Well, it’s been over a year since my first skydive, and almost a year since i have posted at all.

Brian has shamed me yet again, so I thought it was time for an update, and not just about the skydiving.

On my birthday, i tried to get back into it. Some might remember that i had progressed as far as a Category D, where i had to turn and do some forward movement, but i had ballsed it up due to going into a spin. My birthday jump didn’t go much better. It’s the perfect proof that skydiving is very much a physical thing. It was as if i had just learned to sit on a bike without stabilisers, then not gotten on it for 6 or 7 months and tried to cycle again. Read as: i did shite. I kept looking OVER my right shoulder to the JM (Jumpmaster) and therefore dropped my left, spinning to the right.

For a couple of months i made excuses not to go to the dropzone, and kept putting it off, discouraged by my lack of progress. Then, at the start of August, i made a decision, i would spend an entire week there, every day after work, and get the stupid AFF course done, no matter how long, or how much money, it took……………

I began on a Sunday and realised right away that i was my own worst enemy. When i wasn’t thinking about things i would just do them. Once, when i had just corrected a spin, i thought “Where’s Miles?”, and without thinking, performed a perfectly controlled turn to find him. Kerry confirmed my suspicion by mentioned that i tried and tried again to do a barrel roll, then stopped thinking it about it and just did it; most of the anxiety i felt about jumping was performance related.

However, that night I was cleared off radio and did my final jump. I leaped out any old how, did a frontloop, a backloop, a barrel-roll, two 360’s and a five second track, without breaking a sweat, then landed nicely on my feet as the sun was setting. Kerry asked me “do you realise what you just did?” When i shook my head, he said, “You just jumped out of an aircraft, all by yourself, then showed control in free-fall with no one near you, deployed your parachute and landed without any help from anyone… You’re a skydiver, dude!” I could now jump solo, or with a coach. It’s hard to express how good that felt. Skydiving is certainly not an athletic sport, but it is a sport no doubt, and i was finally progressing in one. Me, drama-boy!

Nowadays, doing these things is like lifting a cup of tea, i don’t think about it, but the journey had only just begun. I now had to get my A-License, and there was all sorts of other stuff to learn in the next 15 jumps:

- Dive a minimum of 100 feet after another jumper and dock safely without assistance from the other jumper (twice).
- Do a group skydive and show i can break off, track cleanly away and deploy safely.
- Do a Hop n’ Pop at 3500 feet. In other words, dive out and pull within five seconds.
- Show i can control the canopy, not only with brake toggles, but the four (two front, two back) “risers” and land safely, and within 20 meters of the target, on at least five jumps.
- Be able to accurately inspect very single piece of the equipment I’m using, on my rig and everyone else’s, and pack my own parachute (and jump with it!).
- Using headings, lengths, cloud clearance, visibility, and winds aloft forecasts, tell the plane exactly when to let the jumpers out.
- Know all the safety shit.
- Demonstrate free-fall control on all axes, with a backloop, front loop, and barrel roll, in a “check dive” (The practical)
- Complete an oral exam (The theory)

I know, a lot. Swoop and docks i fucked up twice. It’s bloody hard. This is mainly because the exit from an aircraft is a total mindfuck. Basically, due to prop blast, normal wind, but mostly because of the “relative wind” created by the forward throw of the aircraft, you feel like you’re being horizontally blasted backward by air when you exit. Over the course of the first few seconds, this reverts to the vertical relative wind coming from below, created by gravity zipping you toward terminal velocity. Skydivers call this “riding the hill”, and it’s difficult to get used to. Took me a while to “present” correctly and not end up in a ball. You do this by simply stepping out into a star shape, perpendicular to the plane. If you’re diving after someone else, it’s even more complicated, as you dive head backward, parallel to the aircraft, with your heels toward your arse, so you don’t get flipped over. Bored yet? Don’t blame you.

Hop n’ Pops were another story. You do one at five grand, then 3500. Took me two goes at the five, as i did the ball thing on the first. Let me tell you something, 3500 feet looks a lot bloody lower than the thirteen grand i was used to. I was SHTTIN ‘em.

Add to all of this that i got a “Bootie” suit, which has specially designed legs that direct air and give you even more control, and it was a tall order. I also progressed to a throw-out pilot chute (instead of a spring-loaded one with a ripcord), and had to remember to let go instead of hold on to it, and I now had two emergency handles instead of one. Nonetheless, come my 25th jump, Kerry stamped a great big A on my forehead, and i happily sipped the Stella that tradition dictated i buy, with my new buddies.

Then it got really hard.

Up until this time, i had all sorts of attention in getting me to my goal. Now i had to go around and sheepishly ask people to jump with me. Imagine you’re at the bar, sitting around with your mates, and some bloke you know but don’t really comes up and asks to join the pool game, but he’s got a rented cue, no chalk, doesn’t know the rules of the game, expects you to pay for yourself, and when he manages to hit one of the balls, he scratches. Would you want to play with him? Not to mention that the learning curve is so high. I have fifty jumps now, and my total free-fall time is around 43 minutes. Imagine trying to learn ANYTHING in 43 minutes! Thankfully, most people hadn’t forgotten what it was like to be a student, and were nice enough to jump, despite me getting separated, falling too fast or too slow, forgetting the formation, ballsing up the exit (remember i told you about the hill?), crashing into them or flipping over on top of them. Discouraging it might have been, but i think everyone has been there.

So that’s it; I’ve been jumping intermittently during the winter to remain current, two hours away in Chippewa Falls, WI where they’ve been nothing but nice to me, I’ve ordered my first harness, and I’m going to tunnel camp next march.

Good enough, Brian?