| A bit of brief background history. The following is an excerpt of a letter I wrote to a friend well over 10 years ago based on a skydiving trip I took one winter day with 9 classmates and a pathology professor. I labeled the relevant pages A Cartoon Guide to Skydiving, and they were accompanied by drawings and color, a feeble attempt at making my adventures more interesting. Unfortunately, I've neither a scanner nor digital camera (I'm a technophobe and fumblefingers, if you'll recall), so there's nothing to show you, art-wise or handwriting-wise, to mock. I've used '[image]' to convey where I had hand drawings.
That said, here it is.
A Cartoon Guide to Skydiving
See, this is what you're supposed to do:
1. The jump master tells you to, 'Get your feet out and stop':
- [image] Doorway of plane at 3000 ft; upwind from target. Your feet are parallel and knees bent into the wind (you are seated). 2. The jump master then tells you to, 'Get all the way out': - [image] a./ You 'walk' along the strut with your hands until both hands are on the dark (red) lines. - b./ To do this, you must hang onto the strut and let go of your legs off the step while you float on air. 3. The jump master says, 'Look up!' - [image] a./ You look up under the wing where there is a big red dot and say, 'Dot!' to let the jump master know you see it. - b./ You say, 'Go!' and let go of the strut. 4. You immediately assume a 'hard-X' position and count off 5 seconds [image]. 5. You immediately look over your right shoulder to check if your parachute has opened fully and without problems: - [image] If everything is okay, just relax and enjoy the view. - A person on the ground will radio instructions to you (although the jump master has already given you the directions you need beforehand) - It takes approximately 20 seconds from the plane to reach the ground if your parachute doesn't open. When you're in the sky, it feels like a very long time. Okay. That was what I was supposed to do. What actually happened to me is another story.... What really happened 1. I got through Step 1 okay, even though the wind was whooshing by legs... But, Step 2 got to be a problem... 2. [image] You see, as I placed both hands on the red lines, I had to get my legs off the step so I could float, right? Well, as I released my legs, the wind sucked me away so I bypassed Steps 3 and 4. Oh, boy! And then... 3. There I was [image of a cloud with the following words: We interrupt this program for an emergency broadcast test. Tune in next week and discover the exciting details of Tea and Books, etc's last jump, Part II: Did she make it safely?!]... Okay, okay, stop gnashing your teeth! It's bad for you, you know! I just know you're on the edge of your seat, 'dying' to hear the rest of the gory details, you gruesome horror-monger!... So, continuing where we left off... 3. There I was, staring up into the sky, oh, so blue, and only one sentence/thought flashed through my mind, 'Where's the popcorn?! And Patrick Swayze? [A reference to the movie Pointbreak, starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves, which I never saw but which was being advertised at the time.] Just kidding. What I actually thought was, 'OH, MY GOD!' and then I started counting. [image] I didn't know how long it was that I had fallen, so when I started counting, I guessed about 3 seconds had passed and counted from there. The hard-X position was totally forgotten. 4. I must have guessed right, because I said, '5000' (or actually thought it, since I never screamed or groaned. It all happened in my head, which was more scary!), the parachute opened and everything seemed okay. I don't remember if I checked it [for rips or tears or tangled lines] or not. [image] The radio squawked instructions to me and I enjoyed the ride. And then.... 5. As I was coming into landing, I couldn't pull the brake cords/toggles all the way down to my waist, but only to my chest, so I slowed down. But: [image] Instead of this (standing up) [image] I did this (landing on belly) Yep, that's right, I landed on my tummy. Fortunately, it was a soft landing (whether from the slowed parachute or my massive beer belly or the wet, snowy grass below, I don't know...) Hmm... but I don't drink beer... 6. And then I got up and said, 'When do we go up again?!' as I laughed my head off. (But then, like you said, I'm always laughing anyway...) Everyone came running and I got all these hugs! Boy, that felt good! 7. So, as I'm writing to you with these beautiful diagrams, which I have been assured are accurate, I am lying in the hospital with a broken pinky toenail! No, no, really. It's not that serious. Tee hee. Hmm... So, to make a long story short, I'm gonna go back again if I can. I sure liked it a lot better than skiing, and next on my agenda is scuba diving. (Yeah, from one extreme to the other, huh? Skydiving, scuba diving, moon diving....) I don't know when and I don't know how or where, but I'll let you know. Lastly on this, I did 3 things no else did: - I didn't wear a jumpsuit but my own sweatshirt and jeans; - I didn't float in the air like I was supposed to, but got sucked away; and - I didn't land on my feet (4 of 9), my tush (3 of 9), in another part of the region, 2 fields over (1 of 9), but on my stomach. Oh, and do you know what my mum said to me when I finally told her? She said, when I told her I'd jumped out of a plane, 'Oh, skydiving... That's not dangerous,' in a calm tone of voice. You see, I'd called her the night before and she knew that I was going to do something fairly dangerous, but she didn't know exactly what. So, when I called her the next night and she said what she did, my jaw reached the basement. [image] And I didn't even know she knew the term 'skydiving', although I knew she knew what it was! When I asked her why she didn't think it was dangerous, she said because she thought the equipment was pretty safe. Meanwhile, I'm standing, staring at the phone in disbelief! The funny thing is she had been guessing I went racing (race cars), skiing, etc, etc. Everything on land or water but not air! Hoo, boy! The End. Addendum One of my classmates did a wondrous thing. Before he left the plane, he proposed to his girlfriend, then waited till she landed to get her response (of course, she said yes). The rest of us heard about it on the ground, from the radios we still carried. The jump master relayed the proposal and the girlfriend's response, so we actually knew the answer before our classmate did. Another of my classmates left the plane and floated 2 fields over. Apparently her radio didn't work so she didn't have any idea which toggles to pull. Luckily, she was unharmed, but on the way back to her apartment, she was stopped by a cop for speeding. After she tearfully explained what a bad day she'd had, she was allowed to continue on her way, sans ticket. Addendum 4/27 To see the relevant scanned images of my letter, go here. |
Ho ho, beauty PT! I love the bit where you vanish from plane wing just as the jump master is drawing breath to shout 'Look up!' The poor man must have been aghast. I hope he didn't have heart trouble.
And I bet your Mum was [silently] fair laughing her head off on the other end of the phone at the thought of your expression. You surely didn't think she was being serious did you? Ho ho ho! Cheered me right up that has...
:)