Out of Thin Air (Pt 2)

You can read part one of this exhilarating story here.

So there we were, climbing into a cargo door on the side of a small prop plane with a few other crazies. As Jeremy said, with the long wait, just sitting around watching other people going up and coming down our nerves had pretty much settled down. No big deal. We’re going to get on this plane, strap ourselves to the instructors, and jump out.

No big deal until the plane starts down the runway, and you realize “I’m going to strap myself to this instructor and we are going to jump out of this plane. WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE WE DOING??!!!!”

Because we were first-time skydivers, we were doing tandem jumps, which means you are each with your own instructor. He wears the parachute. You wear the instructor, like a big backpack.

There were two other people jumping with us. A young college-aged dating couple. He had done it before. She was freakin’ out. I heard the guy’s instructor ask him, “Who is your best friend?” “She is.” “Wrong. I am. I’m wearing your parachute.”

So by now the plane has been climbing for a few minutes and the ground is way too far away. There was also a team of professional skydivers in the plane with us. I saw one of them open the cargo door and climb out onto the outside of the plane. Now at this point, it’s a somewhat surreal experience. I’m thinking, “people don’t do that in real life. You only do that in a movie. Hasn’t anybody told this guy that you only do that in a movie?” But the next thing I knew, the whole team of jumpers was gone. They just vanished. Our instructors had us get intimately close to them while they hooked our harnesses to theirs, and then Jeremy and I played paper-rock-scissors to see who would go first. He won… or lost, depending on how you look at it.

About this time, the terrified girl and her instructor make their way to the door. She gave a blood-curdling scream as if someone was about to push her out of a plane at 10,000 feet or something. My guy says, “wow, that was quite a scream. Think you can match that?”

Now, if you don’t know Jeremy, he isn’t a big guy. And by not a big guy, I mean about the size of your average middle-schooler. So his instructor says, “pick up your feet.” And he walks over to the door carrying Jeremy like a kid in one of those baby carriers.

“Are you ready? 1…2…3”

And suddenly I’m alone in the airplane with my instructor. We shuffle over to the door and stand at the edge. I can see Jeremy falling to the earth, already hundreds of feet away. I wait to hear the countdown, but we just stand there watching the others fall helplessly from 10,000 feet, reaching speeds of 120mph. Finally, he says the magic words, we lean forward, and it’s all down hill from there.
After falling for a minute or so, he pulls the ripcord. I can see the others drifting gently to the ground under their bright colored canopies. He gives me the handles and let’s me control our flight for a while. You can actually experience quite a few Gs if you get the parachute turned just right. Then he took back the controls and guided us down for a nice landing. Jeremy was on the ground already. We got unhooked and made our way to the barn, watching the freak-out girl come soaring down with her instructor. She was about to puke… which sort of ruined her boyfriend’s plans for a post-skydiving proposal, but I think it all probably worked out in the end.

We called our mothers and let them know we survived the experience – they were very appreciative – and then we bought some pictures as hard evidence of the adventure. I’d post it here, but I don’t know how.

But that’s the story of how we cheated death.