Sky

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THE SKY'S THE LIMIT

Skydiving checklist:

1. Locate a skydiving company.

2. Find a friend who’s as crazy as I am.

3. Tell my parents. After I’ve returned safely.

It was the summer of 1996. I had just graduated from college, and I wanted to do something big to celebrate. I had achieved the Goal, the point toward which I had been working my whole life. Grade school prepared you for high school, which prepared you for college. And graduating from college was the X on the treasure map, the ribbon at the end of the marathon, the Grand Finale of the opera, toward which all of the lesser climaxes had been building.

And I had done it. I had found the X, broken the ribbon, hit the high C and shattered the wineglass. I had performed all of my scholarly duties with diligence, and I felt I deserved to be a little bit irresponsible, a little bit reckless. To take a risk in order to taste freedom, weightlessness, and the joy of relinquishing control.

I shared my skydiving plans with all of my college friends, and a bunch of them said they’d love to do it, but only Phil – the general manager of the tiny theatre company at which I was volunteering – said, “Yes! Let’s go next Friday!”

Thus fantasy turned into reality.

Phil and I showed up to Skydive Chicago with anticipatory grins on our faces, and a few hundred dollars burning holes in our pockets. We handed over our money and received our jumpsuits, goggles and helmets. Then we went to basic training.

The first step: watch a video overview. We were going to be doing a “static line” jump, which meant that our parachutes would be connected to the plane by a long line. When we jumped out of the plane that line would pull the ripcord on our pack, making sure that it opened. In case it didn’t there was a back-up procedure: count to four and then pull the emergency ripcord on our chest.

Emergency ripcord – Got it.

The video went on to describe steering. Once the chute opened and we were floating down, we could maneuver ourselves by using the steering toggles. These were two lines that ran from the canopy of the chute down to loops near our shoulders (one on the left, one on the right). If we pulled down on the right loop it would slightly collapse the right edge of the parachute, which would give it less lift than the left side. The right side would drag more, and the chute would turn to the right. And vice versa.

Steering – Check.

Finally, the video covered the landing procedure. When we neared the ground we were to pull down firmly on both steering toggles, thus collapsing both sides of the chute and creating a lot of drag to slow us down as much as possible. Then it was just a matter of hitting the ground running, to disperse the rest of the momentum.

Hitting the ground – Piece of cake.

The instructor shut off the video, and helped us practice what we had learned; adopting the right body position for jumping, reaching for the emergency ripcord handle, and jumping off a two-foot-high box to simulate the force with which we’d touch down.

We passed our tests, and it was time to head out to the airstrip.

The plane in which we’d fly was a Cessna 182, a cute little propeller plane with diagonal struts running from each wing to the fuselage. Inside there was only one seat for the pilot, and a smooth padded floor for the rest of us to sit on; Phil, myself and the instructor.

We went up to 2,000 feet, and the instructor opened the door. The air going by at 60 miles an hour seemed a lot faster than the air rushing past a car window at the same speed, and I felt my heart pound a little faster.

I was first to jump. My memory says it’s because I was five pounds heavier than Phil, and they wanted the heavier person out first because they would plummet faster and therefore clear the air for the lighter person. But I recall some guy called Galileo proving that all bodies fall at the same rate, no matter their weight, and so maybe I got to go first because the instructor could feel me bouncing up and down with eagerness, and he wanted me to stop causing turbulence in the tiny plane.

He motioned for me to approach the door, and I shuffled over on my knees and looked out. There were fields and roads down below, with tiny houses and cars, looking like the decorations for a model train landscape. It was high enough to feel exhilarating, but because of all the details I could make out it didn’t seem dangerous. In fact, we were only about 500 feet higher than I had been on my recent trip to the top of the Sears Tower, so it felt very familiar indeed.

I looked to the instructor, and he gave me the signal to do the first step of the jump sequence: “put your feet out and stop.” That meant: “swing your legs out of the door and put your feet on the little step that helps you climb into the plane.” The last word in the instructions – “stop” – is there to remind adrenaline-hyped first-timers not to just tumble out headfirst and somersault away.

I put my feet out on the step, feeling a frisson of excitement at this threshold; half inside the safety of the plane, half in the sky!

I looked back at the instructor and he gave me the second instruction: “go all the way out.” This meant to reach your hands out and grab the diagonal strut that runs from the fuselage out to the wing, and inch your way out along it until your feet have left the step and you’re hanging by your hands.

I reached my hands out, and they were promptly blown back towards me by the force of the wind. I think I giggled. I reached out again, staying closer to the side of the plane to cut down on the strength of the wind, and this time I managed to grab the strut. I inched my hands out, afraid that with my weak upper body strength I would just be blown away. But somehow the magic of physics or aerodynamics made it easy to hold on, even as I shuffled further away from the relative safety of the inside of the plane, and I was hanging off the strut by my hands, legs stretched out behind me.

I looked down. It was amazing! I was flying, like Superman, hands stretched out in front of me, Earth passing slowly underneath. I wanted to stay here forever, living out in real life what I had only experienced in dreams before. But I remembered that the instructor said we only had a short window of time where we were over the landing field, so we had to get out quick. Reluctantly, I looked back into the plane.

The instructor gave me the third and final instruction: “Let go.”

I turned back to look at my hands, whispered “here we go!” and I released the plane. I had imagined it would be like letting go of the monkey bars on the playground, that same feeling of falling. Instead, it felt like I stayed exactly where I was, and the plane immediately rose up and away from me.

My mind was already counting the four seconds until I needed to release the emergency chute: “1-one-thousand, 2-one-thousand, 3-one-th—” suddenly there was a violent jerk on my body, and I was hauled upwards. I glanced above me, and there was my parachute, a rectangle of translucent blueness, blossomed over my head. It seemed farther away than I expected, and bigger, too.

I looked down and all I saw was my sneakered feet, and then the ground, way, way below them, with nothing in between but clear air. I murmured something profound, like “Wow, wow, wow.” The wind was drying out my teeth, but I couldn’t close my mouth because my smile was so big.

A voice crackled inside my helmet. It was a second instructor on the ground with a walkie-talkie.

“Blue chute: if you can hear me, pull on your right-hand toggle and make a 180˚ turn.”

I reached up and grabbed the steering toggles. I pulled down on the right hand one, and the chute slowly veered clockwise.

“Blue chute: that’s great. Now try a left turn.”

I eased up on the right-hand loop and pulled down the left loop, returning myself to the direction I had been facing originally. I was already starting to incorporate the motions into my body memory; not having to think about how to do them, just think about what I wanted to do, and my body would get me there.

“Blue chute: try braking.”

I did as he said, pulling down on both loops at the same time, which caused both sides of the chute to partially collapse, and briefly halted my forward momentum. Up to that point I hadn’t been aware of the noise made by the fluttering nylon of the chute in the wind; then it suddenly stopped and there was only peace and stillness, suspended there in the clear, empty air. I reveled in the sensation for a full second and a half until fear kicked in with a jolt of adrenaline and an image of the whole chute collapsing completely and me hurtling to the ground. I eased up on both toggles, and let myself flutter forwards again.

I heard the man on the walkie-talkie giving the same instructions to “Green chute” and I knew that Phil had made it out okay.

I played with the toggles, turning myself left and right, looking out over the landscape. I could see for miles in every direction; no mountains, skyscrapers or trees to block my view to the horizon. I saw a long river stretching ahead of me, and I could follow it from where it was wide and straight on the left to where it narrowed and began to loop and curve, off to the right.

I could see the even grids of fields with one small house allotted to each. Those farmers had to cover every square foot of the fields with their tractors, up and back, up and back, in tight rows, sewn to the earth. They probably knew every bump and dip in each field. But I could take in dozens, maybe hundreds of fields all at once. Not privy to the tiny, homespun truths gained by close attention, I instead had a broader view of what is common to all and therefore valuable to all.

Likewise, my sense of time became wider and more encompassing. When you’re stuck to Earth by the glue of gravity your focus is only on what’s directly in front of you – or on the small patch of what you can see around you – and so you go through your day linearly, one thing after another. But lifted out into the third dimension you can see the entire path that one might travel: from home, down the highway, into town, around the streets, and back again. All at once. As if you can see long stretches of time at a glance, as well as space.

This broad perspective of space and time was as enchanting as the emptiness of the air and the joy of being able to glide around by power of will. My arms had fully adapted to the controls, and I just had to think “right” and I would turn right. Think “left” and I turned left. Unfortunately, thinking “up” didn’t have any effect at all, and I was going “down” faster than I wished.

The landscape was growing large, and it was time to start aiming for the field. The man on the walkie-talkie gave me instructions on where to land, and I homed in on the right spot.

It wasn’t complicated. I just steered for the three colored blobs standing around in the large green mass of the field. A few seconds later I could see the arms and legs of the blobs. Then their faces. Then the texture of the grass, and then the voice in my ear was saying “brake, brake!” and I pulled down on the toggles with all of my strength and the chute slowed and I hit the ground and ran a couple steps and then stumbled and fell on my face. I came up laughing.

Several people came over to help me up and to gather my chute. They carried it off to the side, and we stood and waited for Phil to land. He wasn’t much more graceful than I was, but he did manage to stay on his feet. And when he reached me we hugged and jumped up and down and all I could think of was “more, more, more!”

We were led back to the office where we had a debrief from the instructors, and then Phil and I got to chatter away to each other about the jump. About the visceral rebellion of the body when asked to move from the safety of the plane to the emptiness of the sky. About the exhilaration and majesty of swooping. About the pain of the straps cutting into your crotch that you couldn't do anything about because you couldn't stand on anything to release your weight so you could shift them. I'd never even considered that.

Rather than winding down, our jabbering got us more excited, so when the instructor asked if we'd like to go up again, we (ahem) jumped at the chance. Phil had panicked a bit while exiting the plane the first time, so he wanted to go out again and prove to himself he could do it smoothly. Me, I wanted to go higher!

There was a second type of jump that they offered: the tandem jump from 11,000 feet. For this one you were strapped to the chest of the instructor, and there was no preparation necessary: he took care of everything.

We went up in a different plane from Phil, just me and the instructor and the pilot. It took a long time to get up to altitude. Long enough for me to get nervous. Long enough for me to start looking around for a piece of paper and a pen with which to write out my last will and testament.

And then the instructor opened the door and I looked out and got really scared. From 11,000 feet the world doesn’t look like a little elf’s garden or a movie miniature set. It looks like what you see from a passenger plane when the pilot says “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have reached our cruising altitude. Feel free to remove your seatbelts and wander about the cabin.” But we had no seatbelts. And we were going to wander outside of the cabin altogether.

If it had been up to me, I don’t know if I could have jumped. But before I could say “ulp!” the instructor had hurled us both sideways out the door. No hanging onto the strut like Superman while the scenery passed peacefully below. Just my heart in my throat one second and my heels over my head the next.

It was like being in a huge wind tunnel! I couldn’t see, and I could barely breathe with all of the air being forced into my face. This wasn’t the gentle weightlessness of freefall that I had imagined. I had been thinking of what it was like for astronauts in space: hovering in place and feeling serene. But this was like being Dorothy in the tornado, without the protection of the house and its walls.

We had 60 seconds of freefall, during which time the instructor showed off all his moves. Turns and somersaults and spins. A roller coaster without the track. I gritted my teeth and tried to breathe.

Finally we reached the end of the ride and the instructor deployed the chute. Again the upwards wrenching as our freefalling momentum was braked and transformed to a glide. The canopied descent seemed to last almost no time; perhaps because I was still reeling from the wind and the somersaults, or perhaps because it’s harder to wax rhapsodic about being separate from everything when you’re strapped to some stranger. Before I knew it we were down on the ground, the landing more elegant at least, with a professional in charge.

Phil was in the café drinking coffee when I came in, and he was smiling with satisfaction. His second jump had gone much better than his first. I still liked my first jump the best, but I was glad I tried the higher one. You don’t know what something’s going to be like until you do it. If I shrank back from uncertain experiences I'd never have jumped at all.

The day was getting late, so we stripped off our jumpsuits, handed in our helmets and goggles, and headed for home. This time we were silent; with tiredness, with content, and with inward musings. I had achieved another goal, taken my little break from reality, and come home safely to tell about it. It was time to take the next step in my life.

“So Phil," I said, turning to him with a grin, "next week hang gliding?”

Andrea Blumberg