like a cheesy tom petty song

"i swear i will never suggest another death defying feat in front of you again."

fortunately, she wasn't mad at me, but after we had jumped out of the plane, maggie had realized that i must be out of my mind. she had suggested going skydiving about a week ago and i thought that it might be a great thing to do for my birthday. once i had made reservations for a 9:00am descent from a tiny, tiny plane in davis, maggie had no recourse but to jump from the plane with me. it was only after we had landed that she admitted to me that her suggestion was made merely as a joke.

the 'instruction' that we received prior to our tandem jump with a more experienced skydiver consisted mainly of signing a six page waiver telling us that we were risking SERIOUS INJURY and/or DEATH in capital letters sprinkled throughout the documents. after every appearance of the word 'serious injury' or 'death' we would have to sign our initials next to it, indicating that we had seen what their lawyers had wanted us to see. once the six page waiver had been given a thorough once-over, our instructor popped in a videotape where a stiff looking skydiving representative read the words 'serious injury and/or death" over and over again from a cue card located nowhere near the camera. he would ocassionally add extra sentences maintaining that they had lawyers, but that was about it. an image of an ambulance pulling away from an accident site with a parachute on the ground punctuated his cue cards. some of the people in the class muttered their favorite deity underneath their breaths. the videotape pointed out that a good resource to check for fatalities was the 'incident report' section of parachutist magazine.

waiting in the lobby after class, i rifled through some of the parachutist magazines issues located on their rack and turned to the first incident report i could find. unfortunately, the first incident report was a woman who had died on her first skydiving jump. her cameraman collided with her in mid-air, but they had somehow managed to land relatively safely on the ground. once they landed, she complained of a broken ankle and chest pains. both cameraman and neophyte skydiver were airlifted to the local hospital and she died of a ruptured aorta during surgery. the cameraman was fine.

the next incident report i read was of someone who had previously jumped about 4,000 times. for one reason or another, his parachute had not opened and he landed in a tree, where he had died of a ruptured aorta.

"we should leave our aortas on the ground," suggested jory.

after a few moments of reading more grisly details of skydiving accidents, our names were announced over the garbled p.a. system, indicating that it was time for us to suit up and meet our tandem jumpers.

my tandem jumper was paul. in the class, they had mentioned that the school would try to balance your height and weight with a tandem jumper who would compliment your size. in my case, paul was a seven foot beanstalk, which made my five foot frame miniscule in comparison. we must have looked like a horrible attempt at a sequel to 'twins.' i knew that it would look even more ridiculous once i was harnessed to him like a papoose. under interrogation, paul had told me that he's been jumping out of planes for fourteen years now. during the warmer seasons, he instructs out of tahoe, but when it gets cold during the ski season, he jumps out of planes in davis. he didn't seem any worse for the wear to me after fourteen years of jumping. i approved.

if you pay an extra $80 for the video/still photo package of your first skydive, you can probably be labelled as a chump. chump or not, i decided that i needed to have the video package. my life documentation would be incomplete if i couldn't have skydiving footage accompany my footage of swapping the engine out of my car, getting my tongue pierced, and having a tattoo inked onto me. with that in mind, i put down my hard-earned cash to have a somber looking skydiver follow me around with a wacky looking terry gilliam camera mount on his helmet and record one of the stupidest things i've ever gotten myself into. what more could i want out of skydiving?

our plane consisted of six first-time tandem skydivers, along with each of our instructors, four separate cameramen for each chump, and four or five 'fun jumpers,' people who are experienced skydivers that hitch rides on the instructional planes. the fun jumpers and cameramen sit on the floor while the tandems sit on benches towards the front of the plane. a flimsy, clear plastic roll-up door keeps anyone from falling out prematurely during the ascent.

much to my surprise, i wasn't really very nervous at any point leading up to my 13,000 foot plummet from the sky. everything about it seemed totally fascinating and i was looking forward to successfully landing on the ground so that i could buy a cape and apply for a superhero license. i felt that prior to this, i have been in situations where my life has been in much more danger without my having any control over what was going on. at least this felt more like controlled lunacy. the only thing that really got to me was when the cameraman shoved his sony digital 8 camera in front of my face and asked if i had any 'last words.'

"errr... uhhh... no..." i replied, "that's a lot of pressure to put on me!"

"ok," said my cameraman, "just remember, when you're freefalling, look for the camera and give me a big smile, ok?"

"yeah... sure... ok," i said. how was i supposed to remember everything they taught me in class *and* what to do in front of the camera as well?

the next thing i knew, the rollup door opened and the fun jumpers started moving around. one by one, they stepped out of the plane like they were stepping out of a car. as i watched them get smaller and smaller against the gridded farmlands of davis, i realized how absofuckinlutely insane they were.

"oh my god!" i exclaimed.

before i could even think twice about how scared i had suddenly become, paul had dragged me over to the door and the next thing i knew, i was plummeting out of the plane at over 200 miles per hour. the air was rushing so fast at my face that i couldn't breathe. i couldn't hear anything but the deafening roar of wind against my ears and the ground looked so very, very immense.

in seconds we had slowed our descent to a mere 120 miles per hour and i had stretched out my arms to replicate what they had taught us in class. i was finally able to breathe again and the cameraman was freefalling right across from me at exactly the same speed. per his instruction, i smiled at the camera and threw a kiss. once i felt that my paparazzi obligations were complete, i looked down at the ground and concentrated on breathing. inhale. exhale. inhale. exhale.

once i had assured myself that i could breathe, it really wasn't so bad. surprisingly enough, i hadn't experienced that awful, gut-wrenching feeling of my stomach coming out of my mouth like i do on roller coasters. i think that there was so much sensory input going on, my body really didn't have any time to create sensations of its own. it was incredible - it's like nothing else i've ever experienced before and it's actually too overwhelming for me to even describe in proper detail. i was flying.

ok... maybe i wasn't flying. to be honest, they probably call this "falling," but it sure felt like flying. i could barely even remember that there was a seven foot tall giant strapped to my back, except for when he pulled the parachute cord.

the release of the parachute at 5,000 feet is a bit jarring, but it doesn't hurt as long as you squeeze back into the shape that they tell you to be in when the parachute releases. it's a bit fetal, but fetal is fine when you're suddenly screeching to a halt from 120 mph to a mere 10 mph in mid-air.

it was silent.

there's really not anything that's making any noise up at that altitude except the person strapped to your back and the ruffle of a parachute. paul had taken the controls of the parachute and made sure that i was ok.

"does your harness feel secure?" he asked, checking my leg harness to make sure that i wasn't going to suddenly disconnect from him and unexpectedly continue my plummet. he adjusted the straps so that i was in a sitting position in front of him and then he started to spin the parachute in circles. it was like that rocket ride at disneyland where the rockets spin up and out from the center point at a super-fast rate, except that i wasn't in a rocket ship and i was 4,000 feet up in the air.

paul slowed the spinning down and started to spin in the other direction, making the sierras whip in and out of my point of view at a dizzying rate. i remembered the instructor mentioning that the spinning was the best part, but the more you spun, the faster your descent.

"there's where we're going to land," said paul, pointing down at a small building with a field next to it. it looked like a tiny lego set in the distance and i could almost make out the tiny lego people standing outside. next to the skydiving school i could see the gun club, where members were shooting at targets with their shotguns and rifles. it made me think of the sign inside the skydiving school warning everyone to not land in the gun club. landing in the gun club is bad. i hoped that they were not shooting skeet.

paul had done a few more maneuvers with the parachute, offering me incredible views of the area around us. being the first one out of the plane, i didn't see any other skydivers nearby. it was like we were totally alone up there in the sky. it was so intense and somehow so peaceful at the same time.

the ground came at us much faster than i would have wanted. eventually, it came time for us to land and i held my legs out in front of me as instructed. we slid onto the landing strip in the sitting position and i was once again bound to the earth.

<11.19.00>

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