Afraid Again---My Sky Dive

Transcription

1 Afraid Again---My Sky Dive My first thought was, Oh, shit! There won t be any cancellation on account of weather today. The weather had been damp and overcast all week, but on that Sunday morning, I awoke to brilliant sunlight pouring through my windows. The sky was azure without a wisp of a cloud. Any no-fault cancellation now seemed very dubious. I was going to have to place my aging body and rapidly diminishing will power where my youthfully obstreperous mouth had been. After so brashly announcing an eightieth birthday sky dive to family and friends on the world-wide internet, it would be unthinkable to chicken out for any reason short of an incapacitating heart attack or stroke. While dressing to go the sky diving facility at the small local airfield, I reminisced about my first parachute jump when I was a thirty two year old Army captain. In those days, most officers went to airborne school immediately after commissioning. I was doing it ten years later. And now, after nearly a half century, I was going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane again when most people my age were contemplating more geriatrically suitable activities. When it came to parachuting, I was definitely

2 a late bloomer. My thoughts returned to that first frightening jump. It was from an old C-123 Flying Boxcar from an altitude of 1500 feet. My stomach knotted as I thought about today s jump from 13,500 feet. Another 500 feet and we would have to wear oxygen masks! The military jump was a static line jump. The Individual static lines were hooked up in the airplane and pulled out the parachute as you went through the door. Today would be a tandem jump. I was wearing a harness that would be hooked to Tony, my instructor. He was wearing the altimeter and he would make all the decisions, particularly when to open the parachute. Sitting on the floor of the aircraft while we climbed to jump altitude, Tony hooked me to his harness. We became a tandem pair. From that point, wherever he went, I went. When he left the airplane, he would take me with him, whether I wanted to go or not. Walking to the aircraft, I passed my friends sitting on the small set of bleachers next to the converted hangar that housed the sky diving club. They had come to watch me jump, and waited patiently through the three hour weather delay caused by the high winds which had come up as the morning temperatures warmed. As I passed, they cheered, pumped fists, and gave me thumbs up. Unlike Pocono Raceway fans who thought it was a bad day at the track if there wasn t a multicar pileup, they weren t there to

3 see me clobber in and become gelatinous fertilizer. They were there as only friends can be witnesses to such personally important events and to strengthen my resolve to persevere. I yelled that I would be under a rainbow-colored parachute, and hoped they would be able to see what was happening. As I waited for the airplane to reach altitude, I intuitively knew that the physical thrill of sky diving would ultimately ebb; that the psychological stimulation of facing up to uncertainty would gradually retreat; and, that the sense of triumph would diminish over time. But, I was absolutely certain that the unconditional friendship I experienced that day would never fade from my memory. Tony and I would be the first pair out. The red jump warning light went on. We stood and, together, we shuffled to the opened exit ramp at the rear of the airplane, I looked down at the terrain now more than two miles beneath me. I might as well have been looking down on the earth from the moon or while standing on some orbiting satellite. It seemed otherworldly! I saw the warning light go green and heard Tony count down from three to two to one. I felt Tony toppling forward and we were out. My only thought was to do what Tony had told me to do, maintain a tight body posture, pulling my arms in close to my body by grasping my harness. For a few brief moments we were falling head first, but Tony

4 stabilized us by deploying the small umbrella-sized drogue chute. I extended my arms and we were diving through the sky. What might have been terrifying was now indescribably glorious. I felt I was on a rapidly moving river of air, as if I were on a hovercraft. I could feel the wind pressure rippling my facial skin, and I marveled that there was no sensation of falling. For about a minute, we sky dived through 8000 feet of altitude at 120 mph doing some acrobatic flips and spins just for fun, but mainly flying in a prone position. Tony deployed the main parachute at about 5000 feet for that last mile of eerily silent and relatively tame maneuvering, gently floating under the rainbow-colored canopy. By manipulating a pair of extensions to the parachute risers, we could actually steer the parachute toward a precise landing on the grassy area beside the runway where we had taken off. Back in the early 1960 s, military parachutes were not nearly so steerable. The jumper was more or less at the mercy of the winds, particularly the wind speed and direction at ground level. It soon became apparent that the landing would be the most significant difference between military and sport parachuting. In the military, much of the training concentration is on parachute landing fall techniques. It is critical to land (i.e., hit the ground) in a prescribed way to compensate

5 for the shock of thumping into the ground while moving at about 30 mph. At the other extreme, at the moment of landing, the sport parachute can be slowed to near-zero speed to allow even a standing landing or at least a soft landing on one s rear. The more copious the rear end, the less bumpy the landing. The effects of a sky dive last far longer than the few minutes of the actual descent, and they are far more profound than the mere physical sensations associated with falling from a great height. For me, it became a rare opportunity in my senior life. It was another chance to challenge facing fear and overcoming that fear. It was an invaluable experience at a time of life when reactions to challenges are too often the jaded and pathetically inadequate, Been there, done that. On my eightieth birthday I jumped out of an airplane at 13,500 feet. It was a free fall, a sky dive and an exhilarating plunge. Considering all the wonderful, joyous, and totally rational things one might do to celebrate a milestone birthday, a sky dive was probably a dumb thing to do. But, what the hell, when it was over, it was far and away the most thrilling thing I have ever done. It was also the most frightening! The total sky diving experience was well worth suffering any of its inherent physical or mental discomforts. While the thrill of meeting the challenge was indisputably memorable, the

6 unequivocally essential value of sky diving on my eightieth birthday was the utter defeat of personal demons, a celebration of comradeship, and the reinvigoration of inner strength. It was exactly that electrifying combination of a heart-pounding adrenalin rush, emotional inspiration, and gut-wrenching fear that resulted in a perplexing and completely unanticipated result. Since I had so auspiciously begun my eightieth year, entering the winter of my life with such a uniquely stimulating experience, what could I possibly do to reclaim the spirit of adventure that pervaded the sky diving experience? How could I ever top the experience, or was it too late in life to worry about? It was a question I never expected. Ernie Dublisky