July 4th, 2010 | 1 comment | Skydiving

There’s a lot to be said for going skydiving once. Over the past four weeks I have heard some of the most amazing stories about why people are deciding to throw themselves out of perfectly good airplanes. Last weekend there was a woman who jumped for her 80th birthday. Her experience? She felt closer to God.

And there’s a lot to be said for going skydiving more than once. Once takes a lot of guts, yes, but the people who continue to get up in the air never cease to amaze me. This weekend (so far) I’ve graduated AFF, had my first reserve ride and have bought A LOT of beer. I say so far because if the weather keeps up I’ll have my A-License by Monday.

First, AFF Graduation. So levels six and seven are most definitely fun jumps. You do backflips, front flips and basically just learn how to get stable after being unstable. Woo! Here’s a video of my level seven. A little bouncy, but it’s insane the difference between that jump and my last one yesterday. After level seven, you’re on to coaching jumps – so I’m still jumping with someone, but the difference now is, they won’t save my life. AFF Graduation signifies that your instructors are confident that at the proper altitude, you will pull your own cord and save your own life. No need for someone to do it for you.

Saturday was quite the experience.

I did five jumps yesterday, the fourth one was a reserve ride. I had to cutaway my main canopy because of a spinning line over malfunction. I didn’t have a camera so this image isn’t of my canopy but that’s basically what it looked like:

This malfunction occurs when one or more of the canopy’s lines pass in front of the nose prior to inflation. This causes the canopy to open in a “bow-tie” shape. Once I realized what was going on, my first thought was “what is this called and how do I get out of it?” In ground school, we go through flash cards of images of malfunctions and discuss whether or not they are something you can get out of. I pumped the brakes and nothing, I was spinning. I reached for my cutaway handle and chopped my main canopy. As I reached for my reserve handle, my reserve opened up. The reserve static line (RSL) automatically deploys the reserve when the main canopy is cutaway.

When I went through ground school, we went through the emergency pull procedures OVER and OVER and OVER again. Right before my level one jump, one of my instructors had a spinning malfunction, couldn’t locate his reserve handle and his CYPRES (automatic activation device) fired and saved his life. He told me before we get on the plane, I need to be looking at my reserve before I pull my cutaway, so I can be sure to do the sequence and not miss a handle. Between ground school, the “this just happened and here’s how you get out of it” tips from fellow skydivers, and our amazing reserve riggers, I’m happy to say that I safely landed my first malfunction. Lived to jump another day.

I’ve heard horror stories about how a malfunction can totally screw with your mind. Several people told me yesterday stories of students who had cutaways, freaked out and never returned to the sport. I knew I had to get back up in the air before my mind got the best of me. So I did. Was the jump good? Eh, could have been better. But I did it. Squashed the fear. I’ve said before that there’s a lot of mental empowerment that comes from being able to jump out of planes – the whole “you can do anything if you can do this” idea. Well, if I can get back up in the air after a reserve ride and not freak out, then I can most certainly do anything.

Skydiving is an interesting sport, I tell you. For your first anything, you buy beer. For graduating anything, you buy beer. For milestone jumps, you buy beer. So this weekend, I bought beer for my AFF graduation, my first cutaway and I’m bringing the instructor that packed my reserve beer back from Chicago next weekend.

And when you land a reserve ride, there’s a whole lot of “congratulations” going on. Loads of high fives, “way to save your life twice” comments and a ton of questions, obviously. That’s why the first thing I thought was “what is this called and how do I get out of it?” Primarily, I wanted to save my life, but I knew when I landed people would ask what the malfunction was.

Topping off yesterday’s festivities, we all packed up on the planes and flew down to Skydive Chicago for their fireworks display. Single-handedly the best fireworks display I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

Up next: rounding out my 25 jumps for my A-License. Hopefully with beautiful canopy rides.