the highest of highs

[petrina]

I received an email last night from someone asking me to write about my skydiving experiences because he/she was going for his/her first jump soon. It's weird, I didn't think I had anymore readers that I didn't also know in real life; changing blog addresses every few months / not updating for weeks at a time tends to shake off most recurring casual visitors.

So anyway it's 4.30 am and I've tried but I can't sleep, so I guess I'll indulge "anonymous", IF THAT IS INDEED YOUR REAL NAME. It's been about 3-4 years since the last time I jumped, and I'm not up to writing a coherent narrative at this time of night, so here are some of my strongest impressions and memories. Which are the bits you need to know, anyway.

• The first time I skydived (sky...dove? Okay maybe not, that sounds like a bird) solo, I was terrified. I reckon it's because they're all old hats at it and hardly notice anymore, but the jumpmasters don't tell you the important little things you need to know before your first jump. Things like "the wind will be ridiculously, unimaginably strong up there". That's important. Well alright, maybe not as important as how to land or which handle to pull to deploy your chute, but important nonetheless, okay!?
  
  
• You feel really alone. You're packed thigh to thigh, butt cheek to butt cheek, but at some point during the ascent you can't hear anyone anymore, you can't even see their faces because everyone has their goggles on and anyway you're not facing each other. It's just you, the increasing coldness, the deafening drone of the plane's engine, and the wind. Oh, the wind.
  
  
• And oh, the plane is scary. I mean seriously, "this is it, this is where I'm going to die" scary. I don't know what the planes are like elsewhere, but the planes we used in Malaysia were old, rickety, swayed horrifyingly with every gust of wind that hit, and threatened to vibrate themselves apart upon takeoff and landing.
  
  
• The worst part is not letting go. Contrary to Hollywood and expectations, you don't just fling yourself suavely out from the door of the plane before you're licensed. You have to clamber out from the plane and onto a pedal outside the plane while holding on to the wing before you release. That means your body is fully outside the plane. And you know how I've mentioned the insanity that is the wind in every paragraph preceding this? Yeah.
  
  
• This process is going to be pretty difficult to describe in words, but here goes. The door is located directly behind the left wing of the plane. When it's your turn to go, you scoot over to the door and sit facing backwards. So the door is on your right side and the wing is behind you. At that point, after one last safety check, you get the signal from your instructor and you stick your right hand out the plane. Now, in theory, this is the part where you're supposed to reach out for the wing. In reality, it turns out this is the part where the wind picks your hand up like a stick in a hurricane and tries to break it against the door frame.
  
  Okay so because I'm kinda small and possibly also because of THE CRAZY WIND, I have trouble reaching the front of the wing to hang on. Anyway, eventually I make it, and I also get my foot on the pedal outside the plane. So imagine, I'm still facing the back of the plane, and the right half of my body is kinda hanging out of it. My arm's sorta extended behind me, holding on to the wing, and my foot's on a pedal outside the door. Got all that? Because here comes the hard part. I'm supposed to swing my left side out of the plane and turn against the wind so I'm entirely on the wing and facing forward. I don't think any HTML tag will be able to convey how incredibly difficult I found this. The wind is like a physical presence up there. An angry one. And while bringing yourself into "the position", there is a point where the only thing that's keeping you attached to the plane is... your right hand.
  
  
• AND I'M LEFT-HANDED.
  
  
• The first time I did this, my jumpmaster had to push me. I didn't have enough strength or momentum or courage, I don't know, so he had to shove me in the back so I could get my left hand on the wing too.
  
  
• So you've made it, you're clinging onto the wing (which, by the way, is too broad for me to curl my fingers around in a comforting enough grip), your feet are squeezing onto the tiny pedal, and your jumpmaster gives you the signal to jump. I should probably also mention here that it's not very easy to uncurl your tightly clenched fingers from the wing, because well, 1) fear, and 2) it's a motion that goes against the wind. YOU CANNOT DEFY THE WIND.
  
  
• No, seriously, the wind plasters your fingers down something fierce.
  
  
• The moment you let go, the plane falls away impressively fast. Free-falling is... a lot faster than you'd expect.
  
  
• Assuming the correct position once you're in the air is not that difficult if you keep calm, in my opinion. Okay I think my instructors called it the alpha position, but I can't be sure. But I'm sure you all know what position I'm referring to, right? Right. So in all the times I jumped I only messed up the position once (I failed that jump), but messing up does screw you over pretty badly. You tumble and lose altitude crazy quick, and if you lose your head and you're alone, well... that's just no good.
  
  
• Once you hit terminal velocity though, that's totally excellent. It feels like you're floating, except your altimeter is registering alarming drops in altitude the whole time. Don't indulge too much though, if you do the AFF course and don't make a point of checking your altimeter every few seconds, you will hear no end of it from your jumpmasters when you get back on land.
  
  
• Deploying is a little painful. I don't know if I don't get my harness on tightly enough or something, but I always get bruises from that.
  
  
• Now, I probably should have expected this, because I was pretty lousy at Where's Waldo as a kid, but I am not good at spotting the drop zone within the time expected. I blame it on the fact that the landscape around the jump site is all this reddish-brown rock that's exactly the same colour as the running track surface of the drop zone. One of the other students landed himself about 10km away in the middle of a golf course though, I've never done that.
  
  
• Your jumpmasters might try to make you do corkscrews on the way down. Don't if you can avoid it. They say it's fun, but really, it's just nauseating. Personally I think they do this because corkscrews make you lose altitude faster, they simply don't want to wait for every student to drift slowly down.
  
  
• Timing your landing is important. You get radio assistance from another jumpmaster the first few times you jump. It's so new jumpers don't inadvertently fly back to Singapore or land themselves in the ocean and drown. It's also how the instructions to do corkscrews come through. The person talking to you controls your first few landings on top of that, giving you an idea of when to pull in your 'chute, etc (it's all very well saying "pull in at 1-2 metres above ground", but you really do need help working out what that looks like from above. The altimeter doesn't help much for that part).
  
  The second time I jumped, some dickhead was doing the radio-assist, and told me to pull in way before I was supposed to. I ended up falling flat on my face and front from 1 metre in the air. It hurt like fuck all, and I had a radio shaped bruise on my chest for a week after. Later on you're expected to land yourself (of course), do it wrong and you'll break a knee. Or so they say.
  
  
• I grin like a loon for 3 days after I jump. It's a great natural high, I would venture to say the best I've ever experienced. Nothing I've ingested, inhaled, or done has ever lasted 3 days, is all I'm saying.
  
  

Anyway if you're curious (and I can't see why you wouldn't be, after 1400 boring words on this subject), I'm not licensed, I stopped about 2/3rds of the way into the course for a number of reasons. I would probably have to start from scratch if I ever took it up again, more for safety's sake than anything else. I don't think the Singapore organisers jump in Malaysia anymore, if I'm not wrong they shifted to Indonesia. I have no idea why, but I'm not too keen on jumping there. Oh well.

Okay I'm sleepy now. I have a bunch of great stories I haven't gone into (like the one where my friend hallucinated during her free-fall), but I have to wake up in about 4 hours so too bad. Hope this helped, whoever you are!

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