Like most people, I have always wondered what it would be like to fly. As a child I used to pretend that I was superman, an airplane, a bird, anything that flew through the air. I ran through the yard with my arms spread out like an airplane, simulating weird engine noises whenever I would make a turn or go into a steep dive. Well, some time ago I got to fly for the first time, and it wasn’t by riding in an airplane. It was by jumping out of one.
Skydiving has always been of interest to me as a natural consequence of my desire to fly. I have always wanted to do it, but never thought that I would until the beginning of fall last year. I decided to wait until spring to make my jump.
I found the place and arrived 30 minutes before my scheduled time at 9:00 a.m. I met some of the other people who were diving (also first-timers), signed a form saying that I wouldn’t sue the company if I was injured and that nobody in my family could sue them if I died, watched a three minute video, and then sat down with the owner of the skydiving center to learn about how to position yourself during freefall. I was skydiving in tandem, meaning that there would be a guy strapped onto my back who would monitor our rate of fall, control our descent, and deploy the parachute.
Then I was introduced to Davide, who was my instructor and tandem skydiving partner. He gave me a huge jumpsuit to wear over my clothes and then took me over to the airplane hanger where he strapped my harness on. Then he put his parachute on, handed me some clear diving goggles, and we got into the plane. We were the first ones in the plane and the last ones out.
We were in a 1946 cargo plane. There were thirteen of us in there. Four of us were jumping tandem with an instructor, two people were diving alone, and there were three cameramen. We all sat on the floor with the guy in front of us sitting between our legs and leaning back on our chests. When we were only a few minutes away from making the jump we shifted onto our knees so that the instructor could strap himself onto our harnesses, and so we could put our goggles on.
The ride up was nice and easy. Everyone chatted kindly with one another and talked about how great the weather was for a dive. Davide asked me how long I had wanted to skydive and if I had any family or friends down on the ground waiting for me. I told him that I had come alone, and he laughed. “That’s the sign of a guy who really wants to do it,” he said. “This is going to be the greatest thing you’ve ever done, trust me.”
I asked Davide how long he had been skydiving and what made him do it for the first time. He said his brother and sister-in-law went skydiving to celebrate their anniversary and encouraged him to try it. He gave it a shot, loved it, and made it into his career. He had been skydiving for 3 and 1/2 years, and had over 700 jumps to his credit. There were several other people on this jump who had 3,000 or more jumps under their chute.
I had not experienced any anxiety or nervousness about the dive until we were about 2000 meters in the air. The cargo hatch door was about ten feet in front of me, but I had an angle to where I could see the ground far below us. “Holy crap!”, I thought. ”I’m going to be jumping out of this thing in just a few minutes!” Amazingly enough, this anxiety quickly passed and I was back to normal. This surprised me more than anything. I had always thought that I would experience extreme fear and trepidation when I went on my first skydive, but aside from that brief moment, I felt no fear at all. While I sat in the cargo bay I wondered if I would feel that way once I was standing at the edge of the plane with the wind whipping through my hair.
Once we had reached 3000 meters we heard a shout from the pilot crying, “Door!” The two people closest to the cargo hatch raised the door and immediately did Superman-esque dives into the air and vanished from my sight. The tandem divers ahead of me all started duck-walking toward the open door (the ceiling was too short for anyone to stand up) and dove out of the plane. Then it was time for Davide and I. We scooted right up to the edge.
We rocked forward, and back, and then fell out of the plane. We tumbled end-over-end for a few seconds and then got into freefall position. It was incredible. I was falling at 200 km/h, hurtling towards the earth and my possible destruction. The wind whipped past me with incredible ferocity. The rush was absolutely exhilarating. My heart rate skyrocketed from the intense experience, but I was not afraid. I was extatic. I felt a fullness of life that I had never experienced before.
To my great surprise, I did not see the earth approach me as I fell. The view from 3000 meters was no different from the view at 1500 meters when Davide deployed the parachute. Davide pulled the rip cord and I felt a gentle tug in the harness as we slowed from 200 km/m to 30 km/h in less than a second. We began a slow descent to the earth, which took around seven or eight minutes. There are two cables that run down from the parachute with strap handles on the end of them, which are used for steering. I took them and steered us slowly to the left, and then again to the right. Then Davide told me how to do a spiral, by pulling down hard on one strap and letting up on the other. I pulled hard with my left hand and suddenly we were in a tight spiral dive, with the horizon spinning incredibly fast before our eyes. I tried it several more times and laughed with joy.
The landing was not as I thought it would be. I remember seeing videos of military operations where those guys would hit the earth fast and hard, and have to do a roll on the ground to try to avoid breaking a leg. This was as light as a feather. You cruise into the grass with your legs up high like you’re doing an ab workout and land on your butt, to absorb the shock. In our case though, we came in a little too fast, so Davide yelled at me to put my feet down at the last second. It was such a gentle touchdown that I didn’t even know I was on the ground until I felt the parachute falling to the ground behind me.
When it was over I spent a while chatting with Davide about the dive, and I thanked him and gave him a big hug. I got out of the harness and returned the jumpsuit, and spent a little time hanging out with the other divers and the people who worked there. They gave me a certificate to show that I had completed my first skydive and I drove away from that little airport with the pulse of life rushing through me.
It is an experience that I hope to undertake many, many more times and shall never forget.
