{"id":20433,"date":"2018-09-30T18:21:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-30T18:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.flywheelsites.com\/?p=20433"},"modified":"2023-10-29T19:06:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T02:06:30","slug":"meet-katie-piele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/blog\/meet-katie-piele\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Katie Piele – The Queen Of Fun"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Katie
Photo by Dennis Sattler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Queen Of Fun!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Meet Katie Piele, A Tandem Instructor Who\u2019ll Put a Smile on Your Face<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Denver, Colorado native Katie Piele wasn\u2019t always a professional freefall navigator–but she was uncommonly prepared to take on the task, to say the least. (She earned a degree in Physics, and let\u2019s be honest, skydiving is just applied physics with a generous side helping of woo-hoo.) When she graduated, she launched straight into working offshore on an oil rig for a little bit, in the Gulf near Houston, Texas. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Katie
Photo by Raymond Adams<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when I started skydiving,\u201d Katie laughs, \u201cbecause I really didn\u2019t like my job. I did a skydive and thought, dude, this is, like, the <\/span>coolest<\/span><\/i> thing. So then I wanted to learn to get my license.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She earned that license at Skydive Spaceland Houston. She actually moved out of her apartment and lived right there on the dropzone as she worked through the levels.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt completely engulfed my life,\u201d she smiles, \u201cas it does with most people. I was super obsessed with it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katie wanted to leave that oil-rig job to pursue skydiving full-time. To that end, her plan was to save up enough money until she could afford 300 fun jumps, and then she was going to quit and be at the drop zone for the whole summer. Then a wrench fell into the plan: an oil industry crash. Everyone\u2019s pay, including hers, took a hit. Undeterred, Katie bought Spaceland\u2019s unlimited jump package and turned in her notice.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere went my life,\u201d she giggles.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katie moved onto the dropzone and, as many jumpers do, became a parachute packer full-time to support her hobby. She logged six hundred jumps that year.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Katie<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was awesome. I had so much fun,\u201d she enthuses. \u201cWhen I first started jumping, I didn\u2019t care about progressing. I was just incredibly pumped. I got really, really good at having fun on skydives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming off that super-strong summer, Katie decided that she <\/span>really<\/span><\/i> wanted to earn her tandem rating.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to be a traveler and go on really cool adventures all the time,\u201d she explains, \u201cBut I was always realistic about it. I can\u2019t be poor all the time. I need to earn a wage. Tandem Instructors can have that flexibility, and I saw skydiving as a way to that goal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Katie<\/a>
photo credit: Guru Khalsa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Katie<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Katie<\/a>
Photo credit: Lane Pawuin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Katie<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As you may or may not know, in order to enter a course to become a Tandem Instructor, a skydiver needs to prove that s\/he has spent at least three years in the sport. Katie only had one. To continue to press forward in the meantime, Katie earned her Accelerated Freefall (\u201cAFF\u201d) instructional rating and started doing aerial videography, capturing the dropzone\u2019s tandem jumps on camera. She started to travel to skydiving events at other dropzones, moving outside the comparatively small orbit of southern Texas. Before she knew it, the three years were up. She was ready to become a TI.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat year was awesome,\u201d she gushes. \u201cI did <\/span>so many<\/span><\/i> tandems and I had<\/span> so much<\/span><\/i> fun.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Finally, adventure travel became part of her everyday reality. She went down to work in Mexico, at Skydive Baja, then in Puerto Rico. She started expanding her parachuting and flying skills, pursuing swooping, BASE jumping and speedflying. Finally, she came to join our team at Perris. For Katie, even though she\u2019s dead set on expanding her knowledge of the sport even farther in a more focused kind of way, at the heart of it, it\u2019s still all about fun.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe cool thing about being down here [at Perris],\u201d she muses, \u201cis there are a lot of people making this lifestyle work in unique, creative ways. It\u2019s inspiring being around people that are trying to progress the sport in different ways and uniquely making this type of lifestyle into more of a career taking it beyond just being an instructor\u2026 The crew here is a good crew. Everybody is super-positive and inclusive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI try to make sure every student is having fun,\u201d she continues, \u201cNo matter how freaked out they are when they come to me. You can totally see it on their face. I just give them a big, silly grin and remind them to have fun. You can see their whole body relax. I\u2019m a big proponent of having fun. If I\u2019m having fun, I\u2019m shredding, and if they\u2019re having fun, so is my student!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Queen Of Fun! Meet Katie Piele, A Tandem Instructor Who\u2019ll Put a Smile on Your Face Denver, Colorado native Katie Piele wasn\u2019t always a professional freefall navigator–but she was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":26674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,1,144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people-of-perris","category-skydiving","category-women-in-skydiving"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20433"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26679,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20433\/revisions\/26679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}