Saturday, December 5, 2020

This is video of me jumping out of an airplane and being scared

 


I have skydived (skydove?) exactly one time.

There isn't likely to be a second time.

I wrote about the experience some years ago. If you're interested in the details, you can read that post from 2012.

The value-add here is that I'm providing video of the experience.

A few quick notes on what you'll see in that clip:

  • I am jumping by myself. None of this pansy tandem skydiving stuff many of you have done. I went alone. This was 1991. BACK WHEN MEN WERE MEN. (Note that Canton Air Sports did not actually offer a tandem skydiving experience then, or else you can bet your bottom dollar I would have gone that route.)
  • I didn't jump out of the plane or anything like that. I had to very gingerly crawl out, hang from the wing strut, and then wait for the instructor to tell me it was OK to let go. This is perhaps not the ideal introduction to an activity such as skydiving.
  • Actually, for me, it wasn't "skydiving" so much as "falling terrified from 3500 feet in the sky."
I made it safely to the ground, where my dad tried to capture footage of me touching down just short of the gravel circle that was our landing target and then dropping and rolling as I was taught. But his clunky old Curtis Mathis camcorder was a little too unwieldly for him to get me in frame, so what resulted is just a confused sweeping of the sky, followed by a 2-second shot of me gathering up my parachute. He tried.

Anyway, in sum when it comes to skydiving: Did it, glad I did it, won't plan on doing it again.


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