moves.

He pounced into the wind in a vertical position – not on his belly like us beginners. Up he shot, like a fast-forward version of Mary Poppins, without the parasol.

Back at our eye level, he popped back and forth toward the window as if riding a unicycle. ("We call it stalling," he explained later. The "we" refers to people who do this as a sport – there are even wind tunnel competitions.)

Then, suddenly, he was upside down, smiling at us and turning himself like a top.

"What does it feel like to fly on your head?" I asked him later, while the imprints of the goggles still decorated our faces.

"Awesome. It's wonderful," he said. "It's kind of scary, but when you have control of it, there's no better feeling in the world."

I have just an inkling of what he means.

Vertical wind tunnels are growing in popularity but have been available to the public since at least the 1980s. They use a variety of technologies. Some are outdoors, even portable.

SkyVenture, one brand of indoor tunnel, first opened in Orlando in 1998. There are currently five SkyVenture locations open in the US (Orlando, Fla.; Nashua, N.H.; Eloy, Ariz.; Lone Tree, Colo.; and Perris, Calif.) Another eight are in the planning or construction stages in the US. SkyVenture also operates near London and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Prices vary. At SkyVenture New Hampshire, instruction and two minutes in the flight chamber costs $48 ($43 for kids ages 3-12). Four minutes costs $85.

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