Mrs. Johnson, a health academy English teacher, is a wild woman in disguise. She appears to be a calm mellow teacher, who stays on the safe side of things, but in reality she likes living on the edge.

In college she tried skydiving and not only once but fifty-three times in two years and she now rides a dirt-bike, as well as her turquoise Harley Davidson hog.. So if you thought she was an average person, think again.

Mrs. Johnson started college at age sixteen and while there she accompanied two of her friends to a drop zone. Her friends were going to sky dive and she went on the plane with them. She saw them jump and remembers looking down on them and thinking “Wow!”. This event made her decide that skydiving was something that she wanted to do. She was sixteen at the time and knew that her parents wouldn’t give her permission so she waited until she turned eighteen to start her skydiving lessons.

The first six times that she jumped she did it with a static line. A static line is the ripcord attatched to the plane and it opens up when a certain altitude is reached. Today, when you go skydiving an instructor goes with you, back then you went on your own or with a static line. The first four times she jumped off the plane she says she “grayed out” and couldn’t focus on anything because the experience was so new to her. When she was clear to jump off with out the static line and packing her parachute she felt an overwhelming joy and confidence. She says that she felt a mixture of fear and excitement the first time she was going to jump and at times she felt like backing out but she couldn’t because of her pride and she also felt pressured to do it because there were other people in the plane waiting for their turn. She was doing this behind her parents’ backs but they found out when she split her lip sky diving and had to get stiches. Her dad thought that what she had been doing was cool, but her mom was mortified. She spent two years skydiving during weekends but after not doing it for nine months, she lost her nerve and hasn’t jumped for over 20 years.

Today, she’s replaced skydiving with dirt biking. After she got dumped by one of her boyfriends, who used to own a motorcycle, she realized that she didn’t need a boyfriend to have fun, or to ride a motorcycle. She decided to buy a street bike and get lessons. After riding a motorcyle for a while she wanted a new challenge, which she found it in dirt biking. She bought a dirt bike and now she goes trail riding in Hollister Hills, it’s an “awesome spot,” she says. In the beginning of this year she twisted her ankle but that hasn’t stopped her and she’s back on her bike. “Dirt biking is a great family sport evryone can do it, kids, men, women,” states Jonhson.

“It’s really important to try new things, because of the self-esteem and confidence that it builds,” says Johnson “because confidence and self-esteem can’t be taught or given, they have to be earned”. Mrs. Johnson has built her confidence and self-esteem by trying courageous wild things, and she encourages others to try new things aswell. This may seem surprising to those who don’t personally know Mrs. Johnson because her profile doesn’t exactly fit with her appearance, this is then where the cliche of not judging a book by its cover steps in. .