Life at 9.8 meters per second per second

I first seriously considered skydiving last year when I was in Las Vegas for the Family-tastic Thanksgiving Desert Classic 2003. But actually, I had jokingly considered skydiving for quite a while. Skydiving always seemed like one of those things a person should do at least once before they die -- like running a marathon, or falling in love, or having a three-way with Romanian gymnasts.

Skydiving seemed pretty easy compared to those other things, since skydiving allows gravity to do most of the work and does not require high levels of personal charm. Then again, it is one of the few activities where you can end up dying in your own personal crater.

Las Vegas is probably the only city in the world with an entire page of the phone book devoted to skydiving schools. This could be because of all the wide-open spaces and majestic vistas. Or it could be because people eventually get tired of gambling with mere money. Extreme sports like skydiving and bungee jumping and prostitution comprise a cottage industry in Las Vegas, and all of their ads and brochures look the same, generously peppered with exclamation marks, promising Heart-Pumping Thrills! and Free Shuttle Service!

So when I decided to get serious! and adrenalize! last year, I recruited my brother to go with me, phoned around, got the details, the price, the time commitment, etc. And then I promptly chickened out. I can't remember what excuse I actually gave at the time; basically, see above, re: crater.

I felt pretty wussy about that, and once I learned that I would be going back to Vegas for the 2004 Cactus Invitational Thanksgiving Family-ganza, the little daredevil inside me started revving his engines again. Also, I should not discount the borderline lunatic ravings of my friend M., who eagerly imparted that her skydiving experience was the Greatest Thing She Had Ever Done in the History of Her Life, and this is a girl who once had sex in a Greek villa for 36 straight hours.

So I was ready this time. But. I was also sick this time. By the whim of an angry fate, I was smote with some kind of tonsil-gland-phlegmy-infection-pnumonia thing the day before my flight. See, I was on vacation, so of course I was taking it easy, but Sin City is not the greatest place to try and heal oneself. Late nights, free drinks and food made primarily from vegetable shortening are not conducive to good health. And let's not forget that Vegas has to be the Smoking Capital of America. Repressed urban nicotine freaks were so happy to be free from persecution that they were nursing two or three cigarettes at a time and growing tobacco in their armpits. It was so foggy in the casinos, I felt like I was in a Def Leppard video.

So I tried to wait it out, and by Thursday night I figured I was on my way back to Wellville and would be fine by the weekend. I had done my research and found the most seemingly reputable outfit in the area, Skydive Las Vegas. Call it a coincidence, but it was also the outfit offering $50 off (retail prices with the mention of this ad).



(I couldn't help but notice that neither of these people are wearing helmets. This worried me a bit, until I rationalized that a helmet is not really going to do much to soften the blow of a 13,000-foot, 220 mph drop to earth.)

I should point out that the predominant and most recommended skydiving method for novices is the "tandem" jump. This means that the novice skydiver is suggestively strapped to the front of a highly experienced skydiver who knows how to operate an altimeter and parachute without the use of adult diapers. While this does dilute the experience somewhat, it does eliminate much of the guesswork.

NOVICE SKYDIVER: This doesn't seem right. Are we going to die?

EXPERIENCED SKYDIVER: Yes.

So, first thing Friday, I scheduled an appointment for early Saturday morning. Actually, I wanted to schedule for mid-day Saturday, but the distracted young woman on the phone said that gale-force winds were expected for Saturday afternoon, and I should try and get in before they had to ground the plane.

Now that I've written that sentence, I'm a little surprised at my lack of immediate panic. In some sort of macho trance, I gave over my credit card number for the necessary deposit, and notified my brother that the drop was on.

We made a conscious decision, even way back in 2003, that we were not going to tell our parents beforehand. My father would not have tried to intercede -- not actively, anyway. He would have shaken his head, and called us idiots, and tried to make us think that it was the dumbest idea since the invention of lawn darts. My mom, on the other hand, would have done just about anything to stop us, including but not limited to throwing her body in front of the free shuttle. We knew that if we were going to go through with this, we needed absolutely zero support from Mom and Dad.

SATURDAY: DROP-DAY

We wake up at 7 a.m., dress warmly ("wear long sleeves and shoes that won't fly off your feet," the young woman said on the phone) and take a taxi over to the shuttle pick-up site, where we meet our chauffeur and the six other people who would be jumping with us that morning. The chauffeur, by the way, is wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones and is sporting thick black-rimmed eyeglasses without any lenses in them.

Once in the van, we were each given a clipboard, a pen, and the scariest fucking document I have ever read. It makes Stephen King sound like Dr. Seuss. It starts:

"RELEASE OF RIGHTS & LIABILITY -- ASSUME SELF-RESPONSIBILITY CONTRACT
WARNING!!! -- EXTREME & SIGNIFICANT RISK AND DANGER -- WARNING!!!

Perhaps as some sort of legal requirement, they make prominent display (just below the box for "Next of Kin") of average-year nationwide industry-wide statistics:

Average Jumps: 3.5 million
Average Major Injuries: 2,000
Average Deaths: 35
Ratio of Major Injury: 1 in 1,750
Radio of Death: 1 in 50,000

Now, first of all, as some of my brighter readers have no doubt noticed, their math is bad. According to these numbers, the ratio of death should read 1 in 100,000. One of these statistics is clearly wrong. These people, repsonsible for my safety, have failed to check a fairly simple math problem. Nobody in the van notices, even me. I am too busy trying not to swallow my tongue. This could be because of the following sentence:

*ALL FORMS OF SKYDIVING, AVIATION & ALL RELATED ACTIVITIES ARE DANGEROUS & CAN RESULT IN MAJOR PERMANENT INJURY, PAIN AND SUFFERING, &/or DEATH.*

Waaaait a second. Pain and suffering? This possibility bothers me much more than the potential for death. I had just assumed that if things went wrong, it was just The End. Now I have to worry about spending my last five conscious minutes with my head protruding from my ass? Oh, okay.

Meanwhile, everyone else in the Van is having no problem with this form. Even my brother, sitting next to me, is happily initialing each legal statement as if he were filling out a coloring book. After a while, it becomes clear to me that I am the only one still working on it, because my compatriots have already started a rigorous diet of gallows humor. "Such a beautiful day. If this is my last day, it's going to be a good one! Ho ho ho!" "If I go, I'm taking you with me, hee hee hee!" "Stop the van, I'm going to throw up! Ha ha ha!"

One section of the waiver requires me to state my health for the record. Truthfully, this head-neck-chest-shoulder cold is still bothering me, but there is no checkbox for common cold, if that's even how one would describe it. I suppose I could make a note next to "other," but I circle "allergy" instead, since it closely approximates my symptoms and it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would get you scrubbed from the flight. If I'm going to wimp out, it's going to be a full-on chicken dance, not some passive-agressive sickness excuse.

The next two pages are almost entirely about giving up the right to sue Skydive Las Vegas, its related entities, its employees, their parents, pets, former schoolteachers, city officials (including janitors), or anyone else ever again in perpetuity -- while acknowledging that the "covered activities" may be subject to "singular or collective inabilities, failures, short comings, bad judgements, wrong decisions, mistakes, actions or inactions, errors or omissions, physical &/or mental blunders & all forms of oversight & simple or gross negligence."

Now I'm not worrying about the death or the pain anymore. I'm worrying about my Mom, and the possibility of having to explain to her that my brother is being mailed home in a manila envelope and it was all my idea, and by the way, he signed a waiver that prevents her from suing anyone for the postage due.

Finally we roll in to Boulder City Airport, a dusty strip of land featuring actual tumbleweed and a stable of planes that appear to be made of Legos and aluminum foil. There we meet the motley crew of skydiving experts, all united by the apparent desire to irritate their parents. Piercings, tattoos and unkempt facial hair abound, and most of them appear to have just woken up from sleeping in the hangar.

Once roll is taken, we are individually weighed and then escorted into a room to watch a 20-minute training video demonstrating the lynchpin of skydiving technique: The Banana Position.

In The Banana Position, the novice jumper is to curl his or her legs backwards between the legs of the lead diver while tilting the head back. The arms are to remain inside the harness until the novice jumper feels a tap on the shoulder, at which point the arms fly open into what dancers refer to as "Jazz Hands." The Banana Position is ridiculously simple, which is comforting, although I might feel a little better if it weren't named after a fruit that is notorious for being slippery and causing accidents.

We also learn about the landing position (feet forward, land and fall backwards) and such trivial techniques as the Climb-Out, Clearing the Ears, and No Touching Anything!!!.

Following the instructional portion is more legal mumbo-jumbo, delivered by a sober and serious man with a long gray ZZ Top beard. He wears a light gray suit, sits behind an official-looking desk, and repeats all the intrinsic dangers of skydiving. He talks about how tandem skydiving is an experimental method that is currently being sanctioned only for study purposes, and that a full legitimization of the process is expected sometime in the early 1990s.

From there, we are geared up with jumpsuits, harnesses, gloves, goggles and a padded helmet -- the kind they give to epileptics in case of seizure. This helmet would not protect my head against an errant bird, much less the unforgiving Nevada earth, but I am somehow grateful for it anyway.

I meet my lead jumper, Jace. He is an aggressively cool dude, with mirrored sunglasses, weathered bluejeans and a delightful sense of humor.

JACE: Is this your first time?

ME: Yup.

JACE: Cool, me too.

My brother's lead jumper is a much more conservative-looking dude, as indicated by the graying hair in his temples and his rigorous attention to my brother's harness. My brother is in good hands. On the other side of the room, Jace is just now putting his shoes on and drinking a Red Bull.

Time to go. My brother and I are in the first group, and we are escorted to the plane, which looks like a corrugated Coors Light can sandwiched between two tongue depressors. Good-natured macho ribbing fills the cabin as we taxi for takeoff. But I am not really buying into it. Like all the lead jumpers, Jace's wrist is outfitted with a small video camera to document the experience. (VHS, $70. DVD, $100.) For posterity, Jace points the camera at me. "How do you feel?" he asks.

"I am about to wet myself."

The plane takes off and climbs for what feels like forever. The door of the plane, which operates basically like a garage door, is vibrating against the wind. I am vibrating also, because it's damn cold, even with all this junk I'm wearing. I turn to my brother, and he seems fresh as a daisy. His lead jumper, who has a very sturdy-looking helmet on, is giving him a few pointers. I can't see my lead jumper, of course, but I don't think he has a helmet on yet.

ME (to my brother): Tell Mom and Dad I love them.

JACE: Yeah, me too.

I'm just starting to enjoy the view from the airplane (Hey, there's Hoover Dam. Hey, there's Lake Mead. Hey, there's the Colorado River. Hey, there's a slight tingling in my extremities.) when the green light goes on and the door goes up. Of course, it becomes very windy and cold in the plane, but I can't really tell anymore, whether because of my incipient panic or because of the human being now strapped snugly to my back.

One by one, the lead jumpers slide forward on the bench and tumble out of the plane. I will be the last to go, my brother right before me. I begin my mantra, a single word repeated over and over, designed to provide me with peace and courage. But I can't keep it up; there is too much to think about. Like...

My brother. He slides to the edge of the door without looking back, crouches patiently, and suddenly he is gone. Holy shit, I think. I just watched some guy throw himself and my brother out of a plane.

And now me. I move to the door, and look over the edge. In retrospect, this would have been a good time for me to take a good cleansing breath. But before I can instruct my diaphragm to contract, I am nudged over the edge.

Immediately I totally forget The Banana Position. I am temporarily distracted, because as part of standard practice Jace starts us out with a roll and a twist, which means that the first thing I see as I fall is our plane passing over us. Quickly though, we flatten out and my limbs attempt to spring into action. My legs tuck back, and -- ouch. It's so cold, and my tensed legs snap back so fast, that my right hamstring immediately cramps up. I try to work it out as subtly as possible without interfering with anything important Jace might be doing back there.

Once clenched into the proper position and able to gather everything I see around me, I am free to scream. But I can't scream, partially because my cold has rendered my voice useless, and partially because screaming would first require me to breathe in, and this is continuing to prove somewhat difficult. The oxygen-poor air is whooshing at my face so hard that it's seeping into my goggles, and still my lungs won't fill.

My eyes are taking everything in -- the mountains, the water, the Las Vegas strip in the distance -- but my mind isn't processing it fast enough. The images are being stored for later, as my survival instinct commandeers most of my resources.

After about a minute of freefall, around the time I become resigned to mid-air suffocation, I feel a slight tug and I let my body go limp. Jace has activated the parachute, and with a slight jerk my 220 mph free-fall becomes a gentle Saturday morning glide over the desert.

It's cold but it's a beautiful day. It must be, because "What a beautiful day" is just about the only thing Jace and I say to each other on the slow drift back to the landing site. We must say "What a beautiful day" about six times. It can be a bit awkward, having this powerful and serene experience with a total stranger provocatively strapped to your ass. I would prefer to take it all in and enjoy it rather than talk about it, but I don't want Jace to think I am unappreciative, so I throw in a "Wow" here and there for good measure.

Even as we dwindle earthward, the adventure isn't entirely over. Those gale-force winds scheduled for Saturday afternoon are coming a bit early, and Jace begins to express what sounds like genuine concern that we might overshoot the landing zone. I don't really care, as long as we didn't drift onto the highway or a cactus or anything. For just a moment I feel like a slightly cooler dude than Jace.

Ultimately, with a final artistic flourish, we touch down perfectly in the landing zone. Seconds later, my brother glides in, grinning ear to ear. Once separated from our lead jumpers, we hug and share a single common thought: "Holy Shit." Then we swagger back into the hangar in our jumpsuits and harnesses, feeling just like Tom Cruise pretended to feel in Top Gun.

After shedding our gear, we wait for the second group to go up and come down before the shuttle takes us back to the strip. We collect our belongings from our locker, where I find a ten-minute old message from M. on my cell phone, asking if I had really gone through with the skydiving plan.

I can answer her now, and I still don't entirely believe it: Yes.

On the ride back to town, I think about how silly I was to panic, my jitters replaced by a combination of pride, adrenaline and the need to pee. I'm impressed with myself, not because I survived a skydive, but because I simply decided to skydive, and then I went out and did it.

It wasn't, as M. said, The Greatest Thing I've Ever Done in the History of My Life. Honestly, I'm not even sure it cracks the top five. It didn't change the way I see the world, or inspire me to take more risks, or reinforce my place in the universe. It was something else, which is still pretty awesome: It was this story. An experience, full of beauty and comedy and fear. A little like falling in love.

Now I just have to get to work on that three-way.