My friend John and I have been trying to do this for a while, but something has always come up and forced us to reschedule.
It was a tandem jump, which means the back of my harness was attached to an instructor. I was expecting to just let my instructor, Rob, do all the work and take me along for the ride. But before we got in the air he ran through the jump sequence, explaining falling positions, when to pull the rip cord, and how to maneuver the chute toward landing. We flew almost three miles up (15,500 ft.), then we jumped into freefall for 60 seconds before pulling the chute and landing, and Rob let me handle the whole process. He even let me land so that my feet touched the ground before his, although he really had no choice since I was a foot and a half taller than him. Basically, instead of just a parachute, I had a parachute and a Rob on my back.
The first five seconds of freefall felt like I was losing my stomach, but then I was weightless for a whole minute with the wind and the ground rushing toward me at 120 miles per hour. My ears popped twice, and it was harder to breathe up there. One thing that surprised me was how easy it was to steer my body during the fall. The smallest motion of my arms or legs drastically affected the direction and speed of my descent. I wore an altimeter on my wrist, and at 5,500 feet I pulled the chute and floated back toward the airfield.
I can see why this is addicting for adrenalin junkies like Rob. He was an awesome instructor, and also clinically insane. On the plane, Rob told me about the time he base jumped from a bridge 450 feet off the ground. That's 150 yards... It's an 8 iron. (Sorry, I had to relate this to golf in order to understand it.)
"If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open, and your friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming."
--Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
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