"By signing this waiver, you agree not to sue us, and if you do sue us, you understand that you will not win."
So ended the legal video that I had to watch on July 18, 2009. My friend Pete and I went to the airport in Luverne, Minnesota, to go skydiving. Pete had taken the class I'm taking now back in April, and he used the six hours I was in class to take a couple of jumps, working his way from static line jumping to freefall. Meanwhile, I was stuck in a makeshift class room, watching a video and listening to Bill explain different aspects of the jumping process.
The beginning of class went over health forms and legal documents, then after a five minute break, we went into the basics of jumping. The static line will be attached back into the plane, and the jumpmaster will give you the commands to get your feet out of the plane, to climb out onto the strut that helps to secure the wing to the body of the airplane and hang there, and to finally let go and arch for a count of five, giving the canopy plenty of time to deploy. The landing process I already knew: in November, I was in a play called VietRock. One of the scenes in that play had all the males as soldiers parachuting into Vietnam, and since no one knew how to use a parachute, we brought in a military paratrooper, who walked us through the Parachute Landing Fall. Everything about landing I already knew; it was all the stuff beforehand that I had no clue about. Another quick break, and then we went into different malfunctions that could happen.
The whole time I was watching these different malfunctions--line twists, canopies not deploying, collapsed end cells, what happens when your canopy deploys in the plane ("Gather it quickly. If the canopy catches wind, you'll be following it out, either out the door or through the side of the aircraft."), and great advice on the emergency cord ("When in doubt, pull it out.")--I was thinking of how great of a story this was going to be: I jumped out of the plane at 3500 feet, only to have my canopy still in the deployment bag. I had to cut off my main chute and deploy my reserve chute, only to have that take its sweet time deploying. At the moment I thought I was going to die, the chute deployed, and I made a safe landing, and lived to tell the tale. But even as I was running this impossible scenario through my mind, I knew that this was going to be a boring story: we went over safety stuff, I planned for a disastrous flight, and ended up having it go off without a hitch. Even if I foreshadowed it with real-life things that I noticed, like the metal folding chairs in front of me with "Miller Funeral Home" stickers on the back of them, it was going to end up anti-climactic, and be a really cool, yet really boring, story.
We had a break for lunch, then finally, the time came when we got into our jumpsuits and into the plane. The first group went up around 2 PM. Then the pilot went to lunch after a couple more groups. Long story short, I didn't end up getting into a plane until around 5:30 PM. My instructor and the other two people jumping with me ran through a dry run of the deployment procedure, then we loaded the plane. I was the first to jump, which meant I was the last to load into the plane. The door closed, we taxied out to the runway, and flew up into the air.
As I watched my altimeter climb from 0000 to 1000, my heart started racing; up until this point, I had been ho-hum about everything, since it took so damn long for them to get me into the plane. But now, climbing up to the jump altitude, the scenario I had in my head began running again, and I knew that soon, I was fucked. Once my feet exited the airplane, there was no turning back. It was do or die, and I had the feeling I was going to die.
The door of the plane flew open. 90 mile an hour winds whipped into the plane, and I knew it was now or never. The whole way up, I said prayer after prayer, recited the Apostles' Creed twice, and the Lord's Prayer who knows how many times. I got the first command ("Feet out and hold."), and followed suit. The wind started whipping at my feet, and I felt like any wrong move and I would fall out. The second command soon followed ("All the way out and hang"), and I turned smoothly into the wind to balance myself on the small 2x1 foot pad over the wheel of the plane. I shimmied my way out to the edge of the strut, and in a last minute doubting of my grip, I bear-hugged the strut, wrapping one arm all the way around it. I looked at my jumpmaster, and saw both disappointment and humor in his eyes. The final command ("Look up."), and I fell to the ground:
"Arch-thousand, two-thousand, oh-my-God-my-heart-is-in-my-throat, I'm-going-to--"
The canopy opened, and I was suddenly jerked from my thoughts. I looked up to check it. Nothing wrong. "Damn," I thought. "A perfectly good jump."
I got a great view of the city of Luverne, a town I've visited many times, but have never seen from that altitude. After a moment, I heard the radio next to my ear: "Jumper one, I need a left turn, left turn, left turn." I pulled my left steering toggle down to my waist, and instantly I jerked to the left. I heard "Stop turn," brought my hand up to the top, and instantly straightened out. The radio guy talked me through left turns and right turns, and little lefts and little rights, and before I knew it, I was almost at the ground.
"Damn," I thought. "A perfectly good jump."
In the radio, I heard "Flare," so I pulled both steering toggles down to my waist to break. Then I heard, "Don't flare!" I brought my toggles up. Then I heard, "Flare!" By the time I heard it, however, my feet hit the ground, followed quickly by my knees, and soon after my face.
"Shit!" I shouted.
"Shit!" the radio man shouted.
"Shitshitshitshitshit!" the lady running toward me shouted.
For a split second, I couldn't feel my right leg. I shouted curse words at the top of my lungs until I heard someone come up to me and say, "What hurts?" After that, the only thing that bothered me was everything from my right knee up to my hip. I felt them undoing straps and cables as quickly as they could, then the lady said, "Can you turn over for us?"
Pain shot up my right thigh, and I cried out in pain, but slowly, I was on my back, where they quickly undid my chest and leg straps. "Can you move your toes?" they asked.
I wiggled my toes. "Yes."
"Can you bend your knees?"
I bent them. "Yes."
"Well," said the lady, "you're moving in all the right places." They told me to roll back onto my stomach. "Can you get up for us?" as the radio guy.
I gingerly bent my knee. It was fine. I set my foot on the ground. I wished I would have died on impact. The pain was so intense that I almost fell over again, but slowly, I got to my feet, and started limping toward the van. The radio guy came up behind me and balanced me as I kept hobbling toward the van. He turned to me and said, "How old are you?"
"I'm 19," I answered.
"Damn, I was going to see if I could get you a beer."
"I'll take one anyway."
We laughed about it, but at the time, I was half-serious. They loaded me in the back, and let me sit there until the other two jumpers landed. Then the quick ride back to the hangar, and I got my jump log and a free ice pack.
Pete was gracious enough to drive my car back to Worthington, where we stopped at the emergency room. After telling my story four times to four different people ("I went skydiving for the first time today, and I flared my chute too early, and dropped 20 feet straight into the ground."), and having Pete text a bunch of people from camp about my experience--making sure that the details were vague enough that people would worry, but not too vague as to leave them in the dark--I was taken in for X-rays, where I hit on the technician non-stop the whole painful experience. When I was wheeled back to my room, I found my sister and dad waiting, when I told them the story. The whole time, Pete was by my side. Like he had a choice--I drove him to the hangar, and he had to drive my car back to camp.
The radiologist walked into the room and said, "Good news. You have no broken bones, but you do have some bad muscle damage." He turned to the nurse and said, "Give him a Vicodin for the pain." He turned back to me and said, "You can take up to three ibuprofen to help treat the pain. I suggest that you not lift anything over fifteen pounds, that you use a cane to help you walk, and if anything gets worse, come right back here." He looked me over and added, "Something was watching over you today. But I doubt they'll be watching again."
I thanked the doctor, and my dad and sister left to get the cane that my sister had to use when she broke her ankle in the first grade. The nurse walked in and said, "Before you leave, we need to send you home with some instructions. Since we don't have anything for skydiving, we're sending you home with 'Keeping the Home Safe and Preventing Falls.' Enjoy the reading!" I took the Vicodin, hit on my nurse, and Pete wheeled me out to the car. We had to stop at my house to get the cane, and Pete finally got to meet my mom, who completely disapproved of my skydiving adventures, and who I thought was going to kill Pete on the spot. Thankfully, my mom was in good spirits about the incident, even going so far as to point out all of the similarities I now shared with Greg House ("You both use a cane, you both are on Vicodin. The only thing left is for you to be an asshole to your coworkers!")
In the end, I'm thankful that the jump ended up like it did. When I got back to camp, I was planning on a restful, relaxing night, but instead a bunch of people took me out to Key Largo to eat, and I got to try my luck getting sympathy from the hot ladies at the bar (didn't happen). It was going to be a great story either way, but thanks to my attraction to bad luck, it ended so much funnier and so much more dramatic that it would have if everything had gone right.
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