I’m officially grounded for the winter. No more jumps until April, when it’s warmer and not windy.

I tired yesterday…too windy.

Today? It’s snowing outside.

This weekend was a dud for jumping out of planes, as it was too windy, so I only have this week and weekend left to complete four jumps and finish my AFF course before the dropzone shuts up shop for the winter.

Not sure it’s going to happen.

Hi all

Just to formally announce that despite my nutsack related drama a couple of years ago, Lynda is 15 weeks pregnant. So the little troupers still march in military fashion.

Needless to say we’re delighted. Might have another house party where we can put the blackboard out the back again and summarily ignore all the baby name suggestions attached thereon.

All jokes about red-headed babies and stern words with Paschal aside, we’re due in April.

Ain’t life like a box of chocolates?

Dr Dave

It’s time I admitted it, I have barely slept a wink since I started skydiving. I’m either thinking about the last jump, or the next. I thinking about what could have gone wrong, or what may go wrong, or about what I have to do.

I think part of it is test anxiety, because the jumps are sort of like a driving test.

Well, today I failed, miserably.

I arrived at three today and barely anyone was at the dropzone, so we went up in a Cessna. Not only is it, in my mind, a more complicated exit, but you exit lower, since it can only climb to 11,000 feet. So, I’m already a little rankled. I’m supposed to turn toward the jumpmaster, track toward him, then do a 360.

Exit was fine, I stabilise fine, get my thumbs up, then turn

the wrong way.

Simplifying it loads, to turn, you sort of do the airplane thing: head and arms dip the same way. I turned my head the right way, but not my arms. I’m turning the wrong way, and I don’t know why, so in trying to correct it, it gets worse. A few seconds later, I’m spinning like a screaming banshee.

Admittedly, in the midst of my annoyance, I noted that it was actually sort of fun, but no matter, the jumpmaster had to re-dock.

He moves away and gives me an emphatic sign for “relax”. I’m stable now, and I nod and begin another turn, and do the SAME BLOODY THING!

He re-docks and it’s pulling time, so I head on down, in softer winds this time, cursing myself. When I get down he tells me exactly what I did, and the fact that I have to take the jump again. When I walked inside, Kerry said “Stevie you where standing out there with your head bowed. Did something go wrong?”

Well yeah, but it could’ve been much worse…

Category C was a wee bit strange. I arrived at the dropzone at 8:30 this morning and was in the air by 8:45. I exited fine and was fully let go of by the jumpmasters, Kerry and Nick.

It’s sort of like daddy letting go of the bicycle seat. I had a little right turn that I would correct then let happen again, and they grabbed, let go, grabbed, just like I was learning to cycle. It was just me and them in the clouds: pure white, sometimes even they were a little hazy.

Before we went up, Kerry mentioned that the wind speed was forecast at 40 mph at the higher altitudes, which as a student, I’m more susceptible to, since I pull further up than everyone else. “But,” he said, “Don’t worry, it’s never that bad.”

Dead on, mate. Remember, I’m not supposed to jump when ground windspeed is 12 mph or higher. By the time I opened and checked my canopy, I knew then and there I was not going to make it. I was slightly upwind of the dropzone, heading into the wind, and was being blown backwards, a lot. Miles confirmed it on the radio: “Stevie, you’re in for your longest walk yet.”

Sure enough, I was moving, fast. I crabbed over west to get away from the town and looked over my shoulder to pick a spot. I ended up skating over trees into a harvested cornfield at a right angle to the wind, and came to rest with a nice, muddy arse-slide. Then I had a good laugh.

Of course, in my concentration on landing safely, I wasn’t looking for a way back to a main road, so I had to trudge through a few fields before I found what can only be described as a massive heap of shite. There were tracks leading away from it, and feeling assured that I was getting to know the Baldwin area and its cornfields intimately, and reasoning that the other end of the tracks couldn’t be much worse, I headed in that direction, and sure enough, found a main thoroughfare, where a nice middle-aged gentleman offered me a lift. He was hanging around, waiting to pick his kid up from jail. I found out when I got back that Kerry had taken the Cessna up trying to find me. As I was leaving today, John said “Well Stevie, three jumps, two landings off the dropzone. A baptism of fire.” Too right, and for Abby too. She had to drive 45 minutes out of her way because i lost my car-door clicker in my ungraceful landing, or freefall, or somewhere in my sojourn across the American cereal landscape.

Forget all that though, I haven’t mentioned the best bit. At 6000 feet, as I got ready to pull, the clouds suddenly opened up. It was like someone turning the brightness down on a white TV screen, and there was God’s good earth. This was my view when I pulled the ripcord and dropped out of the clouds as my canopy opened. This stuff just keeps getting better and better.

Right then, category B.

As I was getting on to the plane, Kerry shouted in front of everyone: “So Stevie, this large green area here is called the dropzone, not the corn over there.” Cheers, big-lad.

Same exit as before, except John didn’t crack his knee this time. I noticed I was dipping to the left right away, and it wasn’t until I realized that John was only holding on with one hand this time, that I knew how to correct it.

I tracked forward for four seconds, did a 180 turn, and pulled at 5500 feet.

This time I was able to actually look around and see just how beautiful the world is at that height. All together: From a distance, the world is blue…oh who cares.

Anyway, I did a few turns and apart from a little correction from Kerry on approach, I made it right to the dropzone for a nice little landing on my feet.

The best bit? I still had the bloody ripcord.

Or plummet more like.

So I’m standing in my fetching black red and blue jumpsuit, replete with grab handles for my two jumpmasters, Kerry and John (the owners of Skydive Twin Cities, which is in Baldwin Wisconsin for some reason), when Kerry (a bloke) looks behind my pack and says “Awww fuck”

Not a good start.

It was packed wrong apparently, but at least he noticed. Not long after this debacle, I get onto the plane and sit down with my customary thud. A sharp intake of breath from all the experienced jumpers. I might have damaged my ripcord mechanism, but it’s ok.

Still not going great.

The plane takes off and I watch as my altimeter spins slowly upward. John says, “So Stevie, what do you do?” Really? We’re having this conversation right now? “Well John, I’m a juvenile probation officer and an amateur filmmaker, and I do all of that ON THE BLOODY GROUND!”

We level off at 5000 feet to let some nutters off, then climb on to 13,000. John and I go over what I’m supposed to do, including not throwing away the ripcord. I remind myself to not do that, as I’m financially responsible for it. The plane levels off and Kerry shouts at me, “Are you ready to skydive?”. No, actually, I’m not, but let’s carry on regardless. I hold my goggles up to stop them from misting over and slowly move toward the door. We are really bloody high, and the wind is fierce, but I know if I stop moving, I’ll not go at all.

I hold onto the bar and crouch foot over foot along the edge, look inside at John and say “Check in”. A nod. Outside at Kerry and shout “Check out”. Another nod. Now I look at the prop make a little bounce as my signal that I’m about to jump, then the three of us leap out together as I watch the plane peel away.

Words cannot express the wonder or the adrenalin rush or the isolation that I felt. There was nothing, nothing for thousands of feet in every directions but these two middle aged blokes hanging onto me. It was amazing.

Unfortunately, there were two things I was unaware of at this point in time. One: the winds had gusted up to 26 mph, conditions that I would not have been allowed to get on the plane in. Two: John had cracked his knee a beauty on the floor of the plane upon exit, and by his own admission, was “zoned out” during the first part of the freefall.

Anyway, what I didn’t know hadn’t hurt me, yet. I check my altimeter: 11,000 feet. I look to John. Thumbs up, my posture is good. I complete my practice pulls, a weird gesture that looks something akin to the merengue: left hand palm-out over the head, right hand palm-in over the hip.

9000 feet. John gives a thumbs up for the practice pulls. Now I’ve got time to enjoy the fact that I’m hurtling toward the ground at 120 miles per hour. Kerry said later, he thought that since we had plenty of time, he’d give me some trim (control yourself, Marty) and tighten up my posture, so he gives me the sign for straightening my legs: the V sign. But, because he’s doing it, I don’t get it. “What does he mean by two?” I ask myself. John eventually shakes me and does the same thing. Now I get it.

6000 feet. Time to lock into the altimeter, and watch it go to 5500. I make two waves behind my head and pull. John and Kerry disappear…

…and so does MY BLOODY RIPCORD! God dammit, that’s twenty bucks, or worse still, four pints.

I had let it go in my instinct to grab my harness during opening shock. Oh well, time to check the canopy and pull out my brakes. There’s an end cell closure, a minor malfunction that is dragging my parachute to the right, but otherwise I’m good. I listen to my radio and the dude on the ground tells me to do a slow 360 degree right turn (nice, that will fix the closure) and that I’m directly above the dropzone.

Wait a minute, I’m supposed to be west of the dropzone, so I can go downwind and turn into the airstream for my landing. I’m drifting north-west all the time. This is a result of the strong winds and possibly the crippled John letting me drift during the freefall.

The radio crackles. “Stevie, you are not going to reach the dropzone. Repeat: you are not going to reach the dropzone. Find a safe place to land.” Not a problem, disembodied voice man, I’ll use the vast seconds of my experience in controlled parachuting to effect an efficient and safe landing, shall I? Not to mention I’m currently above a housing estate. He tells me to keep going straight and I’ll make it to the field next to the dropzone. I don’t think I’m going to make it past the houses so I think, “Up yours, mate. I’m off to the corn”. Kerry told me later that was the best thing to do: “They can’t see what you see, and they’re only guides, not your boss”. So I turn with the wind at 1000 feet and make it out of the houses, toward a corn field, then a right angle at 600 and again at 300. Now I’m slow against the airstream. The cornstalks are confusing, as they screw up my perception of where the ground is, so I flare just above them and land in a not so graceful but uninjured tumble.

Thankfully, I remember where I am in conjunction to the dropzone, so I wrap up the chute and trudge out of the corn and across a muddy field. Some dude comes up on a quad and says “Why in the hell you way out here?” First jump, mate. Sorry. He points to the edge of the field and says “I blame him”. Kerry is standing at the edge of the housing estate by his car. He shouts “How was that Stevie?”

It must have been good, as I’m going to try to do my category B tomorrow.

So, I spent the day learning about how to do a skydive on my own, to the point that I could identify canopy malfunctions by picture and say how to fix them.

Unfortunately, as i was in the accelerated free fall class, where I jump out with two blokes holding on to me, while I do everything myself, I was not allowed to jump, since the wind speed was too high.

Abby could jump because she was doing a tandem jump, where all she had to do was scream. As I was waiting on the ground for her orange parachute, I realized that the last jumper had come down, and she was nowhere to be found.

I got really worried, because obviously, she had lost her nerve, and would be embarrassed and in need of delicate comfort. However, as I watched the plane land, I saw an orange parachute off in the distance.

The cloud cover was low, and although Abby’s tandem master was experienced, he had not jumped at this particular jumpzone much, so bless him, he got lost….

with my girlfriend.

A few fields away…

A bit of good news. Despite the end turning into an episode of Law and Order, my final student script “Loner’s Club” was nominated for a Production Excellence award at school and won.

$1000 for doing what i had to do for school anyway. Not bad.