Like watching Aliens on a broken roller coaster in a hurricane after 17 Insta-Shots…

They tell you to arch your back and cock your head back until you can’t see the ground while reaching under the belly of the plane and touching your heels to the skin of the aircraft. You don’t have long to master that skill. Danielle hung there for only a brief moment before she and Blane disappeared into the dull misty atmosphere above Minden Nevada.

Wess and I scooted forward on the bench, dropped to the floor and before I could really consider it we were at the opening, and the word “drop zone” suddenly had a shit-ton more relevance to my world view than before (come to think of it “world view” became enormously more accute then as well.)

Wess barked orders through the rushing air and engine drone in the now empty cabin of the PAC 750 XL. Then, entirely before I was ready, I was focused on rural Minden Nevada from 15,000 feet, the Pine Nut mountains slowly gathering snow in the growing storm, the graceful meanderings of the Carson River, and finding the bottom of that aircraft with my heels. I nailed that one, and for mere seconds was perfectly satisfied with the experience up to that point. Then the airplane was gone.

We dropped through the toes of the misty sierra cloud with pellets of frozen moisture whacking our goggles and pummeling our skin at 180 MPH. The acceleration was familiar; the duration was not. I noticed three things: That every chemical in my body that reacts to fear or stress was flooding my brain in almost intolerable amounts, the ground, so far away and unchanging, seemed to be a constant no longer relevant to my equation, and breathing required an acute mental focus which I was temporarily unable to muster.

Then the parachute opened, and I saw Danielle and Blane gliding below us. Wess threw us into a nauseating corkscrew, and we were right next to them waiving. Then the ground came rushing up again, far faster than I thought it would.

Once we hit the ground and skidded to a stop on dirt farm lane near the airport I could see Danielle standing and chatting with her instructor. I kind of wanted to puke. The camera man ran over and asked me how I felt, how it was, or some other question that seemed wildly irrelevant at that moment. But sitting in that muddy lane as Wess collected our parachute was about the most comfortable I believe I have ever been…

I’ve been on top of 14,000 foot peaks. I’ve hung on the hairy edge with only my strength holding me to the rock and I’ve railed rocky trails at 30 MPH on a mountain bike, but none of that approached the intensity of sensation and thrill, for lack of a better word, of falling (that’s what it really is) out of an airplane.

-M

ps About a month to day after I jumped with Wess he was killed in a skydiving accident. He was a good guy and I was happy to have jumped with him. I’m pretty freaked out about that for sure. But it just shows that your time is your time. The one thing that I’ve learned about life is that shit happens even with the best of preparation and instead of constant worry and over diligence, the solution is to get your shit right and then enjoy yourself, cause you knever know when the next skydive, bike commute or chicken wing will be your last…

See Sky Dive Tahoe for more info. Videos to follow…