i just decided to do it. jump out of a perfectly good airplane for no reason other than i could, that is. and i was well rewarded for my choice. it was an inexplicable experience. something not quite spiritual but a thing that opens your eyes to possibilities and just plain makes you feel alive.

we got to Marina, just north of Monterey, around 8:30am after waking up at 5:00am and after getting only three hours of sleep. i was mostly conscious but the whole idea of the jump was still theoretical. we signed in. and signed in. and signed in. it was almost more paperwork than buying a house. no, i will not sue you. no, i will not sue the people who make the equipment. no, i will not sue the airport. no, i will not sue the people who own the land on which the airport sits. no, i will not sue the people who wrote the recipe that was used to make the bagel that i had for breakfast this morning. or their relatives, friends, acquaintances, pet gerbils, or pretty much anyone else they ever came in contact with them, ever. yup. that pretty much covers it.

i'd barely finished paying for the jump when Tom, Jenn, and i (there were 20 of us total) were wisked away to grab our jumpsuits (mine was teal and pink), get our quick-n-dirty safety lesson, and hop on the plane. it was a medium-sized, double-prop plane that held about twelve of us crammed in there -- solos, tandem masters, and us greenhorns. the inside was definitely arranged for convenience rather than comfort. but seeing as the trip to 15,000 feet was barely long enough to toss back and forth a few jokes and review the procedures, comfort wasn't an issue.

now, 15,000 feet is awfully high up there. but once you pass that point where you can still make out people and cars, it stops feeling quite so high and you really have to put some thought into it to realize just exactly where you are. the ground looks beautiful. we had an incredible view of the ocean, the mountains, and the patchwork quilt of argicultural fields.

of course, at the time, the view was furthest from my mind. i wasn't really scared, or all that anxious, i just didn't know what to expect. as the door opened, the green light came on, and the first of the jumpers started falling out of the plane, i knew i was about to find out.

once that door opened, though, there wasn't much time to acquire all that anxiety i was supposed to be feeling. it was maybe thirty seconds from the time the door opened until i was at the ledge, my arms crossed in front of me, looking down fifteen-thousand-feet at my destination. and once there, it was one-two-three and whoooweeeee ... tumbling out, rolling, looking back at the perfectly good airplane i'd just exited, and then reestablishing into the wind. and it was loud, really loud. i couldn't even hear myself shout. it didn't really feel like falling. more like laying on a cushion of air. in a way, it felt as if it would last forever; the ground didn't seem to be getting much closer and the sensory intake was incredible. perspective, spatial understanding, and comprehension were all a struggle. but everything contributed to an elation unparalleled. i was floating above the earth in a teal and pink jumpsuit for forty-five seconds on a beautiful Saturday morning and nothing else mattered.

then, suddenly, a tug, a pull, a cinch in a place that prefers not to be so, a yank backwards as the chute opened and caught the rushing air. and then silence. absolute quiet. twirling to the earth for the next few minutes was a completely dichotomous experience. it was drifting and floating, i was looking down but also out, and the feeling of decending was more apparent. it was more graceful in some ways and more mechanical in others. the world was a whole lot more real, in any case. i could see the go karts racing below me and i watched other jumpers floating downwards on either side of me. as we approached the ground, we pulled the chute in and landed gently on our feet. quite an easy landing compared to our screaming decent.

on the ground, it was a while before my senses fully returned. my knees were weak and shook slightly, partly from being tossed around in the decent and partly from my intense excitement. my hearing was dull. and my spatial understanding lacked complete cohesion. i simply was not all there, the rest of me was still floating back to earth.

and so was my first skydiving experience. a mere half-hour of which only a few minutes were actually spent in the air. but it left a flavor that has yet to dissapate. and i'm hooked. i've decided to invest the exorbitant amount of money to become a licensed skydiver, six hours of ground school and twenty-seven jumps later.

if you ever have the urge or are just curious, i highly recommend trying a tandem jump. it's not nearly as scary as the stereotype makes it out to be. and while the experience may not change your life, it will certainly leave you with a wonderfully great feeling and a good story to tell your friends.

see the photo section for some photos of the jump. (by the way, if you're jumping for the first time, i recommend getting the video/stills package. it's expensive because they have to send down another jumper to do the photography but well worth it. although, try really hard to ignore the guy floating down across from you with the camcorder strapped to his head. it ends up being distracting if you pay too much attention to the camera.)