Skydiving

The list. Everyone has one. For some it is very short and consists of things like: “seeing Rome,” or “learning to play the guitar.” For others it is long and extensive. Mine is the latter and I can check one more thing off that extensive list today.

I went out our local airport to try my luck at powered paragliding again. It’s been almost a year since I bought the expensive set up that was supposed to get me in the air during med school. Although I have managed to get the thing into the air without power, I have yet to accomplish that same feat with the motor on my back. Sounds strange, I know. The launch is the most difficult part as it requires the pilot to turn a pile of neon nylon into a flying wing that will support his weight. It doesn’t want to do this without a lot of resistance. I worked all the cobwebs out of my system born from a long winter inside, and prepped my motor for flight. I was almost ready to go when the wind picked up and I was forced to abandon another attempt at a launch into the wild blue yonder.

The whole time I am doing all of my failing, I am watching the skydivers parachute into their drop zone. I hear the faintly jet-like sound of the heavy bodies plummeting through the air and look up just in time to see a neon bloom against a bright blue background. They swoop gracefully (and not so gracefully) down into the grass and load up on the truck to be carted back for another run.

I’m tired of this crap. I’ve been watching this same scene for almost a year. It’s time for me to go skydiving. I throw my useless rig in my car and take off for the crowed hangars that mark the offices of Mile High Skydiving. My paragliding instructor has decided to join me and I curiously wander around the hangers jammed with people packing their parachutes. My instructor takes time to answer my questions about his rig, and then it’s time to load up and head out.

I am thrown into a bright purple jumpsuit, strapped into a beefy harness, handed some gloves and goggles, and herded onto the truck. I watch the beautiful, twin engine Otter taxi to the waiting area. The pilot doesn’t look much older than me. We cram into the cargo space like sardines, close the door and off we go. My photographer was asking me interview-esque questions about what was going on. I felt like I was on the evening news.
We get up to about 10000 ft and the door opens. An older gentlemen is ready to go and I watch apprehensively as he drops away from the plane. Umm, that was crazy. My camera guy flips the camera back on and I make a few more nervous quips and we continue to climb. I have to say that I’m impressed with the Twin Otters engines. All they do is climb all day with a heavy load and then descend and do it again. Those are some tough engines. We get up to about 15000 ft and things start to happen. I am locked into my instructor by the back of my harness. He cinches everything down. It feels good to be securely attached to someone who knows how to save my life. People start shuffling inside the sardine can, and I gather my courage.

The light turns green, the door opens and the crazy people jump out of the airplane. The first to go was a group of guys who were apparently doing some kind of arial formation jumping. They all fell away from the plane at the same time. The next few moments were a blur as the rest of the people ahead of us jumped out. I was concentrating on staying out of my instructor’s way as he hauled me toward the door. I guess he felt like I was resisting him because he told me to relax. Kinda hard to relax when you’re inexorably moving toward an open door almost 12,000 ft above the ground. I tried anyway, and as we got to the door and I was hanging out of the airplane an amazing thing happened, all my fear disappeared. I looked down at the ground, realized that I was going out of this plane whether I liked it or not, and resigned myself to it.

My instructor rocked once, twice and we were falling. Arch my back, and pull my legs up, wait for the tap that indicates when I can release my arms. The tap comes and I put my arms into the slipstream and release my vocal chords. I open my mouth to yell and air is crammed into it and forced down my throat. The cameraman is flying on his back in front of me and I make a few faces and yell like an idiot. I was given a sage piece of advice before I went. My instructor said to take a deep breath and look around at the mountains, don’t just stare at the ground. About halfway into it, that’s exactly what I did. I looked up at the mountains and the ride slowed down. It didn’t really feel like I was falling so much as I was floating. Air was rushing past, but I was suspended thousands of feet above the ground.

I feel another tap and my instructor tries to yell something at me. He didn’t give me any instructions for what to do on the second tap. I wasn’t really worried, and I started to anticipate the release of the parachute. I was expecting something hard and jolting, but the release was smooth and my legs whipped around in front of me.

The rest of the ride was uneventful except for a spiral during the descent. The flight down was fun, but too short. The landing was smooth. He told me to pull my feet up and that we were landing on our butts. The cameraman interviewed me again on the ground, I filled the camera with platitudes and all of a sudden, it was over.

Overall, I would describe the experience as “smooth.” I was expecting it to be jolting and the ride through the atmosphere to be a little rougher, but everything went very smoothly. If I had thousands of dollars in spare change lying around, I might consider doing the full certification course so I could jump by myself, but it was too short an experience to spend thousands of dollars doing. I’m glad I did it and I can check it off my list. Now it’s on to:
“become fluent in Spanish.”