I was originally scheduled to do the jump the Sunday after my birthday with the Swedish Eskimo (I’m not making this up) but conversations crumbled for reasons I’m still unsure. If it had been at any other point in my life I may have just abandoned the plans altogether and just spent another birthday in an
emotional, drunken stupor, but this was my 25th birthday, the day that my insurance will drop and I’m
finally able to rent cars on my own without the government’s help. It was a must to do something drastic and break this chain of bad birthdays that I had experienced the past couple of years.
I was scheduled to sign in at the school at 2:00. I arrived a little late because the directions I
downloaded from the internet stopped a couple roads short of where the school was actually located. I
could have arrived an hour later and it wouldn’t have made a difference. There were about 30 people already in the hanger waiting to jump, some already suited up and ready to go. I sat alone and watched the videos that were being shown on screens above our heads, which were being made for the people coming down from their jump. Behind me I could hear the jumpmasters instructing their next jumpers of the protocol that would be followed once in the air.
“Cross your arms across your chest and crouch down as far as you can go. When I push off, you’re going to arch your back and try to kick the back of your head keeping your arms crossed. Don’t uncross them until I grab them and rip them open. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. I’ll do the rest.”
It seemed easy enough, cross arms, crouch, kick the back of my head. I wasn’t nervous when first arriving at the school and as the time drew closer I became less and less nervous because I heard the same advice given time and time again. The hangover helped to ease the tension as well. I lay my head back and slept as long as I could. When I awoke I saw the people that signed in just before me being called to suit up. I thought I might be called with this bunch but they left without me and another group arrived in the hangar from their jump. I sat up and a woman approached me asking if the seats that were positioned near me were free. I replied positively and dazed off in another direction when I heard a man begin speaking to her.
“Is this your first jump”, he asked her.
“Yes, it’s all of ours. Those are my three daughters there.” She pointed in their direction and the
youngest nodded and gave a slight smile of acknowledgment.”
“I’m doing my first solo jump today”, the man replied.
At this point I looked back at him because I had considered going through the progression of jumps needed to be certified and he was just beginning his with this first solo jump. It takes ten, as well as
instruction, to be certified. What I saw when I turned my head in their direction was a man that
looked to be about 84 years of age. He went on to tell the woman that he lost his job and didn’t have
anything better to do with his time so he decided to start jumping from airplanes. His first jump was a
tandem on Monday, he did another on Wednesday and now he was doing his first solo jump. He planned on being certified within two weeks. The woman noticed that I was listening, looked back at me with a face that noted what an interesting situation it was. The man asked her what brought her here with her three daughters.
“My youngest has a list of things that she would like to do before she died and this was one of them.”
I wondered if her daughter was dying of some fatal illness but thought it would be rude to ask. Besides I would have felt awful if she really was, so I just left it to speculation. It wasn’t long after this conversation that my name was called and one of the smaller jumpmasters, with long red curly hair approached me and said that I would be jumping with him. He reminded me of a shorter Carrot Top but I didn’t tell him, thinking that it was probably not a wise idea to offend the man who would be holding your life in his hands. We went through the procedures rapidly and boarded the transport to the plane.
I was beginning to think that I was like a superman that wouldn’t get nervous at all. If there was a time to start getting nervous it was then, on the way to the plane as I heard one of the instructors tell his student that the reason behind the long wait today was faulty equipment, a chute with “a sickness”, as he put it and a plane with engine problems. But the nervousness didn’t appear. I was cool, calm and collected, mostly cool. It felt as if I was destined to do this all along. There was nothing to be afraid of. This was my fate.
Then we boarded the plane and it began its ascent. The gravity of the situation began to hit me, quite
literally. My instructor, who was closer to the front of the plane, slid into me as the plane rose in the
air at a 45degree angle. This was when I began to wonder why I wasn’t connected to this guy before I
jumped out of the plane. Was he going to snatch me out of the air after I jumped? What if he didn’t
reach me? And wait a second… he never even mentioned anything about the landing. What if this guy was planning on departing this world and bringing me along with him? These types of questions circled my mind and made the trip up almost unbearable. My stomach started to tighten and I it felt as if there was a cold sweat that was trickling down my temple. That was when the cameraman decided to sit next to me and get some footage of my malady.
When the cameraman went back to his original position my instructor commanded me to turn around and scoot close to him so that he could hook up to me. A great relief took hold and I realized that he wouldn’t be trying to grab me out of the air and I’d be safe and secure before ever leaving the plane.
The plane emptied rapidly as we reached the mark, 12,500 feat, or a little over two miles in the air and
I saw that my time was coming. I could feel my hands begin to sweat and my throat started to feel swollen. Before I could get any more nervous, which may have eventually led to vomiting, I felt a push from behind and I was instantly engaged in freefall. The first five seconds are the most hectic. The wind smacks you in the face and makes you feel almost as if you are under water and can’t get to the top. Your nose begins to drip everything seems to be moving at 120 mph, because they are. It feels like you’re a car speeding through the autobahn and slipping on a black ice, but with a little maneuvering you avoid an accident and everything is under control again, but you don’t slow down. Not yet at least.
The free fall doesn’t last long, and goes so fast and is so hectic that it’s kind of hard to remember all of
the details. I know that at some point the cameraman grabbed my hand and spun me around. I know that I kept forgetting to keep my arms crossed and dropped my legs a couple of times when I wasn’t supposed to but I was told later that it was all normal for a first-timer and that I did a good job.
After the cord is pulled and the chute is released, the best word I can think of to describe it is: Serene. After that tumultuous fall the glide down is beautifully peaceful. All of Colorado can be seen and it all seems close. Denver looks like a LEGO city, small and fake a short distance away while Pikes Peek looks majestic, towering over everything in its vicinity. As we approached the ground and I saw all the farmland and livestock in the surrounding areas my instructor decided to inform me on the procedure for landing. I had all but completely forgot about the landing.
“Put your knees as high in front of you as you can and extend your legs. Not now, but when I say to.”
We landed on our feet. He said I was the first all day to do so and even though I really didn’t do
anything, I was proud of myself for it. The high lasted the rest of the night and through the dinner at
Old Chicago’s with the navy girl whose feet don’t reach the ground. It lasted through the movie and the ride home and, I think, a little when I awoke the next morning. It was like I felt a little off, being
on the ground. My mind was still in the air. But this time it wasn’t my imagination. My head was in
the clouds because I was just there and I was remembering it.
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