Confessions of a Skydiver... ...by Bryan Golder (C) 1996 - All Rights Reserved.

I wake up in the early morning hours, feeling slightly ill - but it is not a virus. It is my brain; my reason; my Sanity - making one last feeble attempt to divert me away from the possible future of becoming a small squishy spot in the middle of a field. As always, the attempt fails.

I rise and drive to that sacred place skydivers call "The Drop Zone". A drop zone is not unlike your average small airport except that the planes that land there never have any passengers in them and there are people falling out of the sky. A very fundamental concept which has eluded the people who populate drop zones is the idea that you can go up into the air in an airplane and then return to the ground - in the airplane. Teams of sociologists are studying this phenomenon as we speak.

At the DZ, I am roped, suited, harnessed, packed, pulled, and slapped. No, this is not an excerpt from Penthouse Forum. It's just yours truly being clothed with all of the equipment necessary for the jump (I made up the slapped part for dramatic purposes).

The plane takes off, with me in it. This is the worst part of the experience every time. There is nothing like the ride up before the fall. Way too much time to think about things like:

My chute - inspected by a guy who seemed a bit distracted and upset about his wife not coming home last night... The pilot - who apparently doesn't see very well... The plane - which looks and sounds like something they all decided it would be best not to use back in World War I... Life - which inexplicably puts me in these sorts of situations...

The only thing which makes the ride up endurable is that there are usually several beginners onboard who have never jumped before. This is a keen time for me to turn to one of the more experienced skydivers on the plane and loudly discuss "that one time" we both thought we were going to die. Amusement at its finest. The pasty and pallid expressions of the first-timers is nearly funny enough to chase away the butterflies. We revel in their misery and fear to distract ourselves from Sanity, which is voicing one final appeal before packing her luggage.

Before I know it, the time has once again arrived to do the proverbial jump from a problem-free airplane. I check my altimeter for an accurate reading, turn to my partner, and inspect the equipment he is wearing. He does likewise to me. These inspections are an important process which ensures that everyone jumping out of this particular airplane will live long enough to jump out of some other airplane and fall to their deaths at a later date. Meanwhile, Sanity has just made hasty arrangements for a one-way ticket out of the country.

The moment is here. I stand and move on shaky legs towards the exit at the rear of the aircraft. It is widely agreed upon that this is the part of the procedure which should be executed most rapidly (before your legs get a chance to run in the opposite direction), and there is usually an experienced jumpmaster nearby to provide compassionate support in the form of a firm push if anyone should move too slowly. I arrive at the hatch and clutch the support rail above it, feeling my skin try to crawl off my body and back to safety at the front of the plane. The ground is so far away, and there is so much empty space between it and me. I linger for no more than a moment...and then...

ONE!!! TWO!!! THREE!!! Aurghgapprgkqrwuharhhguh!!!!! Iıve found that the easiest way to learn to pronounce difficult syllables in a primitive language is to practice them as I jump from an airplane. Sanity is now relaxing on a beach far, far away and sipping something with an umbrella in it until further notice. Please leave a message after the beep.

The free fall is an intense, almost "out-of-body" experience. You are almost completely weightless. The only thing that you can feel is the friction of the air passing you at 120 to 180 miles per hour, depending upon the position of your body. You keep your mouth closed, so the air doesn't rush in and burn the walls of your throat.

Unlike the fifteen minute long free falls that take place in movies such as "Point Break", you are very short on time here in reality. Falling two miles takes less than one minute, providing none of the time required to catch the bad guy, kill him, steal his parachute, save the girl, and make love to her briefly before landing safely on the ground with your hair still looking great.

The more relaxed and aware you are once you are out of the plane, the better. You don't want to miss a precious second of what is happening to you. It is a magnificent experience to behold! Look around! Do a few turns! A little swoop! Flap your arms! Youıre a bird! Youıre a plane! A fax just in from Sanity's divorce lawyer concludes, "You are a raving lunatic."

You glance at the altimeter on your wrist which, thanks to the forethought of some really bright people, was calibrated to read altitude above ground level as opposed to sea level. It's a keen idea, since you will usually encounter the level of the ground long before you encounter the level of the sea. When the altimeter reads somewhere between 3500 to 4000 feet make a little mental note that this is an ideal time to release your parachute. This is also an ideal time to highlight, underline, circle, and draw a couple of asterisks around a particularly relevant issue for men who find themselves in this situation:

Recall when we were discussing the part about being roped, harnessed, and packed. Well, one of the things you should be very careful to pack properly (besides the parachute) is, without further adieu, and getting right to the point, and all modesty aside, your testicles.

You definitely want to dwell on these little details (pun intended) and make sure they are carefully prepositioned in such a manner that when the main chute opens and decreases your speed from 120mph to practically zero in less than 3 seconds, thereby pulling tightly the two harnesses that crisscross between your legs, you are not crushing flat those items which prefer to remain relatively round and free from exposure to violent external pressure.

But this is hardly the time to consider such matters.

Now is the time to complete the task written on the aforementioned mental note. This is important. Once this task is complete your parachute should be, according to everything they tell you, open. If it isn't, well then, "Damnit," they say, "it should be." A quick glance upwards, or down for that matter, reveals whether or not they were telling the truth.

The intense part is over (or will be momentarily if the chute failed to open). Now, completely the opposite of the loud, fast, and insane experience of free falling, is the gentle ride in the parachute.

This second phase of the skydiving journey, as you sail through the air beneath your canopy, is one of the most inspiring and peaceful events you will ever experience. The only sounds you hear in the universe are the whispering breeze, the gentle flutter of the sails of your chute, the irregular beating of your racing heart, and your fellow skydivers screaming and yelling like burn victims.

Skydivers like to loudly celebrate the fact that their parachute has opened.

A quick assessment of your own condition immediately following your chute deployment will usually reveal the fact that you are making a series of inarticulate and breathless yipping sounds not dissimilar to that of a small glassy-eyed animal which has just narrowly escaped being eaten. This is normal.

As you hover above the Earth and gather your senses, you will realize that the view is better than anything short of a trip in the space shuttle. It is an extraordinary thing to behold. At this point, you are so grateful to be alive and so astounded at the intensity of what you have just experienced that you may find your mind wandering towards issues surrounding the meaning of life and the purpose of your existence. Questions like "Who am I?" and "Where did I come from?" may flow through your consciousness, followed by querulous realizations such as "How did I get here?" and "What am I doing?", which occasionally leads to less productive thinking centered around concepts such as "Help!!!", "Get me down!!!", and "Auuugghhh!!!!".

You should resist the natural inclination to think these things.

Instead, you look the ground squarely in the eye and say (in your best DeNiro voice), "Who's your boss? Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkinı to ME?!" Then you pull down firmly on the toggle attached to the left side of your chute's sails, and go into a spiraling dive towards the Earth at 45 miles an hour as you scream (in your best Pacino voice), "Say hello to my little friend!!!" This is what itıs all about! Three thousand feet remain below you for practicing 360's, flying backwards, and other perilous maneuvers - all of which forces the few remaining parts of your mind that think rationally to step outside for a quick smoke break.

And when, inevitably, the ground makes its final approach, and if the wind is just right, you can touch down so gently that you could land on an egg (treated with a thin coat of Kevlar) without breaking it. Sanity, despite all her threats, comes back to you in a couple of days.

The End

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