A few years back I did a song called "Flying Without a Parachute" and I'm doing that more in my life now than I ever did but the literal history is that parachutes are one of the few things I didn't crash. "Flying Without a Parachute" evolved, sort of, into "I Love Rats" and I doubt I will ever get tired of playing that one. There's endless amusement for me that a song with such a ridiculous title has become one of my best-known.
This story involves another set of my young and stupid friends and, amazingly enough, you will find a similar cast in just about all of the stories. Even though my friends have been fairly bright fellows, testosterone overrides intelligence pretty much every time.
And so it was when we were sitting about thinking of something young and stupid to do with the day and the topic of skydiving arose. Usually when this subject comes up it will continue until someone comes up with a reason not to do it and that gives an out to everyone else ... but that didn't happen.
About six or us went out to the Waynesville Airport near Cincinnati which was a small place with a grass runway where there was a skydiving club and they did training for novices. I don't know which of us was genius enough to roll a joint before going out there but it was probably me. Jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft wasn't enough, we had to do it stoned to really prove ourselves.
The training was boring as training always is so I'll pick this story up from when we were stuffed into a Cessna to go up for the jump. I was sitting next to the pilot on the floor in the front facing the Jumpmaster and several of my friends were sitting behind him waiting for their chance at death.
It takes quite a long time to get up to three thousand feet to jump. A Cessna is an extremely-reliable aircraft but they aren't at all very fast. We did endless circles around the airport as we climbed to altitude. There might have been some nervous conversation between young men trying to sound brave despite being terrified but it was so loud inside the aircraft that no-one could hear much of anything. That wasn't anywhere near as loud as it was going to get, however.
When the Cessna got to altitude, it flew into the wind in a line that crossed over the airport. The Jumpmaster based the jump position on the wind speed so it would blow me back to where I started while I descended. As the aircraft approached that position, the Jumpmaster reached down to a handle on the door and opened it. This resulted in a huge bang as it slammed up against the wing and this did wonders for the terror we, or at least me, were already experiencing.
He shouted at me to take the position as the roar of the motor and the wind was quite loud and this was a clear prelude to death. There was no way out of it as riding back down again was not an available alternative. Once you get into the aircraft, you are definitely going to jump.
There's a strut that goes up to the wing over aircraft and I reached out to grab it to pull myself out there. At the same time, I slid my boot down another strut that went down to the wheel. This found my right foot not very happily flapping in space. And there I waited for the signal.
When we reached the jump position, the Jumpmaster signalled me it was time to go. I found my feet were willing but my hands were not. This gave the effect of one's laundry on a windy day as I flapped behind the upper strut, hanging on for dear life. This may have been when I realised there were many scratches in the strut which I then decided I had been put there by the fingernails of previous jumpers.
Picture the moment. If you haven't been skydiving, the closest you can come to this is when you're looking out of the window of a commercial aircraft as it goes through its descent over a city. It looks like you're very high up but this is well below three thousand feet. From that altitude, cars are tiny and you realise you won't soon be on the ground but rather you will be part of it.
Eventually I came to the conclusion there was really no option but to let go and this is when I experienced the purest terror of anything I have ever known in my life. I've done some scary things in my life but this went way past anything else, way, way past.
You're supposed to assume the 'arch position' after you jump and this is when you arch your back with your arms and legs outstretched. This will give you the greatest stability and control over the fall until the parachute opens, assuming it opens. But, noooo, I didn't do that.
Some instinct kicked active and I started flailing, presumably trying to 'swim' back into the aircraft. This started me tumbling and I was spinning around multiple axes, totally out of control. This didn't make me any more scared as I was so terrified already that nothing could have increased it.
You don't have to pull the ripcord as your first jump will be on a static line which attaches you back to the aircraft. After it has reached full extension, it pulls the ripcord for you and the parachute opens. Voila, you're a bird.
As I imagine you have already guessed, it wasn't quite that easy. I was upside-down and backwards when the parachute opened so this meant the parachute shrouds (i.e. the strings up to the 'chute) went through my legs and behind me. When the parachute was full open, I was flung all the way back around to vertical in a way I would have previously judged to be impossible.
And then there was the most incredible quiet. There was the most beautiful peace as I stopped thinking about the ground and a quite-revolting death. There was only a slight rippling from the silk of the parachute that's a bit like the sound on a sailboat but so much softer. I regained my composure pretty quickly at that point and remembered the controls as there are two lines above your head that open and close two cutouts on the back of the parachute. By pulling one of them, it will close that cutout and this will steer you in that direction. Release that and close the other one and you will steer back. Man, I was flying!
This is one of the most glorious experiences one can ever possibly taste. Combine losing your virginity with the imminent threat of death. Suddenly your virginity, which you didn't want anyway, is gone and you realise you're not going to die. You're flying far above the ground and without any concern for it because it's still so far away that it just doesn't matter.
In time you do have to start thinking of the ground as it would be best to land on actual ground rather than a lake or, better yet, a road. It would so much suck to land successfully and then drown or, to be really classic, to get run over by a car.
The landing isn't as bad as you might think. The Army surplus parachutes which most training sites used back then come down more quickly than the sport parachutes people use today and that gives a bit of a bump but they teach you in training how to roll out of it.
Despite all the terror, maybe the first thought when you get back on the ground is, man, I have GOT to do that again.
I did keep jumping for a while but then I had another thought: what if the parachute opened but the harness connecting it to me broke. I would have the situation in which there was a perfectly-opened parachute above me while I fell to Earth without it. In freefall you will reach a terminal velocity of about 200 mph or 300 kph and this is how you will hit the ground. KA-BOOM!
So ended my skydiving career.
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