Jumping out of Airplanes for the hell of it

Saturday

YAWN: We get up at the ass-crack of 7am today. The bus is leaving at 8am sharp, and we now know they mean business.

I was smart and grabbed some food yesterday, so I make myself a ham and cheese croissant before we go. This time, Vladik makes the bus.

We have a half-day planned today at the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. We see a lot of cool colorful bubbly steamy smelly things that are best described by the pictures from the day.

But, our minds are elsewhere, because we’ve scheduled a skydiving trip this afternoon.

The idea has been kicked around since we learned we were going to Taupo. New Zealand is known as the extreme sports capital of the world. The basic reason is NZ has laws making it nearly impossible to sue the companies that take clients out, short of extreme negligence on their part.

CHICKEN: By this afternoon, our skydiving group gelled into group of about 25. A handful of people chickened out at the last minute, and we give them crap. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t at least slightly nervous, but I put on my macho act and poke fun at the skydiving naysayers.

Erik starts making up statistics to scare the rest of the group, despite the fact he’s not even going. “You know, 3% of the parachutes don’t open, right? So that means if 26 of us go, that means one of us will die!” I think this is hilarious, but some the more borderline people do not. In reality, the statistic is more like 1 in 50,000. You’re worse off in a car driving around town.

The company that we picked, “Freefall”, delivers the total package. For a low price of several hundred dollars NZ, they’ll pick us up, strap us to another skydiver, toss us out of a plane, give us a video of the process, and drop us off. Thanks to some skillful negotiation by one of our group members, we get a sizable discount for bringing so many people.

LETS ROLL: We arrive at the hanger/staging area around 1pm. The airplane they use has a capacity for 18 jumpers. Since no-one in our group is licensed, we all have to go tandem (strapped to an experienced jumper). I don’t argue with this, as I don’t trust myself steering a parachute to a safe landing. This means the plane has the capacity to take 9 of us, plus tandem jumpers. They offer an option to send up another guy to take video of you doing the freefall, but this is expensive and I opt out.

The group is eventually split into 5 jumping groups. I end up in the second one. They show us a quick video, which is mainly just a promotion for ordering the free-fall video. Part of me wonders if/when they’ll give us instructions on what to actually do when diving.

The first group gets suited up fairly quickly, and I take the opportunity to snap some photos. There is definitely an air of uneasiness as one of the Kiwis working there straps harnesses onto people. The harnesses they use mean business. They resemble a climbing harness, with additional shoulder and chest straps. Once you get cinched into this thing, there is no way you’re coming out of it. I notice there is no parachute on these harnesses, apparently that is for your tandem guy to worry about.

STRAP UP: To complete the getup, they give you a little helmet that looks like the ones used in old-school football games and some plastic goggles to keep the wind out of your eyes. The costume is rather humorous and makes for some good photo ops. We rotate between impersonations of rugby players and World War I fighter pilots.

By now, the first group has started floating down and making their landings. The sheer exuberance on their faces is unreal. After their tandem pilots drive them in to safe landings, they unclip from their proverbial life boats and start jumping up and down and hugging everyone in sight. If I didn’t know better, I’d say all of them had just won the lottery.

It’s my turn. After I get strapped up in the harness, I meet my tandem jumper, Chris. Chris is a likeable guy from the states who has been living down here for a few years. He doesn’t talk a whole lot, so I bombard him with questions to keep conversation going. I’m sure he’s heard them all before. Turns out he’s jumped all over the world, and claims NZ is his favorite place to jump. I’m not sure if he’s being honest or using a marketing line on me.

LOAD UP: As we load up the plane, I notice that somehow I’ve ended up in the back of the line. No worries, until I realize the last people in the plane get to sit in the doorway of the airplane. This is the first (and probably last) time in my life that I’ve sat in a plane, taxiing down a runway, with my legs hanging out the side.

The plane we’re in is a single-prop airplane, reminiscent of an old-school WWII fighter plane (but hopefully newer). The door is located behind the wings, which means we’re less likely to smack something on the way out. The door itself is a roll-up type, with clear slats so you can see out. For our ascent to 15,000 feet, I will be pressed against this door, which is barely ½” thick.

RIDE UP: Needless to say, this is one of the scariest plane rides of my life. The whole thing is rather rickety, and there isn’t much between me and falling out. Oddly enough, I remain quite calm for the ride up, comforted in part by my confidence in that the people running this thing know what they’re doing. I’ve heard stories of jumpers with a sense of humor wearing fake harnesses and expressing mock shock as they rip them off before they jump. I secretly hope there aren’t any pranksters on this trip, and my wishes are granted.

Being the last into the plane means you’re the first out. Chris has me sit up and he straps me tight to him. What would normally be an uncomfortable slightly homosexual situation is damped by the whole extreme sports nature of the thing—I’ll swallow my pride as long as he gets me down safely.

DANGLING BY A THREAD: The next part is where it gets crazy. The magic red light comes on, meaning we’ve reached altitude. They roll up the door, and there is nothing between me and the ground 15,000 feet below except Chris, who is holding on behind me. He turns me around, and I am now hanging out the plane, arms and feet dangling in the 120mph wind from the airplane. The only thing keeping me from plunging into the abyss at this point are the four clips that attach my harness to Chris’s.

I sit in this position for a good 30 seconds or so, in a weird mix of fear, shock, elation, and awe. The fact that I knew what was coming next didn’t help at all, either. Chris chooses now as the time to give me instructions on what to do. “Hold on, lean your head back, and tuck your legs under the plane”. Easy enough. I steal one more glance at the ground below (I think the sadistic part of me wanted me to be as scared as possible for my money) before Chris propels us out of the airplane.

They say a sizeable portion of people don’t remember their first jumps. Maybe they pass out or something, but I remembered mine in crystal detail. Chris shoves us out of the plane, and we tumble head-over heels a few times. I see the airplane, the ground, the airplane again, then finally the ground once more. At this point, my stomach has slammed all around my chest cavity and the flood of adrenaline is starting to pulse through my veins.

FREEFALL: Chris tosses out the little trailer chute that will keep us facing the right direction for the rest of the freefall. As we level out, I am now face down, staring at the beautiful NZ countryside below, with the wind blasting me at terminal velocity, which works out to about 120mph. I had initially thought the entire freefall would feel like those Drop Zone type rides at theme parks, but after the initial drop and tumbling, it is strangely comfortable. It’s like you’re floating around in a giant cushion.

The air is cool to my skin but not freezing, and as I look around I really start to take in the awesomeness of freefall. Chris, apparently bored, uses his hands like rudders and sends us into a fast spin to make things even more interesting. I get another surge of adrenaline from this. Every time I try to open my mouth to let out a “Whooo!!” the air blasts in, pulling my cheeks open, and its hard to get anything out.

The actual free-fall lasts for about a minute. In some ways, it seems a lot longer, in others a lot shorter. It’s difficult to pin down. Regardless, it was definitely the most thrilling minute of my life. I still get jittery when I watch the videos of people jumping out of the planes. But, as they say, all good things come to an end, and as we approach 5,000 feet, Chris pulls the chute. The jerk from slowing down from 120mph to 30mph isn’t as bad as I expected. Apparently it takes about 1,000 feet for a chute to properly deploy.

Should that chute fail, all modern chutes have backup chutes in them, and a special system called Cypres. Should a chute not be deployed by 2,000 feet, the system will automatically deploy the reserve chute for you. So, if for some reason you’re unconscious or simply forget to deploy on time, this system takes care of you. From what I’ve read it’s saved over 100 lives so far and is now standard.

CHUTING: Parachuting turns out to be almost as fun as the freefall itself. Two little handles pop out, and with that you can steer the chute. Pull the left one, you go left, pull the right… you get the idea. Pull both and you slow down. Chris steers us toward the landing site, then hands me the controls to play around with. If you pull one of them hard, you go into a tight spin which really throws some g-force on you. We do this for a few minutes, then Chris takes the controls back and steers us in for a picture perfect landing.

LANDING: If you land a parachute correctly, there is absolutely zero impact. If you do it wrong, you could break some legs or even be killed. In reading up about skydiving accidents afterwards, it seems most deaths come from experienced jumpers getting too crazy with their landings. Everyone else makes good landings, except for Seth, who somehow ends up on his ass. We laugh at him after we see he’s OK.

Once we unclip from our tandem partners, everyone in our group runs together and hugs each other (myself included), and we high five and handshake every person in sight. If you’re down, the perfect pick-me-up is skydiving. Most of us want to go again, but the slight issue of money and time prevent that, but we will be looking out for more opportunities on this trip.

If you’ve never been skydiving before, it’s definitely on the top 10 list of things you need to do before you die. The experience will stay with you for a lifetime.

Since we’re all pumped from skydiving, we go and find some food, then head downtown for another night of partying. We still have to be up early on Sunday, so we don’t stay out that late.

HELL PIZZA: For dinner, we eat at this fascinating chain called Hell Pizza. It is the single most effective marketing I’ve ever seen in a restaurant franchise. Everything’s centered around the Hell theme, and it’s done well. For example, all of the pizzas are named after sins (Gluttony, Lust, Greed, etc). Their bottled water is called “Holy Water”. One of their delivery vehicles is a converted Hearse. The pizza boxes fold up into little coffins to store leftovers. The cashiers are wearing goth makeup while the cooks sport shirts that proudly proclaim “Bitchin’ in the Kitchen!”

Oh, and the pizza’s pretty good too. I am definitely going to open one of these places smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt, just to piss off people. And I’ll get rich in the process.

Cheers,

--P