“Put your foot at the edge of the door and look over at me!”
I vividly remember my jumpmaster shouting these words over the drone of twin turboprop engines. I did as he commanded, and placed my foot at the very edge of the black and yellow striped “caution” tape bordering the doorway. Quickly glancing past my shoe, I could see Perris Valley, California far below. From this altitude the ground looked like a great patchwork quilt, made up of alternating swatches of colored fabric. It almost didn’t seem real. I was about to take my first accelerated free-fall skydive. To make such a skydive, one has to go through an intensive ground school, in which one learns everything there is to know about falling out of the sky. After several hours of rigorous lessons, comprehensive testing, and careful rehearsal, the jumper is issued a parachute and allowed to make the jump, accompanied by–but unattached to–two instructors, or jumpmasters as they are called in the skydiving world.
I shivered a bit at the icy blast of wind coming through the open doorway, then turned to make eye contact with my right-side jumpmaster, Eric Gin. I grinned nervously, then following rehearsed procedure, shouted: “How am I doing?”
He nodded in acknowledgement and gave the thumbs-up signal, which meant that I was ready to exit the aircraft. Slowed by the 35-pound pack on my back, I began the exit procedure. Just as we had rehearsed a half-dozen times on the ground, I rhythmically leaned left, then right before lurching into the bright blue sky, twelve thousand and five hundred feet above planet Earth.
Nothing in the four hours of ground school prepared me for the rush of excitement I felt at that moment. As we left the doorway, the hot exhaust from one of the engines washed over us, and its roar nearly drowned out the thunderous pounding of my own heart. A second later, the howl of the wind took over. Consciously fighting the instinct to curl into a fetal position, I arched my back and pushed my waist toward Earth. I spread my arms and legs outward, assuming the standard skydive body position, a flying “X.” The skin of my cheeks rippled and flapped against the blast of air as we accelerated to 120 miles per hour, assisted only by gravity. I chuckled a bit as my instructors looked back at me, their faces pushed into giant, distorted smiles by aerodynamic forces. In defiance of what I had been taught, I looked straight down for a second, peering at the patchwork quilt spinning below.
Approximately four seconds into free-fall, I initiated the “circle of awareness”; a practiced procedure designed to keep the jumper mindful of his or her altitude. I glanced at the altimeter strapped to my wrist. The needle, already pointing at ten, seemed to sweep counter-clockwise with the speed of the second hand on a clock. I shouted the altitude to my right-side jumpmaster, whose job it is to hang on–with one hand–to a flap on the right side of my suit. He signaled a thumbs-up with his free right hand, so I looked over at my left-side jumpmaster, Moley Stapleton, and waited for his approval. Receiving a thumbs-up from him, I continued on to the next procedure; touching the handle of my ripcord three times, to ensure I’d know exactly where it is when the time comes.
I reveled in the incredible view from here, looking down upon mountain and cloud. I could see clearly for miles in every direction, out to the horizon. And though visible in a bit more detail, the ground still seemed illusory. Sunlight glinted off the tops of automobiles traveling the roadways below, causing them to look like lines of rhinestones laid out on that great patchwork quilt.
The photographer I’d paid to document the event caught up to us then. With a series of acrobatic leg and arm movements, he maneuvered himself to a position approximately ten feet in front of us. He steadied his helmet-mounted still and video cameras and began to click off a rapid series of still photos. It seemed surreal to see this man, literally floating in front of me, with nothing but air below him. I mugged for the camera a bit, stuck out my tongue and laughed, then looked right, under my outstretched arm–past the jumpmaster suspended in midair next to me–and thought, “I’m flying!” The roar of the wind snapped me back to reality, however. I screamed out another altitude report to Eric: “Nine thousand feet!”
At this point, both jumpmasters grabbed the arms and legs of my suit and spun me around horizontally, a full 360 degrees. Though they had cautioned me to the possibility of this maneuver in our pre-jump briefing, it startled me nonetheless, and added an extra thrill to the experience. Four seconds later, I shouted another altitude report: “Six thousand feet!”
Nearing the target altitude of five thousand feet, where I would pull my ripcord, I locked my eyes on the altimeter. The needle continued its inexorable counter-clockwise rotation, and as it passed the number five, I signaled–waving both hands over my head–that I was preparing to deploy my parachute. I grasped the little orange PVC handle, just behind my right hip, and pulled hard.
The wind’s howl quieted to a gentle whisper as yards of nylon fabric and cord unreeled from the pack on my back with a great “whoosh.” This was the most frightening part of the jump for me: The moment where I was to find out if my parachute had been packed properly by a total stranger. Trying to maintain a calm presence of mind, I counted out six seconds, allowing proper time for my parachute to open and inflate. All the while, my instructor’s words echoed in my head: “You have to make a decision as to whether you can safely land your canopy by two thousand, five hundred feet, because once you’ve passed that altitude it’s too late…”
Though alone in the sky, I shouted, “Shape! Spin! Float!” to remind myself of three things a jumper must assess within the first few seconds of opening. I gazed up at the bright green, rectangular shaped canopy above me and determined that it had inflated to the proper shape, was not spinning, and that I was now floating gracefully, three thousand feet above ground. I pulled the steering handles from their Velcro perches above my head and began to pilot myself in wide spirals over the landing zone. This methodical type of flight provided a sharp contrast to the “in the moment” feel of free-fall. All was quiet, except for the sound of my parachute snapping and popping against the wind, like a flag on a breezy day.
A few minutes later the peaceful silence was broken. A voice crackled in my ear: “All right, Ben. You’re far enough downwind to start your approach.” In my excitement, I’d forgotten about the one-way radio I was wearing. An instructor on the ground had watched my descent and was waiting to guide me to the ground. I listened carefully to his directions through the last 1000 feet and came in for a perfect landing.
As my parachute collapsed to the ground behind me, I looked up into the evening sky with a big grin. I had stepped out of an airplane two miles high, and returned to Earth on gossamer wings. For sixty seconds I had known what it must be like for eagles, soaring above the clouds. I raised my fists skyward and shouted with joy.