My Skydiving Days (Part 6).......

If you are interested in catching up with my other posts related to skydiving, you can find them below. They are not chronological in nature, so don't feel obligated to read all of them, or read them in order.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Part 5 was about my skydiving days as they related to my mother. This post is devoted to the intersection of my skydiving and my daughter when she was very young.

I had started skydiving when I was in college, then I quit after I got married and had a baby. I thought my days of jumping out of airplanes were over forever, but I got the itch again when Sweet Girl was a toddler, and I went back to jump again. She was in a stroller the first few times I took her to the drop zone, and I always had someone there who could watch her. The first thing she ever knew about airplanes was that Mom left in one, it came back empty, and Mom floated down from the sky under a parachute. Normal, right?

The first time Sweet Girl was to fly in a commercial aircraft, my mother was taking her to New York only a few days after her 4th birthday. She wasn't nervous at all about getting in an airplane; not nearly as nervous as I was about her being away from me for a week. My mother related this story after they boarded the airplane: Sweet Girl was all buckled in, waiting for take-off, when she turned to my mother and asked, "When do we jump out?" I would give every penny I've ever had if she had asked the flight attendant that question instead of my mother. (Well, that may be a SLIGHT exaggeration, but I think it would have been hilarious.)

When Sweet Girl was a little older and knew her way around the drop zone better than I did (I still had trouble finding the airport from the plane, no joke), I took her with me and left her under the somewhat watchful eye of others at the drop zone while I was in the plane. (I''m sure you'll find that chapter in Good Parenting 101.) They knew Sweet Girl, she was comfortable wherever she was and never met a stranger (including wandering away from her mother in the train station in Munich, but that's a different blog post).

I came back from a jump one day and Sweet Girl wasn't there to greet me as I landed (mercifully) near the packing shed. When I asked where she was, someone replied, "She went flying with James."

"Oh," I said, walking toward the shed. Then I stopped.

"Wait," I said. "Who's James?" Sweet Girl was SEVEN years old.

When they landed, I was too relieved to be angry. Besides, where would I have directed my anger? James? Sweet Girl? Myself? I vote for the last one.

So I snapped this picture before Sweet Girl could exit the plane. Then she spoke words to warm a mother's heart:

"Mom! We went flying in James's plane....after he fixed it!"

Sigh.

Maybe I should have instilled just a LITTLE fear in her?

All this talk about skydiving has made me miss it a little. A lot.

I'm thinking about going back to this very drop zone, but just to make a tandem jump. I'm using a certain weight as an incentive. Because I have to tell them that before we make the jump, and as it's important to tell the truth, I want to make sure my actual weight matches what I tell them.

Until that point, this will more than likely be my last post related to my skydiving days.

My Skydiving Days (Part 5).......

If you have missed earlier blog posts about my (long gone) days when I was skydiving and would like to catch up, here are parts one through four:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Tonight's post is about the precarious intersection of my skydiving adventures and ...

... my mother.

When I first decided to go skydiving, I don't think I told anyone of my intention. I may have been afraid I would chicken out and have to admit it, or I may have been afraid someone would have me committed. After my first jump, I was awarded with a very cool (and yellow!) t-shirt with a parachutist on it and the words "I did it!" I think I put it on in the car on the way home. I stopped at the one establishment on the way home where I thought I might know someone I could tell (a bar, naturally...I WAS in college at the time), and who would be there but my brother. I don't remember him reacting too severely, perhaps just shaking his head in disbelief. I was, after all, past the age where he could twist my arm up behind my back and make me do his bidding.

I couldn't keep my mouth shut, though, so of course I eventually told my mother about my exploits. I DO remember HER reaction:

"[Bragger], there's a fine line between bravery and stupidity. And I no longer know which side you're on."

That's one of my favorite lines of all time.

It may have bordered on cruel for me to take up skydiving at all, much less tell my mother about it. She had already lost a son to a motorcycle crash (AFTER he survived Vietnam...go figure), and she was adamant that  none of us have motorcycles. (Well, I did wait until I was 45 to do that...)

Eventually, though, she came to accept my idea of a good time. She even agreed to go with me. To watch, not to jump.

I had progressed to 10-second delays, and I was working on my form in freefall. (Never did get it right.) I made the first jump of the day, then Mom helped me pack my parachute. It was still a round canopy at that time, big and bulky and a beeyotch to get in the bag. You had to use elbows, knees, feet, and teeth to get everything closed up properly, and an extra set of hands came in ... well, handy.

Mom knew a little more of what to expect on my second jump. She knew I was doing a 10-second delay and that I would be the second jumper out of the plane. She knew to listen for the cut of the plane's engine, and she MIGHT be able to see the speck that was her youngest child falling through the sky.

She waited for jumper number two, she heard the cut of the engine, she saw the speck, and she started counting. "Eight...nine...ten...eleven...twelve...thirteen...."

At that point, she said the only thing she could think about was, "Oh my God, I helped her pack that thing."

I didn't do it intentionally to scare the bejeezus out of my mother; I was working on form and just beginning to use an altimeter. The extra seconds were not even dangerous, since I was a student and jumped from an altitude high enough to allow for some wiggle room. But I'm pretty sure Mom was still pale when I landed.

I can only fully appreciate her feelings now that I'm a mother too. I wonder if it's too late to apologize.

My Skydiving Days (Part 4)....

These aren't really chronological, but more thematic in nature. But if you'd like to catch up, you can read the previous parts here:


My Skydiving Days (Part 1)
My Skydiving Days (Part 2)
My Skydiving Days (Part 3)

Tonight's theme is the unpleasant one of injuries.

I was lucky in my (brief in numbers but protracted in years) skydiving career. As I mentioned at the end of Part 3, I once heard a jumpmaster say that particular drop zone had never experienced a serious injury. He then went on to say the only serious injury was death.

I probably had a LOT more opportunities for injury than the typical skydiver, because I had no idea most of the time what I was doing. When I was jumping round canopies, one time I had a near in-tree landing. I landed in the yard of a woman's house, and I was RIGHT OFF THE END OF THE RUNWAY. I mean, I could SEE the airport, but I couldn't get there. I could just imagine myself dangling in the tree, but I was lucky enough to make it all the way to the ground. The canopy, however, was stuck in the tree. And there were strict rules that forbade me from unhooking my harness, which I would have loved to do so I could slink off into the woods. Instead I had to stand there, tethered to a pine tree while the woman who owned the house leaned out her window, saying, "Ya landed in a tree, didn't cha?" while I waited for personnel from the drop zone to arrive and free me. As if that weren't embarrassing enough, when I got back to the shed I had to take the rig down to the head honcho, who was teaching PLFs to a new crop of students, and explain that I'd had a close encounter of the pine tree kind.

Another time I could have been injured (or worse) was the time I couldn't find east (more on that story in another episode). The last communication I had with the instructor on the ground told me to "find a spot to land." When I looked down, all I could see were power lines and pine trees. Good grief. I was still jumping a round canopy, so steering away from the hazards was not an option. I had to float with the wind and hope I got over both obstacles. The odds of doing so were not good. I know for a fact I wasn't breathing. I was getting ready to "get skinny" if I had to go between the power lines (it's only dangerous if you touch two of them, but I didn't want to put THAT to the test), and at that point the trees were the lesser of the two evils. The gods were smiling on me that day, though, because I drifted well over the power lines, not even draping my canopy over them, and I found a teeny tiny little patch of a clearing among all the pine trees. I was across the road from the shed. Seriously, I could have thrown a rock and hit it. Sigh.

After I started jumping square canopies, I developed a TERRIBLE habit of lifting my feet up when I pulled down on the brake lines. (Without getting too technical, because I'd be terrible at being technical, the best way to land a square canopy is to basically stall the canopy right as you touch the ground. That's what the brake lines do, pretty much collapse the canopy.) I think I was pulling my feet up in an attempt to get more leverage into my pull, because it seemed my arms weren't long enough. Once at a tiny drop zone where the owners later caused me significant embarrassment by using my camera to take pictures of their own penises, the landing area was hard-packed Georgia red clay. I came in for my typical not-following-the-rules landing, lifting my feet and legs up, and I landed on my knee first. There was a small rut gouged out of the hard-packed clay where my knee struck it. I didn't break anything (gods were smiling on me again), but my knee was a technicolor mess for several days. And I still didn't know how to correct my landing.

And I continued to have enough trial-and-error experiences that I should have learned a lot. You know you've had a bad parachute landing when you head back to the packing shed and EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. you pass along the way asks, "Are you okay?" As approaches go, it was a good one. I was on target to land on the drop zone (instead of a different zip code), possibly in the "peas" (pea gravel in a some-foot diameter circle that was the targeted landing spot for the really good skydivers). Heck, I was just proud not to have a 15-minute hike in front of me. I saw the ground approaching, flared my canopy (too high - again), raised up my feet and legs (again), and bounced on my tailbone. What happens when you stall a canopy too high is that you're not close enough to the ground to land. At least not properly. And you're TOO close to the ground to allow the canopy to re-inflate. Thus the bounce. It hurt pretty badly then. But that ain't NOTHING compared to how it felt in the next two weeks. Oh, and I was doing my student teaching at that time. With a toddler to take care of. I mentioned to someone that I thought about going to the doctor to have it checked, at least to have them x-ray my tailbone. Then someone said to me, "Bragger, they don't x-ray for that kind of injury. They check it.... using other means." Since I was pretty sure they couldn't do anything about it anyway, I just toughed it out. And it WAS tough, but I had no one to blame but my own stupidity.

Someone finally fixed that problem for me. Some random experienced skydiver suggested that when I unstowed the brake lines under canopy, I should take an extra wrap of the cords around my hand. That meant I didn't have as far to pull them to get a full stall, I didn't have to lift my feet and legs up in an effort to get the extra pull I needed, and I didn't have to spend a couple of weeks walking like I'd just given birth to a drill sergeant. It worked like a charm. (Further evidence that a lot of our "training" was random and arbitrary."

One final "injury" of sorts before I bore you to death. Ultimately I got to the point where I was allowed (nay, encouraged) to pack my own chute, especially necessary if I wanted to jump again the same day. It's not actually as complicated as you might think, the whole rig being held together by rubber bands and velcro. I'm not even kidding. There were a lot of steps to the process, though, and the only way I can learn is by DOING something. I can watch it a jillion times, but until I do something hands-on like that, the process remains a mystery. And I have to do it a number of times before it becomes intuitive. I performed a jump right after packing my own rig one day, and most of the jump went off flawlessly. Good freefall, good opening. WHAM!!! It felt like I had run full tilt into a tractor trailer. The canopy was good, I landed uneventfully, and the purple bruises where the four straps had been around my thighs and upper arms wouldn't show up until the next day. When my jumpmaster landed, he asked how my jump went, and I mentioned the hard opening.

"It happens sometimes," he said. "Next time try rolling the nose just a tad more."

Roll the nose. That means rolling the front edge of the canopy under just a little bit before packing it into the bag. The purpose is to slow the opening down ONLY FRACTIONALLY, YOU UNDERSTAND, preventing sudden, hard, bruise-inducing canopy openings.

Roll the nose. So THAT was the step I left out.

My Skydiving Days (Part 3).....

Some of my skydiving memories appear in my mind as individual slides from a carousel that someone has dropped and carelessly reassembled. (Does anyone out there even REMEMBER slide carousels?)

I know these things happened, and I can picture where some of them occurred. I just can't always put them in a correct time sequence, and sometimes I can't put them at the correct drop zone.

It would help if I could find my logbook and read some of my jumpmasters' comments (painful though some of them may be). I know I didn't throw it away, heaven forbid, but I couldn't find it last time I went looking for it.

After my first experience with freefall, the sequence was to complete a certain number of "good" jumps at each stage (3 jumps? 5? I can't remember) - 5-second delays, 10-second delays, 15-second delays, etc. My first piece of equipment was my own helmet and goggles, and boy was I proud of them.

Later (much later), I was fitted for a custom-made jumpsuit. I lost custody of that when I (hurriedly) moved out of my ex's house, but I wasn't using it anymore anyway. I loved my jumpsuit. It was mostly blue, with red and yellow accents. (Love those primary colors.) I was embarrassed at having such ... intimate ... parts measured in relation to other parts, but it was a necessary evil if I wanted my own jumpsuit. The same day I was measured for it was the near-disaster that occurred when I couldn't find my ripcord. I was so upset after that occurred that the guy who had fitted me for the jumpsuit (Banks? that name just jumped into my head, and I have no idea whether it's the correct one or not) told me he would hold off on placing the order for a day or two. By the time I got home I had calmed down enough to know I didn't want to stop skydiving, at least not on such a sour note, so I told him to go ahead and place the order.

I wish I had a picture of that jumpsuit. I loved it so much. It was blousy (the style at that time) and had these cool handles for other people to grab during relative work in freefall (more on that later), and it was mine. The first time I wore it was my first-ever stand-up landing under a square canopy. I'm sure THAT'S no coincidence. I wasn't about to risk tearing a hole in the knee of my new jumpsuit. I was also somewhat near the landing zone. Go me!

All this time I was jumping borrowed (or, more accurately, rented) equipment from whatever drop zone I was using at the time. Finally a drop zone opened only about 20 minutes from my house, and I had the opportunity to buy a used rig from a guy who was selling it for his sister. I don't remember if she was giving up skydiving or upgrading her equipment, and I don't think I ever SAW the rig. But for $500 it could be mine, and it just so happened that my ex had won $500 playing the lottery that week and was in a benevolent mood. For once.

So I took the five Benjamins in my hot little hand and made my way to the drop zone, hoping the guy would be there. He was there, all right, and he said he would gladly hold the money until I could get the rest of it.

Do what?

Apparently I had misunderstood, and the total cost of the rig was $800. In those miserable days getting another $300 was something akin to getting water from a rock. But I told him to hold it and I vowed to get the rest even if I had to sell returnable soft drink bottles at the convenience store. Oh wait...we don't have that anymore.

To make a long story even longer, life intervened, and I stopped skydiving before I ever went back for the rig. Got a divorce, moved on, didn't look back. I'm sure the guy would have returned the money, because he seemed like a nice sort, but I never went back for it. Why? I don't know. Perhaps some inner childish spiteful person figured it was the ex's money and enjoyed the fact that it was wasted. But the reasonable person inside (she doesn't show up very often) knew I could have used that money, particularly in the post-divorce days. Oh well. Sometimes when someone mentions wasting money, I say, "Well somewhere I own five-eights of a parachute rig." They don't usually ask me to explain. They just hustle their children away rather quickly.

I didn't mean for this to become a post about equipment, but I'll stop there for tonight. In future posts I'll try to remember to write about my mother helping me pack my parachute, crying when I couldn't pack a rig that was a beeyotch to close, my thirteenth jump that went terribly wrong because I got hung up on the number thirteen, some of Sweet Girl's exploits and comments related to skydiving, the plane crash at a drop zone that was not an accident, having trouble finding east, and my (admittedly minor) injuries related to skydiving.

In the words of one jumpmaster, "The only serious injury is death."

My Skydiving Days (Part 2).....

**I have no idea how many parts this will be. I may not post them all consecutively either. Just in case you care.**

You can read Part 1 here, if you just wandered by and don't know how you landed on Part 2.

I don't remember making a conscious decision to go back to the drop zone after my first jump. I'm sure I wanted to get it right, but I also didn't just want it to be something I had DONE.

It wasn't convenient for me to go skydiving. As I mentioned in Part 1, it was a drive of about two hours. And my car didn't have air conditioning. It also wasn't cheap, and I was a poor college student. But I went any Saturday I could afford it and had the time to go, and sometimes if I were particularly flush I might turn around and drive back down there on Sunday.

I don't know why it never occurred to me to buy a tent and just camp out at the drop zone. I'm sure other people did it. I was single and had no pets or other obligations, and it would have been cheaper than driving back and forth. It may even have saved enough money for an additional jump. Maybe I thought camping was something you only did in the woods. Who knows.

I mentioned in last night's post that I wish I had had DJan as a skydiving instructor. It may not be fair to characterize the people who taught me skydiving as bad instructors. I also wasn't a very good student. I didn't ask questions (mainly because I didn't know WHAT to ask), but I did sit and absorb. There is a LOT of sitting-around time at a drop zone. Waiting for your turn to load. Waiting for your jumpmaster to come back from HIS jump and sign off on your logbook. Waiting for there to be a full load of students. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. I listened (eavesdropped?) a lot, but I didn't have any way to know how useful the information I was absorbing was.

I'm not sure how it worked at other drop zones, but the manner in which students were assigned jumpmasters (who became informal "instructors," the only kind we had after that first one-day class) seemed to be random. I think some of those guys (and they were ALL guys) just agreed to be a jumpmaster because it meant either a free or reduced jump for them.

I remember my first freefall jump (besides the ones immediately following static-line jumps, where you pulled the ripcord immediately). It was supposed to be a 5-second delay, and I understood how to count one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand. But I didn't know WHEN I was supposed to do that. Our jump sequence was Arch, Look (at the ripcord), Reach, Pull. Now it seems intuitive to realize the 5-second delay would take place in the Arch step, where you arched your back to achieve stability in freefall, but I wasn't very intuitive. And skydiving wasn't an intuitive activity. No one ever told me when the 5-second delay was supposed take place, and there we were in the shed, waiting to load the plane. I finally took the reins and asked a guy who was along on the load with us, but he was NOT the one who was my jumpmaster. Was I wrong to ask the wrong person? Probably. But the guy who WAS my jumpmaster was a little scary to me, and I found the other guy more approachable. Maybe it shouldn't matter who answered the question. I got my answer, I completed the jump (successfully, I assume), and I went on to jump many more times. The imparting and receiving of knowledge and instruction, however, was haphazard at best.

I never felt part of the group at that drop zone, and part of that may be my fault too. I felt like a rookie ALWAYS, and I think I had a little bit of the "impostor syndrome." I was afraid if I spoke up or asked questions, I would reveal myself for a fraud who didn't belong there. So I sat quietly apart, but in retrospect that may have looked like arrogance at worst, aloofness at best.

I did learn the most useful piece of information related to skydiving during this period. We were sitting around eating and drinking (no alcohol allowed until every last plane was tied down, and they were NOT joking about that), and a student asked one of the experienced guys, "How long before I stop being scared?" My ears perked up because I had wondered that too. Every single time they opened the door of that airplane, my heart hammered and my mouth went dry.

The guy answered, "The day you can jump out of a perfectly good airplane and not be scared, you need to hang up your rig and do something else."

That made me feel so much better.

To be continued.

My Skydiving Days (Part 1)......

I have written a couple of blog posts about my days as a (sort of) skydiver. One was here, an occasion that might have ended my skydiving career earlier if I had had any sense. Or, on the other hand, been less lucky.

This post, by the way, was inspired by my blog pal DJan, who wrote this past Sunday about her days as a skydiving instructor. I never made it far enough to become an instructor, and something tells me I would have been a better skydiver if I had had instructors like DJan.

I think I was enthralled with the idea of jumping out of airplanes as soon as I knew what airplanes were. Maybe sooner. I remember playing on the swings at the playground and being disappointed they didn't go higher. I wanted to jump out of the swings, but I didn't want it to hurt. (It usually did.) Skydiving was one of those things that I didn't realize common folk like me might have access to.

One day when I was in college, I ran into a guy with whom I went to high school. We were both in Mrs. Marshall's 4th period math class. Apropos of absolutely nothing, this is my fondest memory of Greg: The headline in the newspaper was proclaiming that costs associated with building a certain dam in eastern Georgia had exceeded expectations. For several days, Greg kept looking at that headline and shaking his head, muttering, "Dam costs go up." Even Mrs. Marshall eventually got tired of it, and she was pretty patient.

Okay, back to the point. See why this will probably be Part 1?

Greg told me he had gone skydiving at this little place about two hours from our hometown. He left a note on my car one day with a drawing of a parachute on it, and we might have gone to the drop zone together if A) he had picked the right apartment; and B) if it hadn't taken me two weeks to figure out what the drawing was.

Greg and I couldn't make our schedules work out, so I made plans to go alone. I know, right? And keep in mind, this is in the days before the internet. I had to find out the name of the place, call them on the actual TELEPHONE, get some fairly vague directions, and then figure out how to get there. Good thing I was pretty handy with a map.

I went through the training program (many people were shocked that it only took one day) without knowing anyone else there. I had a tense moment or two at the beginning, which I wrote about in this early blog post. We jumped military-style round canopies in those days, and we had to learn how to do PLF's - parachute landing falls. We jumped off a little platform over and over and over again, practicing how to land on the balls of our feet, roll to the sides of our calves and the upper thigh on one side, then roll to that shoulder and over backward if necessary. Our jumps at the beginning were static-line jumps, just like you see in the old war movies (except we were sitting down), with a line from the parachute attached to a ring in the floor of the plane. There was no question of pulling the ripcord or not pulling it; when you ran out of line, that baby was coming open. Students had to have 5 good static-line jumps (I had to do 6) before they were allowed to jump and pull their own ripcords.

The little Cessna 182's we jumped out of had no seats. There was room for four skydivers and their gear and one jumpmaster. I don't remember what position I was in my first time, but I wasn't first. I had lots of time on the way to altitude to think about what I was doing. Lots and lots and lots of time. I remember the name of my first jumpmaster - Hugh Aul. (I thought it was funny because it sounded like "You All" and even he commented as such.)

When it was my turn, Hugh let me know we were at altitude and flying on the approach line. Then he told the pilot to cut the engine (they didn't really "cut" it, but slowed it down tremendously), and he opened the door. His next command was for me to sit in the door. I had to put one foot on the step and leave the other one danging. When he said "Go!" I was supposed to put my weight on the step, reach out for the wing strut and hang there for just a second, then release and allow gravity and the static line to take over. I remember sitting in the door and thinking to myself, "What in the world have I gotten myself into?" When Hugh said "Go!" the first time, I froze. He clapped me on the shoulder then and said "GO!" again. I would like to emphasize here that he did NOT push me out. I don't think any of the jumpmasters there would have pushed any student out.

My exit was fairly weak (that's why I had to do 6 jumps before being cleared for freefall), but it wasn't long before I saw that glorious round canopy over my head. I did remember the steering toggles (although they didn't really steer, they just turned the canopy into or with the wind), and I looked down and spotted the arrow on the drop zone. This particular drop zone didn't have radios at that time, so the only way they could communicate with student jumpers was a huge wooden arrow they would spin around to indicate which way we should turn our canopies. It was an inexact science, but most of us found our way near the landing zone if not on it. I don't even remember where I landed that first jump. I do remember it was nearing sundown, and the view from above was stunning.

I was gathering up my canopy when another girl from my class (there weren't many of us) came back from her landing. Someone nearby asked her how it was.

"Oh man, it was beautiful! Gorgeous! Breathtaking! I can't believe how cool that was!" the words just spilled out of her one on top of another.

The person asked her, "Are you going to jump again?"

"HELL NO!" she replied.

I did jump again. I had a total of 66 jumps spread out over a period of about 14 years, with a couple of long breaks in between.

When people find out I used to be a skydiver, sometimes they ask why I quit. My answer is always, "Because I wasn't very good at it."

To be continued...

Theory of Relativity.....

With my most sincere apologies to Albert Einstein. (He WAS the one with the theory of relativity, wasn't he?)

This post has nothing to do with physics. Or whatever it was that Albert was famous for. For which Albert was famous. Whatever.

Have any of you ever experienced complete and total silence? Think about it. I mean the absolute absence of any sound. I kind of think I may have...but it was a long time ago, and part of my description of that experience will contradict the whole idea of complete and total silence. I'll (sort of) explain at the end.

This thought has occurred to me a couple of afternoons at the end of the school day. When the students leave, if we have no meetings or interviews, my co-workers and I are typically in our individual classrooms alone. We may be catching up on emails (the serious ones) or finishing up a level of Angry Birds (the slackers) or reading to the end of a chapter on the iPad (more slackers) or checking gymnastics websites to see what gymnasts should be inserted into the line-ups this week (slackers...wait...never mind).

Students are gone, and the hum of conversation is gone too. It's very quiet. Silent.

Then I turn off all the computers remotely. They go off one by one, and it becomes even silenter. As the low hum of each computer stops, what seemed like silence just a moment ago suddenly seems loud.

Then I turn off my own computer.

And then I turn off the power strip. It gets quieter and quieter and quieter. I've toyed with the idea of going around and unplugging every single power strip and device in the room, just to see how totally quiet it can be.

But that's a lot of trouble, and I'm not really that curious.

I'm not sure where I was going with this post. You may be able to tell that I couldn't decide which approach to take with this blog post. I was vacillating between being silly and sarcastic (my defaults) or attempting to make some serious connection between my computers and life. But I got nothing.

Now for my story about silence. I read an article once about some soundless booth a company (I think it was a telephone company) had developed for testing. They put someone in the booth and the person reported hearing the rushing waters of a river. That was the sound of the blood pumping through his veins and arteries. I thought that was cool. I think the closest I ever came to that was when I first started skydiving. Way back then we jumped with round canopies, old Army-issue ones. Those canopies, unlike the modern rectangular canopies, had almost zero forward drive in them. You jumped, you opened (thank all that is holy for those openings), and you went straight down. The only exception was that you could TURN the canopy so that the wind would carry you in a certain direction. Preferably in a direction that took you to the landing zone.

Because those canopies had no forward drive, there was very little motion. And it was dead silent under those babies. You couldn't hear the plane after it left, you couldn't hear anything from the ground because you opened so high (if you did what you were supposed to **ahem**), and there wasn't even the flap of nylon coming from the parachute. It was awesome.

Like the man in the soundproof booth, I think I heard my heart beating.

And it was going very, very fast.

Just Because You're One of the Guys.....

.......doesn't mean you can trust them.

......or even than they are really your friends.

Years ago, in a previous wifetime, I was skydiving with a group of guys at a very small airstrip west of Atlanta. It was seriously small. I mean grass "runway" and everything. I don't remember why I started jumping there; I was probably tired of driving two and a half hours, and two hours and fifteen minutes was a MUCH better drive.

Skydiving was an inherently male sport for the most part. I have no idea how much things have changed these days.

I remember the first day I went to jump. I went all by myself, and I didn't know a soul there. We were assembled in this trailer where the gear was stored, and I was sitting on a counter minding my own business. I didn't know the experienced jumpers from the students, so I was just observing and absorbing.

This guy marched over to where I was sitting and stopped dead in front of me.

"Are you here to jump?" he demanded.

"Um....yes," I stammered.

"Shit." He turned around and stomped off.

I was thinking, "Oh great, hostility from the veterans already."

Then I heard him say to his buddies on the other side of the room, "She's sitting there cool as a cucumber, and I'm scared shitless."

I apologize for the language, but I wanted to be true to the story.

All of that has nothing to do with this story, except to point out that the men outnumbered the women by a wide margin.

At the very small airstrip with the grass runway, the guys were always making off-color remarks, but for the most part I just laughed them off. I couldn't afford to be indignant, since I never knew which one of them might be assigned to be my jumpmaster on the next load. You couldn't risk offending the person who would sign off on your logbook. Or not.

My ex never seemed to mind that I went off all day participating in a mostly-male sport. As long as it didn't interfere with HIS plans, it was fine.

One day I took my camera with me, just to take pictures on the ground. [I never reached the level of comfort where I could take pictures in the air. Another jumper once tried to take pictures of me in freefall with an elaborate helmet-mounted camera, but he couldn't catch up to me. I was terrible about backsliding in freefall. I thought it was cool that he had rigged a shutter release that he held in his mouth, and he bit it when he wanted to take a picture.]

This was of course in the days before digital photography, so I had to wait a week for the photos to be developed. For some strange reason, the ex and I were together when I went to pick them up.

The photos were in a little wire-bound portfolio, and I flipped through them excitedly.

"This is the plane."

"This is Brian."

"This is Bill."

"Here is the landing zone."

This went on for a few minutes, with me flipping over to each new picture and identifying the person in it.

Then I flipped to the next picture, and it was......
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

a penis.

[I thought they didn't even PRINT that kind of picture. No wonder the clerk at the drugstore looked at me strangely when I went to pick up the pictures.]

My ex went rigid beside me. No pun intended. Really, no pun intended. Seriously.

He drew a breath and said through his teeth, "What in the hell is that?"

There was a long silence.

"I know what it is," I said. "But I have no idea how it got there."

There was proof positive of collusion in the taking of the photo. The prepetrator's hands were also showing, as he pulled down his sweat pants. Clearly someone else was involved.

They had taken my camera while I was in the air for a jump and taken the offending photograph without me knowing it. They didn't even have the decency to tell me about it.

Needless to say, that was the last time I jumped there. As the ex put it, and this was one of the VERY few times I ever agreed with him when he said, "And THESE are the people who have your life in their hands?"

I did get a very small bit of satisfaction months later, when I was jumping at a different location (two and THREE-QUARTER hours away), and I ran into one of those guys again. He asked me where I had been, and I told him the sordid story.

"What did you do about it?"

"I mailed the picture to him and told him I didn't appreciate it."

"Wait. Where did you mail it?"

I told him the address where I had sent the picture.

He laughed uproariously.

"He's getting a divorce. You sent it to his wife."

I'm glad I'm not one of the guys anymore. It's way too much trouble.

8 Seconds from Certain Death......

I must offer a disclaimer about this post. The pictures are not from the same day as this story. In fact, the pictures are not all from the same day. They are, however, mostly of me. And I offer them here just as visual support.
Someone told me I looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy in this picture. This was before I had my own custom-made jumpsuit and my own helmet. They didn't make me look any more attractive, but they were certainly more colorful. That gadget in the middle of my chest is an altimeter. It shows distance from the ground in feet. You don't want to get into the red zone...
I never found out the real name of this aircraft, but we called it a Caravan or Skyvan. I only got to jump out of one like it one time. It held 25 skydivers, and I was number 25 out of the tailgate. You just sort of walked to the back and stepped off into nothingness. I loved it. As other groups jumped, I kept inching my way toward the door. My jumpmaster said, "It's not our turn!" and I replied, "I want to SEE!" It was so cool, seeing all those falling bodies from above.
When I first started jumping, we used those old, round, military canopies that could not be steered. You could turn into or with the wind, but you were pretty much at the mercy of whatever direction the wind was blowing. And the accuracy of your spotter.
I laid off skydiving for a few years, getting married and having a baby. I remember my rather old-fashioned doctor patting me on the hand on my first pre-natal visit.

• Dr. Van: Now, we aren't as careful with pregnant women as we used to be. Anything you did before, you can do while you're pregnant. Do you participate in any sports or activities?
• Me: Well, I skydive.
• Dr. Van: For God's sake, don't skydive! Are you crazy?

But when I found out they were letting students jump the ultra-cool, square (okay, rectangular, but we called them square) canopies, I had to go back. Back when I started, you had to have 50 jumps under your belt before you could jump a square.
These pictures were taken on one of the rare occasions that I actually landed somewhat near where I was supposed to. I have no sense of direction on the ground, and when you throw in another dimension, well, I'm pretty much lost. I was doing well if I could spot the AIRPORT from the air. You would think all the airplanes would give it away.
But not really CLOSE to the spot I was aiming for. I don't remember whose parachute that is in the foreground; perhaps a jumpmaster's. That's me way off in the distance. Probably busted my ass (I usually did), but I am already up and gathering up my gear in this picture. We could not detach from our rigs; we had to bundle them up and carry them back to the packing zone. For me it was often quite a distance to walk.

On the particular day in question, I was using a rig that I had used many times before. I had learned how to pack it, and it felt right on me. Besides, there was just something comforting
about wearing the same rig week after week.

[I have just spent the last 15 minutes looking for my old log book in an attempt to be true to the details of this post. But I can't find it, so I'm going to go on memory.]

We jumped from probably somewhere around 8000-10000 feet. My jumpmaster followed me out of the plane, and we probably attempted some maneuvers where we grasped forearms, etc. I say attempted because I SUCKED at those maneuvers. It isn't as easy as it looks to just reach out and touch someone who is falling, just like you, at 120 mph.

I waved off at the proper altitude, because regardless of what they show on television, skydivers are NOT supposed to be close to one another upon deployment of their parachutes. It's just too risky, because the canopies can become entangled, etc.

I must say that I did NOT follow the proper protocol. The correct sequence was "arch ........ look ....... reach ....... pull!" I was supposed to make eye contact with my ripcord handle BEFORE attempting to pull it. Problem was, the handle was located on the belly band of my rig. It was held in place by a piece of velcro. (You would NOT believe how much of a parachute is held together with velcro and RUBBER BANDS!!!!) And I had these ....... how do I say this delicately ....... BOOBS that got in the way of my actually being able to see the ripcord handle. So I got into a rather bad habit of just feeling for it. It was always there. Except this time it wasn't.

The little plastic handle wasn't where it was supposed to be. I grasped again. And again. And again. By this time, I was tumbling wildly, haven broken out of my stable arch position with probably the second grab. You don't really want your parachute to open when you are tumbling wildly. Except you really, really want it just to OPEN.

Because I am typing this post, you can probably tell that I did at last locate the handle, but I'm sure it was sheer luck. The rig I was jumping had an AAD (Automatic Activation Device) on it, and it was supposed to fire my rig in the event I was still traveling at terminal velocity when I reached 2000 feet in altitude. Apparently it failed. We weren't supposed to rely on them anyway; I think their primary purpose was for skydivers who lost consciousness during freefall (injury or just being scared s***less) and afford them a slight chance in hell of reaching the ground relatively uninjured. Or at least undead.

The owner of the drop zone watched in horror as I screamed toward the ground, and he estimated that I probably pulled the ripcord at around 1200 feet. I did some research once, and I believe that was 8 seconds before I would have hit the ground. As a student jumper, I was supposed to pull NO LOWER than 4000 feet.

I didn't experience any harder a landing than usual (that's the first question people always ask me about that episode), because a canopy that is allowed to inflate fully is probably going to offer the same speed regardless of WHERE it was opened. When I landed, I immediately took off my helmet (because I wasn't allowed to take off my rig, of course) and hurled it across the field. I had already had my moment of relief once I saw that beautiful expanse of nylon over my head in the air. Now I was pissed off. Angry at being stupid, angry at having witnesses, angry at being almost dead.

I dreaded facing Banks. But he didn't fuss at me. He was too busy reaming a new one for my jumpmaster, who had apparently CHASED ME and attempted to save me. Banks screamed at him, "Just what in the hell were you going to do with her when you CAUGHT HER?????"

It turns out that the velcro on the belly band of my rig had pretty much worn out, and although it held the handle in place on the ground, it was useless at terminal velocity. The handle had blown around behind my back, and if I had only had the presence of mind to find the cable and follow it around, I would have been fine. But when the handle wasn't where it was supposed to be...... well, let's just say all presence of mind went right out the window. Or into the wild blue yonder. Whatever.

But I didn't find that out that day. I jumped the SAME RIG the next weekend, figuring that I was obligated to "get back on the horse," as it were. What were the odds that the same thing would happen again?

Odds were approximately 100%.

I couldn't find the handle again.

But this time I knew where the RESERVE handle was, and I didn't hesitate to use it. When that beautiful, old-fashioned, ROUND canopy opened above my head, I was so happy to see it that I forgot to be embarrassed at the same thing happening again. I forgot to be embarrassed that everyone on the drop zone was aware that someone had used a back-up parachute. I forgot to be embarrassed that it was a "first" for me, and anyone who experienced a "first" was expected to buy beer for everyone on the drop zone after the planes had been tied down. I forgot to be embarrassed that I didn't have enough money to buy a case of beer.

I reached up for the toggles to "steer" the reserve canopy toward the drop zone, and someone had written on the little wooden toggles:

"You're okay."

7 Things about Me...

I was "tagged" to tell 7 things about myself and then tag 7 other people. Not only do I not have 7 bloggers to tag, I don't really like to do that. For the same reason that I don't forward emails to 10 friends in 10 minutes and expect a miracle or something.

So, while I don't mind telling something (everything? isn't that why we blog?) about myself, I'll leave it up to those who read my posts whether or not to reveal 7 things about themselves. If you do, just leave me a comment, and I'll jump over to read yours.

Here goes:

1. I actually like the fat part of a steak. It may be because when I was young (and chunky, before kids were actually overweight), my brother told me that eating the fat would make you skinny.
2. I have been known to watch entire replays of sporting events that I attended in person. Multiple times.
3. I have never seen Miracle on 30-whatever Street, It's a Wonderful Life, or Willa Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (neither the old one nor the new one).
4. I was a true "accident," a post-vasectomy child. And while I don't obsess over it, I manage to work it into WAY too many conversations.
5. I was once a skydiver, and I would return to it in a heartbeat, but I wasn't very good at it. When my daughter turned 10, I decided that if I had jumped badly 66 times and lived to talk about it, it was time to take up something else. Now I ride a motorcycle.
6. I teach high school English, but I do algebra for fun in my spare time. I would love to be a math teacher.
7. I quit smoking almost 16 years ago. And I still dream about it. Not about wanting to smoke, but about actually smoking and thinking in my dream that I have blown the entire last 16 years.

Those may not be the most interesting 7 things about me, but they are the ones I'm willing to share right now. :)