Into the Wild Blue Yonder

In anticipation of the upcoming three-day weekend, I told Ed we should plan to do something fun. I suggested wine tasting on Long Island or perhaps a day hike somewhere. The next thing I knew, he had booked us two tickets to Vegas and suggested that our activities there include a skydiving trip. Without really thinking, I replied that I'd always wanted to go skydiving. I had, but I'd filed it away in the "someday" category, meaning that I sort of thought it might be fun but hadn't thought much about it. To my delight and horror, Ed took my response as a resounding "yes" and booked us spots on a Sunday morning skydiving trip in the desert outside Vegas. It all happened terrifyingly quickly. I learned, though, that with some things it's best not to have too much time to think.

A van picked us up at the MGM Grand, along with a British guy and two Brazilians, at 10:00 on Sunday morning, and we were off. Our driver put on a video for us to watch during the drive, which gave us very dire warnings about all the ways we could possibly be horribly maimed or killed, then assured us we were going to have a great time anyway. We watched as we copied our initials over and over again at the end of each paragraph of a ridiculously lengthy waiver. Ed grinned at me. "I usually read this stuff really carefully, but I figure that if anything goes wrong I'll be dead anyway and so it won't matter whether I want to sue," he said cheerfully.

Once at the facility next to a tiny airport, we donned jumpsuits and harnesses and were given a one-minute tutorial on what to do by our instructors. (Brian: Cross your arms and bend your knees under the plane when we jump out, when I tap your shoulder, hold your arms out, put your feet up as we land. Questions? No? Good.) Brian was taking another guy up before me, so Ed and I settled on a couch to wait. A TV played a continuous series of parachuting videos, and after watching 15 or 20 of them, it started to look like jumping out of a plane was a pretty normal thing to do. Brian and the rest of the crew returned about half an hour later, everyone looking wind-blown and the customers looking elated. Brian gave a concerned tug at my harness, which was so loose that it kept sliding off my shoulders. "Too bad," he said. "We use a one-size-fits-all harness, so I guess it's going to have to work. I'm just glad mine fits better than that." And he wandered off to collect another chute, leaving me to look bleak while everyone else laughed.

Too soon, he called my name and I joined Ed and the Brazilians in what felt like a death march to the tiny plane. I sat between Brian's knees on the floor at the back, while he alternately made small talk to help me relax and terrifying jokes. When I asked if we were going first, he said, "Yup. See, I'm still kind of new to this, so I have to be supervised at all times." Then, in answer to my silence, "No, just kidding, I have more jumps than everyone in this plane put together, but I'm the lead jumper so I have to figure out where we need to jump out." This was somewhat comforting. To our right was a row of windows, and to the left was a door that slid upwards, much like a garage door, made of some kind of clear plastic. "Does it make you nervous being so close to the door?" Brian wanted to know. "Nope," I said, clinging to the bench next to me. "Good. What about if I do this?" He reached down and yanked the door upward, so there was nothing between us and the sky but air. I said that it didn't really, but the thought that we were about to jump out of it was a little unnerving. He laughed. "We're really high," I observed tentatively. "Yeah, we're about halfway there," he replied. Gulp.

Too soon again, we reached 15,000 feet, and Brian handed me my goggles, tightened my harness to a reassuring strangle-hold, and clipped me to his harness with two clips at the shoulder and two at the hip. Then the door opened, he scooted us forward, and I barely had time to mutter a string of expletives and hear Ed scream "Yeah Beth!" before we were out, free falling. In the video, Brian counts to three before we jump. I don't remember this.

I totally know how this dog feels.

It's hard to say which thought entered my head first. I was thinking that I had really gone through with it and that I had screamed, but not too much (and so maybe I wouldn't look like a total idiot on the camera) and that it was COLD and quite uncomfortable. The wind was absolutely blasting my face, and if I opened my mouth my cheeks filled with air. Ed, a veteran jumper with one successful plummet under his belt, told me that it didn't feel much like falling after the first few seconds. It did to me, not so much because of the physical sensation but because I could see the landscape approaching. Then there was a sudden, upward yank - not too hard but very steady and somehow reassuring. I thought, that must be the parachute opening, and then I realized that the scary part was really over. I looked up and sure enough, the chute had worked and now all that was left was to float to the bottom.

Not so, thankfully. Brian handed me two cords and told me to yank one as hard as I could, and suddenly we were spinning in a tight, fast circle. It was a fantastic feeling, and after a moment he told me to yank on the left cord, which sent us in the other direction. I commented that the whole thing had happened really fast, and he said that they do it that way on purpose so that people don't have time to think, which tends to make them scared. Good technique (although you can hear the Brazilian in Ed's video screaming a blue streak before he jumps, anyway. He was way wussier than I was). Then he pointed out California and I watched the cars on the nearby highway, the mountains growing bigger and bigger, and our landing site, which Brian expertly steered us toward. We touched down into a pit of pea gravel lightly and I hopped up in time to see the other three jumpers land around me.

I learned afterwards that the emergency chute is used only once in every 1,500 jumps, and that while an expert packer can load a chute in about 15 minutes, it takes 2.5 hours to load an emergency chute. All of this would have been comforting to know about before, but it was nice to hear that, counterintuitive as it may seem, I was actually in very little danger. I would absolutely do it again.

Here are three video clips:

1: Me, with the skin on my face rippling like it's hardly attached. 

2: Video Ed found of a girl on YouTube, whose face is WAY worse than mine.

3: Ed, looking ecstatic and totally calm. Hmph.