Dying in Virginian Skies
by Jim Friend

Embrace the insanity
Credit: Dan Wayland

Anyway, most days, during the hours I'm not at work, I'm not excited about the idea of dying at all, but on a warm fall day, in the Virginia countryside, I got in line with a number of other odd cats to put my life on the line for what would hopefully be one of the most exciting days of my life.

Ok, let me back up for a second. I didn't really go out there thinking I'd die. Not very much of me anyway. At the time, a good friend of mine, Josh, was living on the East Coast and we had already decided to do something totally crazy every time we got together, and skydiving was the particular adventure we chose for this trip. Josh and I have always been about crazy things like that, and skydiving was a big one for the both of us. And for the record, I should add that I don't really care where I die, just as long as there is a lot of violent noise and the sound of screeching tires, or explosions and fireballs directly preceding my demise. That's cool. What I'm not so interested in is dying in a sour smelling room, on a hospital bed that's right next to someone else who will soon die, in a bed on which everyone else who had laid in it before me had died. Translation: Nursing home. That's not cool. It's not ok. Worse than that, how about being constantly saturated in that horrible nursing home smell, the same smell that certainly fills your nostrils every single day at work after you choose the profession of mortician? That's not ok. At all. It's like that bourbon-sipping, constantly-smoking comedian on the Blue Collar Comedy tour once said: "My doctor bugs me about drinking and smoking too much… he says it'll take ten years off my life. I tell him, 'Yeah. Well, it won't take those years off the front end, it'll take 'em off the back end…the nursing home years.'" Ron White is my kind of guy. He's been thinking clearly for years now. Comes correct.

Now, come to think of it, I'm fairly sure this talented comedian will depart this sphere earlier than most because of his habits, however, there will no decade-long pit stop in the Kingdom of the Chronic Bed Sore. He will hear no loud plaintiff moans, smell not of the full bedpan that hath explodeth over, and wilt not suffer through nightly nightmares about his last sight on this earth being a nervous looking, furtively glancing, and wide-eyed elder care nurse staring down at him with a loaded syringe dripping with digoxen, tranquilizers, and muscles relaxants, bent on adding a new name as just one more meager single page journal entry to their storied career as the newest Johnny-come-lately to the world of nursing home serial killers. No, I'll bet you Ron White will enter his stille-nacht with alcohol and nicotine in his system, minus illicitly injected toxins or even the obligatorily prescribed pharmaceutical cocktail cooked up by the nursing home itself, meant to prolong life long enough to exact just one more payment from the insurance company and Social Security agency. With any sort of blessing, I will end my days under circumstances similar to Ron's, with or without the alcohol and nicotine. So when thinking about skydiving, in consideration of the potential of a lingering and sour demise at the dreaded and now seemingly franchised Birkenau elder care facilities, dying in a skydiving accident, even if unlikely, really didn't seem so bad to me at all.

Ok, so, I'm sorry, I got a little bit distracted there for a minute. Let's move on from the realm of the nursing home and head toward that other sort of dying. Quick. Violent. Virtually painless… Skydiving.

Mass exit from larger plane. Credit: Dan Wayland

I should start off by saying, for those of you thinking about going, that it's not hard to get to skydive. There are very few requirements. All you really have to do is call and tell them you're coming, and they will arrange a plummet time for you. Pretty much the only question they'll ask you is how much you weigh, their main concern being that you are not 220 pounds or over. When you jump for the first time, the standard arrangement is that you're usually jumping tandem, meaning you are tied to an instructor who makes sure you don't freak out on the way down, soaks up any body fluids you expel on your way down per FAA and EPA regulations, and makes sure the ripcord gets pulled at some point after you pass out from the shock and awe of it all. For some reason, skydiving instructors don't like the idea of being irretrievably lashed with nylon tethers to anyone who weighs more than two and a half bags of concrete while they're plummeting to earth. This seems reasonable to me somehow. If you are over 220 pounds, depending on where you skydive, you might be able to talk them into it, but they will charge you extra. That last sentence is not a joke. If you're a bit over the line, you can make arrangements. A standard arrangement is an extra charge of around $30 per every extra ten pounds of you, added incrementally as the poundage doth increaseth. Then they also haul out the Biggest Parachute you have Ever Seen in Your Life. (Just kidding… don't sit on me!) (Really though, that parachute is huge. Lol.)

With a "Git 'er done" attitude, we booked us a weekday slot fer some ska-dahvin' akshun out there in r'ral Virginee, at a place called Skydive Orange, in Orange, Virginia. As we were driving out to the facility, there was much talk about anxiety levels. Josh and I were constantly keeping track of where we were at on the emotional discomfort scale. For some reason, I wasn't bothered much by the idea of skydiving at all. Reasonable man that I am, I figured that statistics were on my side; in fact, I reasoned that we were almost certainly way safer in the air skydiving than on the ground, driving to the facility. (Especially with Josh at the wheel.) While we were driving, my stress level never went over a 2, on a scale of one to ten; while Josh said he was hanging out at around a 5. Anyway, I wasn't worried. The worst that could happen was that I wouldn't ever have to go back to work again.

We arrived at Orange Skydive fairly before our jump time and started to go through the process of checking in. One of the first things they have you do is fill out reams of paperwork, most of it having to do with legal matters regarding your potential demise, or any injuries incurred on the premises which might or might not precede that demise. And man, I'm talking reams of paperwork. All the pages you sign started out something like this: "Skydiving is an inherently dangerous activity that could result in great injury to you or even death...blah blah blah." At the time, I was taking pre-law classes, so I decided to actually read what I was signing, just because I was already tuned in to that sort of torture, apparently. And on and on it went… "Significant injury… Death…. waiving of all right to sue and forfeiture of liability… Death… malfunction of parachute or equipment… Death… increased risk of life or limb, not liable for injury or…. Death… involuntary evacuation of bowels… Death." For some reason, as I read on, my anxiety level spiked up to a 5, which resulted in many quick signatures and an equally speedy surrendering of the paperwork back to the desk person.

After so vividly awakening my imagination, they had us watch a video or two, the contents of which I can't remember, because my fingers were still throbbing from all the name-signing. Then it was on to the complex training for the jump, which lasted about two exalted minutes. The instructor told us the basics of what we were going to do and pretty much walked away, and with that, we were deemed fully prepared to jump out of an airplane with him strapped to our backs. Ok, that's fine. Curiously, the airplane that would be used in the day's jumps turned out to be a Cessna. For those of you who don't know, a Cessna is tiny. They had bigger aircraft there, but there were too few jumpers on that particular day to support that sort of efficient venture. So then, the plan for us was to go up one by one in that little Cessna, with only the pilot, the instructor, and the jumper aboard. The best part of this equation, at least to me anyway, was that we would have to step out on the specially modified wing of this Cessna while in flight, perch on a little step for a minute at 10,000 feet, get situated, and then jump only after the instructor situated the set-up for the jump properly. How cool is that?

Another great day to be alive.
Credit: Dan Wayland

For some reason, of the group that was there, Josh and I were scheduled jump to last, which meant we had a plenty of time to sit and think and worry. Come to think of it, we actually didn't do much of any of those previous things, especially the thinking part… as usual. As we were waiting, I practiced the jump procedure that had been described to us by the instructor, over and over again, on a Cessna in the hangar that had been specially modified (cut to shreds by a metal saw) to demonstrate proper exit procedures. I was going to be sure to practice the procedure enough to the point where it was automatic, so that when I got to 10,000 feet, it would all be routine to me. Essentially the drill was this: From the aircraft, you were to step out onto the small ledge on the right wing, face the tail of the plane, and perch on it for a minute on your ankles until the instructor could get behind you and tighten up the straps connecting the both of you. You would then cross your arms like a mummy over your chest, and wait for the instructor to say, "Rock!" At that point, you knew there were going rock back and forth (front to back) twice and then on the third rock forward you would push off into the unknown. Once in the air, it was apparently very important to keep your head back and arch your spine (backward) until the descent was stabilized. The instructor would then yell, "Hands!" at which point you would relax your back a bit and throw your hands out into a classic skydiving pose. This may not sound like too much information to cope with, but somehow I found it vitally important to practice it. Way back there in some deep, dark crevasse of my mind, apparently work wasn't so bad after all. Actually, it was probably better said that I didn't want to, by default, contribute to my skydiving instructor's premature end, as I was rather convinced he loved going to work everyday, and I didn't want to ruin that for him. So there.

At some point during that waiting time, wandering about aimlessly, mumbling, and exploring and such, Josh and I somehow made our way around to the back of the jump hangar and peeked over the fence. Many small travel trailers filled the interior of the wooden fence, and it became clear that the skydiving instructors, insane as they clearly demonstrated themselves to be already by their choice of profession, actually lived there in the back lot in some sort of endorphin saturated slum land, like a bunch of dope addicts who threw down the junk all day, made a great deal of money for doing so, and stumbled out the back door of their offices only to land in their warm and waiting beds. Yes… so submerged in the world of freefall were these wild-eyed madmen that they actually lived behind the back of the hangar in about a half a dozen tiny tow-alongs, finding the spartan accommodations a worthy tradeoff for getting to live their lives in the realm of Adventureland everyday. These guys are my frikkin' heroes.

Seeing the last of the jumpers that were ahead of us file gladly to their cars in their intoxicated and excited dazes, we realized that it was finally our time to jump. Mi amigo went first and piled into the airplane with the instructor, and off they went into the heavens. For the last time. Or maybe not, we would see. The droning engine of the plane faded as the spacecraft climbed higher and higher, until it was virtually out of sight. As was customary for this part of the experience among those on the ground, there was much covering of the eyes and pointing up into the sky, as many fruitless suggestions were offered up as to where the plane might actually be. That's how high up 10,000 feet is, you can barely see a small plane up there. Anyway, I was thankfully able to make sight of the Cessna just before the actual jump. At some certain, crystalline pure moment in my memory, I can remember a black object falling from the airplane. This dark glob was of course the conglomerate mass of my pal and the skydiving instructor, and it looked exactly like a bomb. It fell and it fell and it fell, very slowly getting bigger and bigger, defining shapes coming and going, faster and faster, twisting and turning, until the chute exploded out of its dwelling place and announced very clearly its very relative position in the 3D of airspace. Watching them freefall like that, screaming toward earth, was one of my favorite moments of the whole experience. A high-end and kinetic all-the-way blasted-off, fully committed, no turning back death-shot to the waiting terra firma below. You understand very clearly at that point that if anything goes wrong, it will all end with a bang, not a whimper. Bad to the bone. They floated down to earth, gliding right over us before the landing, with the sound of the canopy ripping through the air as they alighted onto the demarcated landing zone next to us.

The author throws gang signs at all appropriate times. Credit: Dan Wayland

Then it was my turn. I still wasn't afraid, my stress level still hovering around a 1 or 2. On the walk out to the Cessna, I engaged the instructor, Mike French, in a conversation about what he did for a living before he got into skydiving. He told me he had been into construction, but then things had gotten slow and he changed gears and got into the skydiving thing. I told him I had also been in construction for awhile, and our banal conversation topic continued until about 7,000 feet, when I got interested in looking out the window. First though, I should mention that the pilot was wearing a t-shirt, shorts, tube socks, and tennis shoes, and was also wearing a pair of those iconic-dork style Top Gun aviator glasses, and was also joking a lot with Mike when he could find the time. I somehow didn't mind having a comedian flying the plane, as it somehow made me feel relaxed. It was all absurd anyway. Having a grown man strapped tightly to my back (not my thing), jumping out of a plane, sitting on the metal floor in the back of a tiny plane like two Wyoming rednecks riding in the back of a dirty pickup truck in giddy anticipation of a frosty creations celebration at the Laramie Dairy Queen… you understand. Why not have Dave Chappelle flying the plane too? Looking out the window finally, I could see we were way up in the air. A quiltwork of farmland and forests, freeways and tobacco fields, and invisible Civil War battlegrounds as far as the eye could see. I briefly reflected on my life: It had all come down to this. Looking straight down, I could see the airport below.

Finally settling into the sobriety of the task at hand at our final elevation of 10,500 feet, the mood inside the Cessna shifted into some accelerated form of seriousness, and with a few tersely worded exchanges, the pilot and Mike decided it was time for us to bail out. Mike quickly reached for the door and slid it open with a bang. As the 55 degree air loudly rushed in, all of my practice knowledge gained from the Slasher Cessna kicked in, and I comfortably moved to the door to get out on the ledge, with Mike, already loosely latched onto me, soon to follow. I distinctly remember seeing my foot slide toward the open air, and when it finally broke the plane of the open door, the 70 mph of wind hitting the skin of my ankle brought home for the first time what I was about to do. Of all of the things about skydiving I remember most, it was this: Seeing myself stick my foot out that airplane door, feeling that cool rush of air, knowing I was going outside for sure now, a scene my imagination had tried to construct so many times before.

Here we go.

The pad you put your feet on when you crawl out of a Cessna to skydive is about nine inches by three inches, and it is welded onto the frame of the wing. Sure enough, just like I had practiced and with relative ease, I crawled out onto it and perched there, with the instructor joining me, making his final preparations.

Very loud.

Plane engine.

Rushing wind.

As it turned out, the position I ended up at on the wing placed me at a rather declined angle, to the point where I didn't even see the plane anymore, I was just staring into the mosaic of hinterlands below. Straps tightened. Crossed arms. Head back.

"Rock!"

"One. Two!"

And we were off.

To my surprise, I distinctly remember it got quieter. Another snapshot. When you jump from an airplane, there is a moment in time where you are almost suspended in some sort of Einstein-archetype relativist nether-region, as stationary air decelerates your forward motion after detaching from the airplane. It doesn't take long for this to happen, but in the meantime, your rate of downward acceleration from earth's gravity hasn't accelerated you enough yet for you to experience much in the way of resistance from, again, the stationary air. In essence, things get quiet for a second because you are in a decelerating/accelerating no-man's land. Weird. Also, to more quickly stabilize, Mike made sure to use the most of the body's profile to decelerate from our forward momentum, gained from the forward thrust of the Cessna, so our bodies were momentarily vertical, heads pointing straight down. For a brief moment I could see the plane again, it was up there by my feet. Killer.

Anyway, gravity, typically ever doing what it's supposed to, took over at that point, and we were off, plunging down unto what would surely be an exciting and certain death. Unless the parachute worked. One thing is for sure, when you jump out of a plane at 10,500 feet, you are going to die. This death will result from impact with the Earth. Again… unless the parachute works. That is your last hope. Your very last hope. In the meantime, you are accelerating to the grand speed of 130 mph, which is faster than most of us have driven in a car. It wouldn't be too far out of the question to imagine that in a car wreck at 130 mph, you are probably going to die. Government statistics tell us that there occurs one death per every 40 mph accident, on average. That means, by the way, that you can be driving at 20 mph and hit someone else head-on that is going 20 mph, and it's likely that one or both of you is going to die. Think about that the next time you're skimming along toward 7-11 in your Honda Civic, drooling lustily like Billy Carter for that next six-pack of Hamm's, fumbling hastily among the remnants of your cigarette ash burned floor mats for that last Merit Ultra Light that sprung from your fingertips just as you struck the last match in your matchbook. Adding to the strangeness, when you're skydiving, 130 mph is referred to as your "terminal velocity." Terminal, meaning either: The maximum speed you can accelerate to? Or, terminal as in, the massive heart attack that you inherited from the shock of jumping out of an airplane, resulting in your blue-lipped demise? I'm still not sure.

As soon as we reached this state of terminal velocity, there was a lot of screaming involved… I was yelling like crazy. Like this: "Wooooo! Wooooooooooo!" I was completely stoked. After having dreamed about this moment for so long, I was finally actually doing it, falling through the air with only a parachute to save my skinny butt from shooting straight into the earth's core like a piece of straw in a tornado whipped through a telephone pole. Right there in my fingertips was another great adventure I could check off my life's "to do" list. Verbal communication is very easily accomplished during a freefall, even with the loud sounds of the air rushing by and crazy people screaming, so for fun, Mike told me to try steering us by turning the palms of my hands to the left and right. Sure enough, it was scarily effective, our bodies corkscrewed through the air, and I was left in a sort of mystified state by it as if I were a child learning to walk: A completely uncharted environment, learning absolutely brand new skills. Awesomeness.

With a brief warning and at a foreordained altitude, Jumpmaster Mike pulled the chute cord and sure enough, for better or worse, the parachute worked, and we decelerated with much violence. Apparently because of all my "Woooing," Mike thought I was some sort of hardcore fellow, so he immediately pulled hard on one side of the control strings for the parachute, which put us in a hard and fast face downward spin toward the ground. He told me later that we were swinging around at the end of that tail at 50 miles an hour. Imagine holding onto the end of a rope that's been tied to a merry-go-round that's booking along at highway speed. I thought it was cool for a second too, and then I could sense my hamstrings were getting angry because they were having to make room for most of my digestive system, which by now was being repeatedly stomped on by the entirety of my respiratory tract. The vast vacuum of space created by this reordering of my internal organs was completely filled up immediately with an Overwhelming Desire to Vomit.

With all that spinning we got to the ground in a hurry, and as we came in for a landing, I was really hoping I could look smooth and land on my feet, rather than take the butt slide, as so many first timers understandably do. Sure enough, Mike was so hardcore and skilled, I was able to simply come to my feet and take a couple of steps to gain a full upright and standing posture. Once back on the ground, I was so excited by the whole experience, I temporarily forgot I would actually have to go back to work eventually. Hey man, it worked for a minute, so it was worth it.

Amazingly, Mike carried with him a wristwatch of sorts, which spewed technical information about the jump: Maximum mph per skydive, the exact distance from jump point to the ground, etc. This masterpiece of technology was no doubt mandated by the county coroner, who demands technical data for that certain section of his autopsy reports. Notwithstanding this sure fact, I was fascinated by the results. Our average speed on the descent was 118 mph. Our maximum speed was 131 mph. We fell unhindered for 45 seconds. We plummeted 7,000 feet before chute deployment.

Anyway, after this sort of technical information was exported and other pleasantries were exchanged, I separated from Mike and the rest of the group (some additional people had showed up in the meantime) and went and laid on a picnic table, trying not to puke, while my spleen, liver, gall bladder, and kidneys tried to sort out their boundary issues like the elderly passengers of a tour bus gathering themselves after experiencing a roll-over accident on a trip through Death Valley.

Josh eventually materialized and we jumped back in the car and rolled out. We were so stoked leaving there…I can't even tell you how stoked we were. It so very much lived up to any of our expectations of that day. Josh said his anxiety level peaked at about a 7 somewhere during the experience, but said he had been rather calm throughout the actual skydive itself. The worst of it for me was a 5, experienced while filling out the tomes of paperwork with all their vivid legal discussions. We feverishly talked about our individual experiences almost all of the way back to Washington DC . It was truly awesome.

Josh had some bourbon later that night, and I may have even had some myself. Chances are there was some nicotine floating around in our systems by the end of the evening as well. We did not die that day, in fact, it was one of the most exciting days of my life, just like I'd hoped. And when I got back to work, it wasn't as bad as I had remembered it. (That's a lie.) I'm still trying to avoid the nursing home, though, so if you have any ideas, uh… drop me a line.