When Greg recently blogged about skydiving, it brought back memories of my own jump about ten years ago. It was an amazing experience. Shortly after the event, I wrote this essay for a writing class. If I had time, I’d revise it. No, that’s not true. If I weren’t lazy, I’d revise it. So here it is, unedited, and far too long for a blog.
I was hanging onto the wing strut with the wind tearing at my jumpsuit. If you don’t know where a wing strut is located, it’s on the outside of small airplanes, which is exactly where you don’t want to be when the plane is three thousand feet above the earth. Looking down, I could see cows — white specks, actually — scattered across a diminutive green patch that was their pasture. At this point, I found myself wondering what I was doing there.
I’m not a risk-taker, and I’m deathly afraid of heights, so it’s really not in my nature to sign up for extreme sports like skydiving. I’d always thought of skydivers as slightly unbalanced thrill-seekers who eat plenty of fibre, exercise regularly, and perform many other stunning physical feats. I know I would never have flung myself from an airplane had it not been for Simon and Leanne, who insisted on signing up with the Skydiving Club during Club Week at UBC. Knowing this, I felt much better about skydiving because if it didn’t work out, I had someone else to blame.
Only a handful of people signed up in addition to the three of us. The more clever students avoided it for the simple reason that it’s too damn scary. In reality, the jumping is the easiest part of skydiving, and on one Saturday two years ago, I learned that for myself.
On the following Saturday, thirteen of us shivered in the early morning air. Leanne, Simon, and I glanced nervously at each other, but without no one uttered a word about backing down. Looming over us was the rusty shell of the hangar, which cast a long shadow on the dew-laden grass, like the hand of doom. We were embarking on a possibly fatal adventure, and in my eyes practically everything was an omen of death or misfortune: there were thirteen of us, I’d seen a black cat, and I had already two people had walked underneath ladders.
My shivers turned to more obvious tremors — I imagined the stories of my accidental death reported in the local newspaper: “Local student drills hole in field with head”. Oddly, the thought of the news story did more to build up my excitement, than to make me back down.
During the hour-long drive to the airfield, we had been discussing the subject of death and injury at great length. We convinced ourselves that to die while plummeting from an airplane was probably the very best way to go. By the time we reached the airfield, our philosophizing had reached a level so intense that we made the other trainees give us odd looks and back away a step.
We agreed, in principle, that having one’s spine rammed up into one’s skull wouldn’t be entirely enjoyable. However, if we compared it to dying while crossing the road, the prospect seemed positively filled with glory and heroism. To die while intentionally flinging ourselves into the arms of fate, we concluded, was far more poetic than to fall victim to a random street accident in the routine of everyday life. By Leanne’s shifty expression, I could tell that she believed that argument as much as I did. Simon, on the other hand, was positively charged up. Eventually the three of us fell into a nervous silence and contemplated our imminent pulping on the sunny meadows of the airstrip.
The basic training was… basic. Our instructor was exactly the type of person I’d expect to be a skydiver: macho, arrogant, and conceited. I think that’s why he instantly won our respect and confidence. He acted like a skydiver. How could we even think of trusting our lives to a run-of-the-mill sane person?
This man was a dashing daredevil. I knew it, the trainees knew it, and he knew that we all knew that he was exactly the professional madman that we could trust with our lives. He had done it before. He had been there, laughing in the face of death. And at that moment, I almost peed myself.
The training didn’t boost my confidence. We started with emergency procedures and learned what to do in a variety of situations: tangled lines, twisted lines, a balled-up chute, or even a burning chute. When I asked the Daredevil if he had ever actually seen a parachute catch on fire, he informed me that one in every hundred parachutes will fail, so we couldn’t be too careful. I made another trip to the washroom.
With six hours of training behind us, the Daredevil showed us where the equipment was stowed. I noticed that none of the experienced skydivers would help me pick out my parachute or even tell me how to choose a good one. I imagine that they wanted to avoid giving a trainee the one chute in a hundred that fails — or the one that mysteriously catches fire — and so I closed my eyes and made an educated choice. The first one I picked was pink. I put that back and grabbed the orange one next to it. Dying with a pink parachute didn’t seem appropriate.
Finally, the Daredevil escorted us to the runway in our group of four trainees — Simon, Leanne, me, and some guy who kept shouting “yahoo” in an unnaturally forced manner. At that moment, I felt as if we were astronauts about to embark on a dangerous mission. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid anymore. My helmet was strapped tight, my goggles were in place, my jumpsuit was zipped, and the parachute was strapped so intimately to my body that I was having trouble moving my legs enough to avoid waddling. “If there’s room for a ball to slip in there,” the Daredevil had said, “chances are, it will.” I took that advice very seriously.
Waiting for us on the tarmac was an old Cessna of the 1960s variety, and its numerous dents and broken rivets showed its experienced. I would have preferred the less experienced, shiny airplane beside it, but we weren’t being given a choice. The daredevil didn’t seem perturbed, so I decided not to think about it much. Besides, the idea of backing down at this point was unthinkable; Simon and Leanne might think I was a wimp for not hurling myself from an airplane with only a sheet of nylon to keep me from being crushed into a pulp on the ground. Also, Leanne was asking to be the first to jump. The “yahoo” guy asked to go last.
The daredevil unlatched the door, swung it open on its rusty hinges, and we crawled in one by one. The inside was not exactly roomy. Once we were firmly stowed, the pilot informed us that because our total weight was so much, we would have to lean forward during take-off so that most of the weight would be distributed under the wings.
With a stuttering roar from the engine, the plane surged forward on the runway, and we leaned. The ground dropped away from us. As the pilot leveled the plane at three thousand feet and circled back towards the drop zone, the Daredevil swung open the door. Wind tore into the cabin, surprising me with its force.
Slowly, carefully, Leanne climbed into position. And then she was gone.
The daredevil grinned at me, and gestured to the door. I hesitated for a second, then edged my way to the door on my knees.
Gripping the battered door frame, I aimed my foot at the step and thrust my foot into the gale, and missed the step completely. Luckily, my grip on the door frame kept me from hurtling out the door, but I simply hadn’t expected the wind to be so powerful. I tried again, this time a little more wary of what I was fighting, and connected with the step. Great. I was now clinging to the outside of a Cessna at three thousand feet with the wind trying to tear my away from the plane. It was a good thing I had a parachute with me.
A thought struck me — it seemed as if there was nothing holding us up. The wing vibrated
in the wind, extending out into nothingness… and then I simply let go.
Psychologists call it sensory overload. When I jumped, I completely forgot all of my training and watched the Cessna disappear between my feet into the blue sky. Something tugged at my back and weight returned gradually. Looking up, I saw that my canopy was open and looking beautiful, so I pulled down the steering toggles and I was flying.
Green patches of landscape rolled from the purple mountains on my left to the mighty Fraser River on my right. I had conquered the laws of nature. I had dropped from a moving plane and not died, which in my mind, elevated me to the status of a superhero. A superhero brave enough to challenge Fate itself, and almost braver than Leanne, who was already landing.
Simon followed me shortly, executing a perfect jump… with the exception of the landing, which he buggered up completely. He landed like a sack of potatoes, and spent a few quality moments rolling around, moaning “argh” with convincing sincerity. After Simon’s crash landing, the fourth of our group hit the earth with a startled “yahoo” before crumpling into a heap of ropes and nylon.
Hours later, Simon, Leanne, and I sat around a table, drinking a toast to danger. We had risked our very lives that day and enjoyed every moment, with the exception of Simon’s landing. Now, years later, I yearn for that incredible feeling of freedom, and I know that sometime soon I’m going to sign up again.
That is, I’ll sign up again if Leanne does first.
