1.
The reality of what I have signed up for does not hit me until I am by the aircraft’s open door, watching the jumper before me disappear into the hazy blue distance. Until then, no real sense of scope has been established: Wind cannot reach the back of the plane where tandem divers board, and the circular window by my seat offers a modest view of our ascent that I only register as a static image, slowly scaling out.
In a commercial aircraft, long waits on the taxiway turn any particular excitement for takeoff into simple impatience, while clouds conceal whatever nature or structure lies beneath by the time the snack cart has made its first round. The smaller skydiving jet does not take us above the clouds, but it is hard to eliminate the notion that there must be something buffering us from the earth besides 10,000 feet of empty space.
At the edge of the plane, the illusion disappears. The ground, altitude-warped and tiny, is fatally near.
2.
Nothing is professionally guaranteed in skydiving, not even the day you book.
If the fog did not lift that August morning, we would have been sent right back home, like the other unlucky groups on the heels of the stormy season’s stormiest week. My mother and I drove two hours into Virginia at the break of dawn for our appointment, so when we were set loose in the hangar with the instruction to simply wait, we were content to busy ourselves until the weather cleared.
It was still cool enough in the early morning to wander outside of the hangar’s shielded interior. But there was little activity there, the bustle contained as long as the foggy conditions held it in. A massive American flag was draped over the hangar’s entrance, facing the airway where the first jumpers had begun to suit up, leaning over aging men stretching with that particular concentration lost on spry, fit folk and blessing small jet planes wheeling about before takeoff. Shortly, sunlight split over the field, exposing marked yellow tracks pressed beneath the fog, and we were briefed on safety preparations.
One might consider danger in degrees of calculated risk. The more easily risk can be managed, the more bureaucratic the process of surrendering oneself as a liability. Recall the red tape at the DMV: so much tedious licensing, regulating, testing and teaching. At the most extreme end of extreme sports, this formalization approaches uselessness. Take BASE (buildings, antennae, spans, and earth) jumping, which in some manifestations—jumping from private bridges or buildings—operates entirely outside of the law. Is safety as those athletes understand it encoded in their rules and regulations?
Safe skydiving is in the middle of these zones. First a military maneuver, parachuting became a general sport when the first commercial drop zone opened in 1959. Advancements in safety technology such as Bill Booth’s three-ring release system and automatically-deploying parachutes have aided in its recreational accessibility. For tandem skydiving, as my mother and I would soon learn, the process is almost dubiously simple.
My mother and I entered a room with an instructional video looping on the screen where we were to sign our waivers. We were through very quickly, and a receptionist traded our packets for nametags for our instructors to identify us with. The video concluded with the actor smiling and telling us: “Welcome to the family.”
My tandem instructor was a man everyone in the hangar called “Joseph Goldenboy”—even the screen separating tandem students and instructors into diving groups read “GOLDENBOY, JOSEPH.” When he introduced himself to me, he omitted the epithet, but it would have been impossible to mistake him. Sporting a Hawaiian-print button up, athletic shorts and sunglasses while biting down on a toothpick, his confidence manifested in an almost casual affect.
A young man with a GoPro, responsible for the photo and video packages, seemed to know him well. Detecting or projecting some regular anxiety, he found me at the mats prior to our jump to announce, “Don’t worry, you’re with Goldenboy. You’ll be just fine.” It was not a neutralization of risk.
3.
During freefall, you have passed the apex of danger. On the drive over I could have sat in the blindspot of a semi-truck without knowing it, and during the ascent, at any point, the engine could have blown out. The moment right before our jump was probably critical—Goldenboy removed his sunglasses and rolled his shorts down over his calves, and began fiddling with my harness—but I was not told why.
There is a particular order for the divers to jump: first the belly groups, freefly groups, tandem, then wingsuit. Out of the dozen or so people in the plane, I am one of three first-timers. The entire way up, I stared alternately out of the window or directly at the helmet of the diver in front of me, which was decorated with stickers. My favorite read, “JUMP SLUT.”
The professional divers at the location we visited jump between eight and 13 times a day. “This is my coffee jump,” one of them joked. Close to the first round of dives, we all exchanged fist bumps around in the plane. Through the goggles it was hard to catch anyone’s eye. I am certain I intercepted someone else’s high five.
The cabin began to thin out and I found myself moving in an awkward straddle-waddle forward on the bench, the ceiling too low to stand straight up. Suddenly, Goldenboy asked if I was ready. Understand that you are completely incompetent, entirely dependent upon your instructor; understand that for a practical purpose, you are a part of this.
4.
Freefall is terrifying. I had expected my stomach might drop, like missing a step going down the stairs. That is not the case: There is no recovery, no place to land. I spend most of the time hoping for it to be over.
A minute later, it is over. The canopy extends over us and now we drift slowly, for four to five more minutes, toward the field.
Goldenboy wants to know how it was. “Good?” I venture.
“Great!” As we descend, he shouts jubilantly, “That was awesome!”
On the ground, my mother had asked the diver with the camera if his job was harder than the tandem instructor’s. After a half-beat of shocked laughter, he corrected, “His is way harder.” Instructors are often jumping with people who are doing this for the first time, who could react in any of a million unexpected ways.
A skydiver must jump 200 times on their own before they are allowed to bring a camera and 500 times before they can become a tandem instructor. I ask Goldenboy how he got started with this.
His ex-girlfriend bought him a package as a present, and he liked it enough to do it again. “Same as you,” Goldenboy says.
We descend, moment by moment, and I wonder if only I am processing the rush from a successful foray into a new experience. Every one of these professional jumpers has, at some point, experienced this vertigo. The difference is a matter of habit.