Skydiving

Summer, 1998

My friend Karl and I decided we wanted to go skydiving, so we booked a tandem jump.  [Karl was a kleptomaniac who worked with me as a summer camp counselor during college, but that’s another story for another day.]  The thing about skydiving for the first time is that once you arrive at the airport, they proceed to put you through a multi-hour “safety training” course - which is of course nothing more than an exercise in seeing if they can scare the piss out of you enough so that you leave and they get to keep your deposit. 

After signing a multi-page waiver that I didn’t read (because what’s the point, I wanted to jump and they wouldn’t let me without a signature or twelve) and watching a video of dozen of ways that you can die while plunging to the earth at terminal velocity, they haul you up a five-foot platform to practice the proper “tuck and roll” procedure.  The whole time I’m trying to think of a scenario in which this is actually useful.  If I become detached from the guy with the parachute strapped to my back, I’m pretty much toast.  And if he’s still attached, good luck executing a tuck and roll with a 200-pound dude strapped to you.

It is my understanding that at most small skydiving sites, they take you up in a 4-seat plane where you shuffle your way out on a special wing and then let go.  But not me!  Nope, they happen to have extra room on a 22-person Otter that day because some truly disturbed individuals are doing a formation jump where they all hold hands while plummeting to their demise.  (Because jumping out of an airplane isn’t enough, let’s see if we can crash into each other in mid-air!)

So Karl and I get attached to our jump masters and sit in the back of the plane scared out of our gourds.  Before taking off, they strap an altimeter to your wrist and tell you that when it gets to 11,000 feet it’s about time to jump.  Of course, I’m staring at that dial the whole time and when it crossed over 10,000 feet, I had to pee my pants so bad it hurt.  Just when I get my bladder back under ground, some lunatic decides it would be funny to literally rip the side of the airplane off.  Turns out the door we were jumping out of had a piece of cloth velcroed over it.  I wish my bladder had known.

During the training session, they instructed us how to shuffle up to the door with our jump master, place one foot out of the door, then the other, cross your arms, lean your head back against his shoulder, go limp, and let him take care of the rest.  After the rest of the crazies in front of us go pouring out of the plane to certain death, we shuffle up to the door.  Karl goes first, and I remember his exact words as he exited the plane… “Holy F^&%!”  (98% sure my bladder gave up the fight at that point.)

Now it’s my turn.  As I get close to the door, all I’m thinking about over and over is: “first foot out, second foot out, cross arms, head back.”  Now to this day, I’m not sure what happened next behind me.  All I know is that I got one foot out of the door, he shoved me, and we were tumbling head over heels out of a perfectly good airplane.  (My best guess is that they tell you that stuff so you have something to think about other than whether your mother will be able to identify your body after impact.)  After three somersaults and me yelling “Holy F^&%!” at the top of my lungs (must be a common reaction), we got into the spread eagle position and were in free fall.

Here’s the thing about free-fall – it is the most peaceful, calm, serene thing I have ever experienced.  To be free in space looking down on the world is a unique experience that lets you truly take in the big picture.  It’s not at all like a roller coaster, where your center of gravity is constantly getting thrown around and you walk away wanting to puke.  Once you hit terminal velocity and are no longer accelerating, you feel nothing but the wind rushing past you.  I know it sounds weird, but I was completely relaxed during free fall and never wanted that peaceful feeling to end.  At that moment, I completely understood what it means to be an adrenaline junkie.

For me, the scariest moment of the entire jump was after the parachute had opened and we were safely floating down.  During the jump, you are strapped tightly to the dude on your back so he can control you.  But once under canopy, he lets out a couple of inches of slack.  In reality, it took a millisecond to let out the slack.  But that jerk forward is more than enough time to think, “Crap, I’m falling and there’s no parachute on my back.”  (Looking back on it, I’m convinced most of what you experience during your first tandem jump is nothing more than unnecessarily cruel jokes so the staff can keep themselves entertained.)

Safely back on the ground after a successful landing, Karl and I looked at each other and had the exact same reaction, “When do we go again?”