Skydiving

Sunday, May 20, 2001

I have a list that I call my Life-Scale To Do List. Although that is probably a misleading title. It's not like a list of chores, where I'm actively trying to accomplish each item on the list. Instead, it's a list of things that I will do in my life. And when I say I will do these things, I mean it in much the same way that I would say "I will die". The items on this list are not things that I've thought "Gee, I'd like to do that sometime" about. Instead, as far as I can remember having any thought about them, I've always said to myself, "I'm going to do that at some point in my life."

Last sunday I put the first check on my To Do list. I went skydiving.

I did the jump at Skydive New England in Lebanon, Maine. The jump I did was an AFF Level One jump. I jumped with two jump masters, who helped me to fall properly. I pulled my own ripcord and piloted my parachute to the ground. I also had video and still photos taken of the jump. Here are some of the stills (edited a bit). You can click on each picture for a larger version.

This is me all suited up before heading over to the plane. See how excited I look? (39K)	Here you can see me after I've left the plane. I'm falling at approximately 120mph. I'm in the center. The jumpmaster on the right is Mike, and Dave is on the left. I've circled the airport in the lower right of the picture. The long thin bit is the runway, and it points to the north. I landed near the runway in the cleared area to the south. (27K)
This is a closeup of the three of us from the previous picture. You can see that Mike and Dave are both holding onto the straps around my legs. The reason they do this is because otherwise they might not keep falling. How would you like to get stuck floating in the air about 9,000 feet up? You can also sorta see that Mike's giving me the thumbs up. That means I'm doing pretty good. (15K)	Holy shit! (18K)
You can see here that I spotted some object about a mile off in the distance. I'm trying to figure out what it is. Mike is giving me another thumbs up, which I am ignoring. (I've left out the pictures where I was ignoring the hand signals that show I'm doing something wrong. They make me look irresponsible.) (22K)	Here I've just pulled the ripcord. What you don't see in this picture is the anvil tied to the end of those lines. Haha. Just kidding. It was a piano. You can also see in this picture that Dave is turning to leave. (16K)
I'll be damned. You can actually see the half-twist in my lines here. While it is a good thing that the parachute opened above me, I must say that it is not a comfortable thing. I was slowed from 120mph to something closer to 20mph in about three seconds. (8K)	Here I am coming in for landing. This is actually probably the most dangerous part of the whole jump. Which makes sense if you think about it. For most of the jump prior to this time, the nearest object was thousands of feet away, so I wasn't about to hit anything. Still, I am actually trying to hit the Earth at this point, so I hope I don't miss. (16K)
This picture belies the truth of my landing; I actually smacked down pretty hard on my butt. I did not, however, end up with any breaks or sprains, so I shouldn't complain too much about my landing. (11K)

And so that's it. I will most likely skydive again. Probably pretty soon. But I don't think any future jumps will be as important as the first one.