120 mph, straight down.

At a little over two and half miles up, the air is cold, the wind is deafening, and my heart is pounding. The safety glasses pinch my nose and I shift uncomfortably on the aluminum bench. The small plane rattles and bumps and suddenly a door is opened. And men are willfully jumping out. This all seems dreadfully wrong. I am tightly strapped to a care-free instructor (my back to his chest) who chuckles at my obviously and genuinely terrified comments. “Oh shit.” I nervously recite to myself what I was told in the preparatory class. "Wait... um... when do I do the... um... what's the altitude when... er..." My friends have disappeared out of the door which is just ahead of me. "Don't worry about it!" he haphazardly hollers. Suddenly we're scooting forward. Now on the lip of the open doorway, looking down at the distant ground and a few strangely-near wisps of cloud, my mind is blank. My body has gone limp as my animal survival-instincts are suddenly overcome with a numbing I've-gone-too-far-to-go-back realization and the whipping of a cold wind that my body knows was meant to support birds, not men in flimsy straps and buckles. Yet from somewhere deep inside begins to erupt a whoop of exultation.


Skydiving in Orange County, Virginia. August 20, 2005.


Cheers,


Noah