2003-09-25

So, hm.

���� I sort of really want a diary diary to work, but it is simply not and I don't know if I could make it. There are a ton of things I'd like to write down but they're all intertwined and kind of fleeting and if I grab at them they just dissolve. It's maddening because some people are so good at it. But anyway.

*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*

���� Sunday my dad and I drove up to Lebanon, Maine, donned helmets and faintly-B.O.-smelling jumpsuits, and tossed ourselves out of a bright yellow plane. I don't know if you've ever been in a little plane, sort of a flying van -- it's like being in a tin box hanging there in the sky, and you can feel the engine like it's pressed against your back; you can see all the bolts and welds, and you can see the rods and joints that the pilot manipulates to conduct the thing through the air. Wings, wheels, gas and an engine, a narrow margin of economy, and little or no promise of bodily protection. Small planes are low on pretense, primitive enough to remind a person of the huge dividends simple concepts can yield. Having a plane is very very different from not having a plane.

���� So imagine you're in this plane with ten other people all sitting on the floor in two backwards-facing rows as the pilot throttles the thing forward and up off the runway. You're back to back with the pilot's seat, and pressed up to your chest is the parachute of the guy in front of you -- in this case Scott, your main side jumpmaster. He tells you over his shoulder to go through the sequence--

����which is basically 4 things:

����1. Hop out sideways and arch yourself into the wind
����2. Once horizontal, watch for any corrective hand signals from your instructors
����3. Reach behind to make sure the deployment grab-thing is in easy reach
����4. Check your altimeter every few seconds, so you'll know when the time comes

���� ����--in your head, and relax, and also tell him when your altimeter passes 5500 ft, so he can make sure his is synched with yours. Paolo, your reserve side jumpmaster, is perched on the copilot's seat, facing backwards. He shouts RIGHT ON MAN, YOU GOT IT! YOU GOT IT! YOU READY MAN?! WHAT'S THIS? and he gives you the loose shake hand signal. RELAX! you yell back at him. He gives you a huge thumbs-up with his really huge thumb. Meanwhile the plane is roaring upward at a 40 degree angle, and cameraman Keith is stretching over everyone to hold the camera up to your face, waiting to ask DUDE! HOW'S IT GOIN' MAN? YOU NERVOUS?! You say, well, whatever you'd say. I said, "a little, yeah, but, no, uh, not really" because, well, I had no idea.

���� Soon you're at 13,000 ft. You can tell because the plane has just leveled out and the passengers are all rolling out the door. They zip away in an unmistakable straight-downward direction. Scott and Paolo beckon you to the door. You knee walk over to the door (it's a low ceiling) and assume the practiced position -- get in the doorway facing the front of the plane, plant your right foot at the edge, straight under you, and your left out behind you, hands gripping the wall-edge in front of you. You know the next step is to look left at Paolo, to see if he's ready -- the seqeunce is confirm with Paolo on the left, confirm with Scott on your right, lean out a bit, in a bit, and then jump. It feels about 20 seconds since the plane leveled, 8 seconds since you got up to move to the door; now you look left and he's already there, his huge Paolo grin 8 inches from your more normal-sized bewildered grin, the huge thumbs-up in between. Paolo's ready, so what's left to do but look right and see that Scott has turned his launch key and now out and in and missiles away.

���� This is where the real bewilderment starts. For the first few seconds, there are cues that let you know you're falling -- your trajectory from the plane, the fact that your head is aimed downwards -- and not doing anything about it takes some effort. Not that there's much you could do. But it's confusing and it shuts your brain down for a few seconds. You're not used to falling from a height where falling isn't the most pressing issue. Further weirdness comes from the fact that it doesn't feel like falling. Not even for a second. It feels like floating, like you're a hand out the car window, like you're in the antigravity flying dreams full of pillows that I used to have when I was 10. You notice, whoa, I'm out here in the sky. You move your hands and feet a bit, get yourself level. You realize that air is thick and planes fly on this thickness. This thought returns your brain to you and you attend to the things you have to do (#2 and #3 above). Keith is racing in circles around you, about 20 feet below, shooting you from all directions. Your previous dislike of Keith's camera presence has been superseded by a baby-like pleasure at having companions in this puffy cloud puffy air place. You check the altimeter on your wrist. You check it again. You breathe. Your eyes dart all around, trying to put it all together. You check the altimeter again. And again. It's frightening how fast the needle moves, but it's also reassuring since it confirms what you know to be true but can't really perceive.
���� But now you've left the puffy cloud place; you're swooping down on forest and field.

���� 5500 ft comes. You wave off the instructors, reach back for the pilot chute, throw it and wait. You're suddenly taken up and shaken like a can of soda. Up down left right, shaking violently, and then silence. The roaring wind has ceased and you're sitting in a swing with 85% of a mile between your feet and the ground.

���� You look up at the nice nice parachute; soft, good parachute that was in your backpack a few seconds ago and now buzzes gently in the wind. You look around and can see that you're moving, the next step is to steer. You reach up and gingerly un-velcro the steering handles. You're not really inclined to be detaching anything from anything right now, but everything goes okay. You take the handles and pull them all the way down. It swings you out in front of the parachute like someone swung you off the roof of a building by the scruff of your neck, which is scary. You try lefts and rights. The wind shakes you around every once in a while. You slowly come down on the airfield. At the far end you do a u-turn and swing into the wind, braking about 10 feet off the ground. It's a little low and you skid to a stop in a squat.

Enter Keith with his camera, as you awkwardly untangle yourself from the lines. DUDE! WAS THAT THE BEST THING YOU'VE EVER DONE?! TELL ME, WAS THAT THE COOLEST?!

���� I wished I could tell him something, but I was pretty much speechless.

���� It was a little like how it's fun to walk home from a place you've been driven to. And maybe it's a nice sunny fall day, and maybe you got an ice cream cone on the way, and maybe while you weren't noticing somebody totally sexed you all the way up and down, and now you're home and maybe you'll just lie down in the driveway for a few minutes, breathe some oxygen, and feel good.

*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*

���� Sunday night as I closed my eyes I had flashes of downward whooshings, and upward yankings.

���� Monday I was tired from not having slept well, and Monday night I didn't sleep well either.

���� Tuesday I went to see Lost in Translation. Did you ever read The End of Something and then afterwards say, "holy crap, these three pages!" And I don't mean to say the movie is short -- rather, "how did these few people go to Tokyo with some cameras and some ideas and manufacture what should have required sublimation? How have I had this experience for $9 and 2 hours at the Loews Boston Common?"

���� But we'll see what we think in 5 years.

*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*����*

���� Today at lunchtine I went into the nearby little strip park just in time to watch some kids filming BMX tricks and jumps off a particularly rampy curb cut. They had some nice moves, and el se�or of them (which is a term I just made up meaning "the best one, maybe the oldest, to whom the rest look up, and for whose ability they yearn") got big air and then swore and whinnied on landing almost every time, except for the few instances in which the air was big enough to do the trick, and then everybody hooted and clapped. Simultaneously, I admired a cool picture of John Ashcroft in today's Phoenix.


0 Comments

 First

 List

 Email

 Comments

 Latest

statcounter.com