Quirky Bedtime Stories - Oh Foolish Boy

Another quirky story from the vaults of yesteryear. I wonder if we all have done things that we now regard as having been foolish, reckless, and ...slightly dumb? Skydiving has a rather strange allure, doesn't it? It seems that the people who do it on a regular basis have a certain freedom of spirit... or is it that the only way they can cope with the humdrum of life is to toss themselves out of a plane?

Transcript

Good evening,

Sleepyheads,

And welcome to another edition of Quirky Bedtime Stories.

I have quite a number of these things lying around by the looks of it,

So it's just a matter of me digging around and finding one that seems suitable for the moment.

And this one here is called The Recollections of a Fool,

And it's a story about me as a young man doing a very foolish thing that involved trying to impress a member of the opposite sex.

I'm still in touch with this particular person,

And she lives in Timaru with her family,

And we send each other missives every now and then,

But it was a different story way back then.

Oh,

The follies of youth.

Anyway,

The other day I was looking through the archives of my computer and came across this little essay on my one and only attempt at freeing myself from any connection with the ground we walk on.

Oh,

Foolish boy.

Let's flash back to Wellington,

New Zealand,

1981.

Finally,

After many delays because of bad weather,

The day dawned a bright,

Calm and cloudless blue.

Perfect conditions for my first jump.

The trip out to the site would take about two hours,

Though,

And having experienced last-minute changes in weather before,

I didn't feel the high level of nerves that I had at first.

In a state of outward calm,

I gathered together my leather jacket,

Helmet,

Gloves,

Kicked over my SR500 stand,

And headed out to the airfield to meet up with my fellow first jumpers.

Motorcycle journeys are interesting in themselves.

You,

The machine,

And the road.

A road becomes fixed in the mind like a mental map after having travelled it a number of times.

An automatic awareness takes over that allows you to think about other things while you ride.

It's a bit like our breathing,

Or our heartbeat,

In that we don't have to think about what we're doing in order to do it.

My thoughts cast back to the first time the idea of trying out skydiving came up.

Why jump out of a perfectly good plane,

Is what a pilot friend of mine said to me straight away in reply to me telling him of my idea.

I didn't really have a good answer to that,

Other than it seemed like an adventurous thing to do,

And that it would break up an otherwise boring daily routine that my life had settled into.

There must be something more to life than an endlessly repeated cycle of getting up,

Going to work,

Going home,

Watching TV,

And going to bed,

Right?

However,

If I were telling the complete truth,

It would be that I was out to impress a girl.

And what better way to attract the opposite sex than by crafting and projecting an image of adventure and daring?

But that's another story.

Leading up to jump day,

The jump master had instructed us carefully in the safe and secure environment of the community centre gym.

With our feet planted firmly on the ground,

We ran through the features of the equipment first,

Then talked about the exit procedures,

And finally the steps to take when,

Not if,

A malfunction should occur.

The parachutes we were going to use were old oval chutes that were army surplus and apparently safe.

I had had visions of gracefully gliding to earth under a colourful wing-like canopy and landing like a modern superman before the admiring gaze of the gathered crowd.

But that hope was dashed when I saw the bulky,

Camouflage,

Khaki-green,

Grey,

Workman-like chutes we were going to use.

There was no romance here.

One comforting feature of these chutes was that they were opened by a ripcord mechanism that pulled open the backpack containing the main chute after a three-second freefall.

Something that I would be more than thankful for later.

Some more experienced club members demonstrated the way to get out of the plane,

Which would be a small,

Single-engine Cessna with an overhead wing.

Placing one hand protectively over the emergency release lever to avoid an anterior release of a chute.

Yes,

It had happened to some unfortunate souls who did not live to tell the tale.

We were shown how to exit a plane at three thousand feet.

Move to the edge of the doorway,

Reach out with your hands to grab the overhead wing strut,

Step out with the left foot onto the wheel axle,

Cross the right leg and dangle that freely in space.

Then,

When the jumpmaster yells,

Release,

Simply let go and arch your back so that you fall gracefully away from the plane in a stable position,

Allowing the chute to release freely.

Simple as that.

We took turns to strap the harness to our bodies and being hoisted up off the ground in order to simulate the conditions we would be facing.

We also had to go through the main chute release procedure that would lead to the release of the emergency chute.

We were reminded time and time again that the main chute must be cleared and out of the way before reaching for the emergency release.

Failure to do so would result in a tangled mass of cables and material with a rather final consequence at the end of the journey.

We all had to sign a disclaimer.

My mind switched back to the present.

At the airfield,

Things were tense and nervous.

I was placed in a group of four that included the jumpmaster.

We packed ourselves into heavy canvas jumpsuits with flared sleeves and legs,

Crammed our heads into rather flimsy-looking white helmets,

And finished off the look with a pair of plastic goggles to cover our eyes.

The chute pack was fitted last and seemed so much heavier than when we had tried it on before.

I was wondering,

Did my chute have any twists in the cables?

Had it been properly packed?

Was it airworthy?

Was I stupid to place my life in the hands of an unknown other?

Those questions simply never occurred to me.

I moved forward in a numb,

Robot-like fashion to the door of the awaiting plane.

It looked small.

It was small.

We were packed in like sardines in a can,

Given a pleasant wave by the team members left on the ground,

And trundled down the taxiway ready for take-off.

Once airborne,

We circled and circled the airfield to gain the required 3,

000-foot jump height.

It doesn't sound like a great height,

And in a jet this is achieved in a matter of seconds after take-off.

In this single-engine plane,

Though,

It seemed like forever.

Birds were flying faster,

And I thought at one time I saw a bird land and preen itself on the wing strut of our plane as we struggled to gain height.

My turn to jump came all too soon.

At 3,

000 feet,

The pilot switched off the engine,

Replacing the strained drone of the engine with the eerie whistling of the wind as it squeezed past the fragile frame of the plane.

Get ready!

Shouted the jumpmaster.

I moved out to the edge of the plane,

Stretched out my hands to grab hold of the overhead strut,

Then stood on the wheel axle with my left foot,

Crossed over the right and dangled it in space,

All as I was supposed to do.

Release!

I fell,

But not the graceful back-bent arch that had been expected,

But in a curled-up fetal position that indicated my true state.

I screamed,

I think.

I can't quite remember.

My helmeted head came into contact with the rubber tyre of the plane,

Or so I was told.

I bounced and my body somersaulted backwards,

Not through some attempted artistic control.

Upside down and absolutely petrified with fear,

The chute opened after a long three seconds of terror.

It opened okay,

I think.

I just can't remember.

What I do remember is hanging in midair in the sudden quiet,

Looking around and thinking,

Why jump out of a perfectly good plane?

Switching back to the present moment,

I look back with a fondness at that event.

I could easily have been killed on that jump.

The ripcord could have twisted itself around my neck and pulled my head off.

A million things could have gone wrong,

But only about 500,

000 did.

I was lucky.

So much of our lives are spent in dull routine,

Days pass by in which nothing really happens,

And as a result we don't really remember one moment from the next.

But my parachute jump,

The one and only parachute jump,

Has etched itself in the fabric of my mind,

Simply because the mix of fear and adrenaline worked together to do so.

Do we all have moments like that?

I do hope so.