Why Jump Out of a Perfectly Good Airplane?
By Judith Hinds
Rock-climbing? No thanks. Hang-gliding? I’ll pass. Zip-lining? No way. Skydiving? Hmm. For some reason, that one tempted me. However, it’s so expensive, I would never have followed through.
Except …
One summer, my friend Caroline worked as the office manager at the Skydiving Center in Pepperell, Massachusetts. She offered my son and me the use of her employee discount. Suddenly it was a case of now or never.
On a beautiful day in early September, we showed up along with Gareth’s girlfriend at the time, Gretchen, who was just going to watch. As rank beginners, we would be doing tandem dives, strapped to an experienced instructor. Each of us would be accompanied by another diver on a separate parachute, with a video camera to record our adventure for posterity. We were shown an instructional video telling us how to behave and when to pull the cord. We had to sign insurance waivers full of dire warnings about the risks involved and promises that our heirs would never even think about suing the master diver or the Center.
Gretchen decided what the hell, and she signed up, too.
What were we thinking?! I at least was old enough – about fifty – to know better. The other two were roughly half my age, evidently with higher risk thresholds, but still … why would we sign those waivers? I can’t explain it. It was just the right dose of insanity at the right moment. It was a “let’s do this!” kind of day.
One by one, off we went, suited up in coveralls and leather flying caps. I was first.
Our little Cessna took off, climbed in circles to 10,000 feet, and the moment came when I had to jump. My foot hung up momentarily on the door frame and I almost lost one shoe. That was my only moment of panic. Tim, my tandem master, wasn’t having it. Out we went.
The freefall was exhilarating. I smiled for the camera. Then I pulled the cord to deploy the parachute and discovered a phenomenon they hadn’t warned us about in the video. When the parachute opens and catches the air, it slows you down so dramatically that there is a sensation of swooping upwards, like being lifted up in a boat on a big wave. It took me by surprise and left my stomach behind somewhere. I tried to put that feeling out of my mind, and just concentrate on savoring the ride, admiring the rural countryside as the airfield came gently up to meet us. When we landed, I tripped over my own feet and fell forward, dragging Tim down with me. Though it was not a graceful landing, we were safely back on Earth.
Smiles, handshakes, high-fives. Then we had to scuttle off the field so that Tim and the videographer could prep for Gareth’s jump, and subsequently, Gretchen’s. Following their successful dives and all the congratulations and exclamations of glee, I went into the restroom and threw up. Now my stomach was back in my body where it belonged and I could enjoy the rest of the day.
We, and Caroline, received a piece of good news. Caroline had never used her employee discount before, and the owners of the Center loved her so much, they gave all three of us this experience of a lifetime at absolutely no charge!
I learned three things that day:
(1) Lift your feet!!!
(2) There are people in this world whose idea of a good time is so extreme, they spend the whole summer taking idiots like me on tandem dives, hour after hour, day after day, and then they spend the whole winter doing it again in Florida. They live in their camper trailers at any skydiving center that will pay them for their skills and patience. I bet their health insurance is astronomically expensive, if they can get it at all.
(3) The official correct answer to the title question is, “Because the door is open!”