Parachuting!

The day finally arrived. We were gonna go parachuting around noon. For two days we had been training for it and it was the training that had my quite worried. You see, static-line parachuting is fairly straightforward: you jump out of the plane when the instructor tells you, the chute auto-deploys, you perform a number of simple checks and then try to land softly, keeping your knees slightly bent and facing the direction of the wind.

The vast majority of the training is therefore devoted to all the things that could possibly go wrong and how to respond. All the horror scenarios I hadn't yet thought off beforehand were drilled into my head. From the chute deploying inside the plane to landing on the roof of a building and everything in between.

Naturally, the night before the jump I dreamt of a chute that didn't deploy and when it did, had its lines tangled. I didn't get much sleep. There was one final exam we had to pass. After that, we had to wait for another group to jump and for the plane to refuel. That hour was gruesome. Heart pounding in my throat, solid iron in my legs kinda gruesome.

The plane was ready, three of us first-timers were gonna go up with experienced skydivers. We would jump out at 3000 feet and they would climb to 10 000 feet to do free fall acrobatics. I'll never forget the moment the little red light turned green signalling our arrival at 3000 feet. This was it. The hatch opened and I would be the last of us to jump out. The first two made it look easy. Just sit in the opening, look over the wing and let go. When it was my turn, all emotion disappeared and I focused on the checklists I had to do.

The instructor was screaming stuff, but I couldn't hear her over the wind so I just nodded 'yes'. Then I heard 'go'. And I jumped.

Wait for my next post to hear how it turned out, gotta run now.