Skydiving

Sunday was the big skydiving adventure. It was a beautiful, sunny Colorado day. Perfect weather for a crazy family outing.

The skydiving company looked a little more... fly-by-night than I was hoping for. Everything was run out of a tiny room in a nondescript buiding adjacent to the airstrip. Nothing fancy, Just planes, harnasses, and a endlessly-looping video of wild-eyed twentysomethings jumping out of planes set to a deafening chorus of "Highway to the Danger Zone."

One of the things that surprised me the most was that there really wasn't any training involved. Basically, you just came in, paid your money, signed a liability waver, and they strapped you up and whisked you out to the planes.

If you're going to be nuts enough to jump out of a plane, you really couldn't ask for a better view.

 

Here's Aunt Di explaining to Frankie that her dad, grandparents, and aunt are all going to be jumping out of a plane. Note the skeptical look on Frank's face.

Hanging out with grandma, waiting for the jumpers.

Matt and Aunt Toni were scheduled to jump first.

They got all strapped up and headed over to the tiny, doorless plane.

Sort of like that scene from The Right Stuff, don't you think?

Once Matt and Toni had borded the plane, we all drove to the landing site at the Boulder Resevoir.

We spent a lot of time waiting and nervously watching the sky.

We could hear the plane from the ground, buzzing along at 11 thousand feet. Matt jumped first, and we saw a little speck in the sky. Then... relief! We saw his parachute open, and he started to gide down towards the ground. We could hear a tiny voice yelling "WOO-HOO!!!" all the way down.

This is Matt's face right after landing.

Toni followed immediately afterward, and came down looking just as happy and excited as Matt did.

Frankie was so happy to see her dad on the ground, safe and sound. (Me too!) Everything with their dive went perfectly. It was really a textbook jump. Toni and Matt seemed to be really excited and happy that they’d taken the plunge.

After Matt ad Toni's crew had all landed and given each other copious high-fives, we settled in to wait for Jim and Jo's plane.

Jo had thoughtfully packed us all a cooler full of snacks, and we waited happily in the sun, assuming that everything would be just as smooth for Jim & Jo’s dive as it was for Matt and Toni. 

Here's Frankie and Di, excited to catch their first glimpse of Jim an Jo's plane.

And here's Frankie running to meet the first diver.

Just like Matt and Toni, Jim and Jo were jumping along with a camera man. The camera operator was part of the package, and was supposed to catch a video of everyone jumping out of the plane and plummeting to the earth in free fall. With Matt and Toni, the camera person was the last to land, because she wanted to stay in the air to film the dive for as long as possible.

Imagine our surprise then, when we saw the first chute open. We expected to see Jim or Jo gliding down towards the landing strip, but instead we realized that the person heading towards the ground was the camera man, and not Jim or Jo. There was a bit of confusion, and as soon as he hit the ground, he started running towards the dive coordinator yelling, “WE’VE GOT AN EMERGENCY LANDING!!! CALL THE TOWER!! CALL THE TOWER!!”

My heart just about stopped.

Thankfully, the panic only lasted a few seconds because a moment later we saw two black specks in the sky. The specks went into free fall, and then we could see two parachutes opening up behind them. We didn’t really know what was going on, or what sort of emergency the plane was facing, but we were pretty sure that Jim and Jo were ok because we could see their parachutes. Of course, all sorts of worst-case scenarios were going through my head. As they glided towards the ground, we listened to the dive coordinator and the cameraman racing around trying to figure out what was wrong with the plane, and how to prepare the tower for their landing. From what we could tell from their conversation (and what we later pieced together from Jim’s first-hand account), the electrical system had gone out on the plane, and they were operating with a broken front wheel and no radio.

Not exactly relaxing circumstances for a jump.

Jim and Jo did get down on the ground, safe and sound, and we all ran over to meet them, relieved that everything was ok.

This is Jo, right after her dive.

And Jim, right after his.

Overall, I think Jim and Jo enjoyed the dive. (It did look pretty thrilling.) But, I think their experience was a bit more harried than Matt and Toni’s. The in-air plane emergency made everything on board much more stressful and panicked, as the jump instructors rushed to get Jim and Jo off of the plane.

In the end, the plane landed safely. But, I don’t think that Jim & Jo will have any video footage of their jump. (Since the cameraman jumped first he didn’t have the chance to film them.) I’ll have to ask Jo to post the details, but she later told us that there was *another* in-air emergency: Jo got her foot stuck in the door of the plane as she was jumping out. Like, seriously stuck. So, that also didn’t contribute to a very mellow jump vibe.

All things considered, it was a thrilling day, even for those of us on the ground. I think that Jim, Jo, Matt, and Toni were all very brave to take on this adventure. Personally, I can’t imagine being able to find the will to throw myself out of the door of a plane. Way to go, guys!