56 and 364/365ths

I have the two greatest daughters. They both came many miles to witness my almost-certain birthday death.

It took way longer than it should have to get to the skydiving place, and for Molly it took twice the anticipated time. She arrived literally ten seconds before I had to climb the ladder to the plane.

Turn the clock back two-and-a-half years. In Nepal I was talking to a young man from England about our respective futures. “I will never skydive,” I said with conviction, “because I have a fear of falling.”

“Don’t go bungee jumping,” he said. “But skydiving: that’s not like falling at all.” I’ve been curious about it ever since. How could it not feel like falling, when there’s no disputing that’s just what you’re doing… and fast.

Molly and her boyfriend skydive with some regularity (to my dismay, because I figure that every jump you survive increases your odds of kicking off on the next one).

There was a spirit of fun at the hangar of this skydiving place. Or maybe it wasn’t fun. Maybe it was suicidal recklessness. Maybe it’s like the playfulness one might see at the front lines. At any rate, the young women at the front desk were funny and charming, and they even gave me a discount because they’d heard me say I was a teacher. They know how hard we work.

An Englishman in his fifties plunked down on the sofa near Eleni and Emmy and me, as I initialed forty squares releasing anyone of culpability for my imminent death. Then I had to watch a video of a the silky-bearded inventor of tandem jumping, telling us there was a decent chance we’d smash onto the pavement from 10,000 feet, because we’re all only human.

That Englishman turned out to be my jumping partner. I overheard that he was “hung like a donkey,” and heard another man ask if it was a tiny donkey with a bad temper. As I fell out of the airplane, strapped to him, I was in no state to notice whether or not he had any equine tendencies, but I do believe he knows how to keep from dying when plummeting to Earth.

Speaking of which, Eleni made another comment that signaled that she is a true Allison. On our drive, we talked about why bungee jumping has more the sensation of falling, while skydiving doesn’t. “Ooohhh,” she said (a telltale “aha” in her voice). “Of course! Because gravity is different when you’re on a plane.” I didn’t ask her to explain our resolute plummet toward Earth. The notion confounded me as well.

I wasn’t exceptionally nervous in the moments preceding my leap, until the last few when we toppled out of the plane at eleven-and-a-half thousand feet. I tried to include here some of the images from the video (“you have only one first jump”), but it didn’t work. There was a shot of my feet at the edge of the plane that captured an aspect of my terror, and another of the spiraling bodies of jumpers just beneath me. But here are these, which are the next best thing. And I refuse to include all the ones in which my face looks like the surface of an ocean in a hurricane, with peaks and troughs in unexpected places. I’m pretty certain that the inflation of my nostrils was a major contributing factor in slowing my descent.

The first seconds of falling out of the plane were like being tossed in an Atlantic Ocean wave for a little too long, unable to know which was up. The next bunch of seconds (probably about 60, with your fall being stopped only by a teeny parachute not much bigger than a backpack) weren’t much fun. I was gasping for breath like a trout as I fell through ice particles while trying to smile for the camera. I don’t know how fast we fell. I’m guessing it was over 100 mph. But strangely, there wasn’t that falling sensation at all.

Once the main parachute opened, it was lovely and quiet. Well, it would have been, had we had more gentle weather. My leader asked me to steer us left by pulling the left handle down. We spun and spun and spun left until I had to close my eyes because I was gonna lose it. When we stopped, I shouted up to him politely, “I think that’s enough of that.” I thought he was doing it for my entertainment. He wasn’t. We had  significant wind sheer issues, and we kept blowing upward and off-track. “Sorry,” he said, as he made me pull the parachute right for about ten spins, and left, and right. If I’d kept my eyes open, I would’ve done something unfortunate.

But aside from that, and from almost landing on the photographer during the last milliseconds of our landing, that parachute float was quite lovely. Right before I thumped onto the ground I saw Emmy and Molly. Shedding my harness I made my way toward them. “Where’s Eleni?” She felt sick watching you land. She’ll be right back.” Them’s my girleens.

Okay, here’s a little ole slideshow for ya. Click on that little ole right arrow for a glimpse into my experience. You might want to click on those four arrows on the lower-right to see the bigger version: