Jumping...

Jumping…

Today I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. Twice. And I’m gonna do it again, and again, and again… The funny thing is, I showed up that day to fly the planes, not jump out of them.

I’ve flown jump planes now for almost a year. It’s the most challenging flying I’ve done so far and it’s a flippin’ BLAST! Little Cessna 182’s that hold one pilot; all the rest of the seats have been removed and replaced with floor seatbelts (Google it if you don’t know what kind of plane I’m referring to). The right-side of the plane has been modified to allow a top-to-bottom clear plexi-glass (or maybe Lexan) door that swings upward and locks into place. The pilot wears a chute too…just in case ;) The first few times I flew jumpers and that door opened up…I could feel my pulse quickening and started sweating. All of a sudden this cacophony of wind noise and cold air (at 11,000 feet) enters the cabin and people (four of them, to be exact) are holding onto the strut of this tiny little airplane and the instruments are (mostly) un-readable…good times! 4000 flight hours, almost eight years of flying for the airlines, flying in some of the shittiest weather you wouldn’t think twice about DRIVING through, and flying jumpers is what it takes to get my heart pounding!

Anyway, so why did I jump? Because it’s scary. That’s the point! It’s like getting a tattoo…pain is part of the experience. (I have eight of them, btw…and still counting). You have your choice when you make up your mind to defy gravity: Tandem or IAD/Static-Line. Tandem means you get a free-fall for around 20ish seconds, but you don’t do anything; you’re strapped to a qualified jumper and he/she does all the work (you just have to shit your pants for 20ish seconds ;). I chose the IAD (Instructor Assisted Deployment) jump because it forces you to “man-up” (I apologize for the sexist remark, but you get the idea), crawl out of the plane yourself, hang from the plane and…let go. Talk about a RUSH!

My first IAD jump was last November…all I remember is shitting my pants, feeling like I was tumbling through the air asses over elbows…and the chute opening. Then, I remember breathing faster than I thought was humanly possible (at the time), seeing a good/clean canopy (Shape and Control) and thinking to myself: “Okay. I’m alive so far!” The risks are (mostly) perceived, but very real…and shit can (and sometimes does) happen. I’ve been rock climbing, SCUBA diving, the aforementioned flying escapades, gone to battle stations (for REAL) when two Yugoslavian fighter jets lit up my ship with a radar missile lock, etc….but, I’m here to tell ya’: That first jump was…the coolest thing I’ve ever done with my life thus far.

So, today I show up to fly…someone asked if I wanted to jump (thanks, Don!) and I said “Hell, yes!” As the plane takes off from the grass runway, I’m all pilot: Looking at the engine gauges, waiting for the engine to quit, what am I gonna do if the engine dies below a safe altitude…the normal stuff. Once we’re over a thousand feet above the ground, it hits me…and my gum-chewing starts getting faster. Palms never started to sweat, but all I can think of is the WIND. It’s flippin’ WINDY when you crawl out of a plane! 90mph = hurricane force, people. So, in reality, I’m gonna intentionally crawl out of a tiny plane into hurricane force winds…shimmy along the strut and put my life into the hands of the unknown person that packed the chute strapped to my back. The first body part out of the plane is your left foot…and holy crap is that wind STRONG! But once you get your hands on the strut (and have a pretty good death-grip going, btw) it’s okay…except it’s hard to breath into a head-on 90mph wind!

And I’m here to write to y’all: This is soooo cool! The chute opens and you just get a feeling like a building could fall on you and…you’d be like the Incredible Hulk and walk out from the rubble with your arms raised above your head saying “fuck, yeah!”. I got on the ground and got talked into (kidding) going again. I had about enough time to catch my breath, take a piss and go back up. I didn’t complete one of the tasks I was supposed to do  but it was still a jump…and it was AWESOME! I’ve found a new addiction, and couldn’t be happier about it!