By Guest Contributor Kristy Layton
On one of those spectacular and unusually bright May Seattle afternoons, my girlfriend gave me the only instructions I needed for our surprise date, “Wear real shoes. The lace-up kind”.
To some, that sort of hint might seem vague, I instantly knew I had it figured out. Denise was MUCH too excited for this to be your average Groupon date or surprise hike to a waterfall.
I was going to jump out of an airplane.
Skydiving has topped my bucket-list for years, but I’ve never found the right time or place to tackle it. I’ve bungee jumped the Bloukrans bridge in South Africa, strapped myself to a harness in Ecuador and swung, I’ve leapt off cliffs into the sea, I’ve hiked ridges, bridges, cliffs, and drifts. I tried trapeze swinging once, but found I lack the monkey bars skills and strength to do much flying. I even stood on a car-sized boulder in Norway impossibly wedged between two other rocks, 1,000 meters above the fjord below. I’m developing skills in the indoor skydiving wind tunnel at iFly. But somehow, I’ve never tried skydiving. We drove north and exited 1-5. My heart rate doubled by the time we parked at the tiny airport in Snohomish. This was really going to happen.
We signed in at the reception counter, and completed (no kidding) at least 7 pages of legalese waiver, acknowledging that “Skydiving is a dangerous and possibly deadly pass time”, and agreeing to not sue anyone ever at any time, past, present, or future involved with this sport. I signed and initialed, ate M&M’s, and drank my beloved Diet Mountain Dew.
After a 20 minute video, I could recite the three rules of first-time tandem skydiver:
1. Smile and have fun
2. Arch your back and look up when it’s time to jump
3. Lift your legs and land on your butt when it’s time to come back to earth.
That’s it. The easiest class I’ve ever taken. Proceeding to the gear-up area, I noticed two young men skillfully rolling/folding parachutes. They chatted and listened to music, but never broke concentration.
I met my tandem skydive instructor, a calm, boyish-looking guy in his late 20’s. We reviewed my responsibilities: don’t freak out, arch your back, land with your feet up. I asked him if anyone ever freaks out in the plane. “Some people refuse to go again once they’re down, but nobody ever regrets jumping”
As we waited for the tiny plane, Jordan asked what I do for a living. “I’m a Pediatric ER nurse. Essentially, I stick needles into sick kids and make them cry. Generally speaking, my patients and their families are having the worst day of their life.”
I thought about Jordan and the other staff at Snohomish Skydive, and commented, “Your job is to help people experience one of the BEST day of their lives.”
“The airplane door is closed,” Jordan said. “Do you know what that means?
“I can’t get out?”
“You can’t BACK out!”
The plane lifted off from the small runway, 8 divers aboard. 4 were independent hobbiests, planning some sort of mid-air rendezvous. The other tandem pair jumped first, at about 1.5 miles up. The group of four left a few minutes later. Jordan and I scooted to the edge of the plane and stared at the NOTHING below us. I could see Canada, Tacoma, Bellevue and Seattle, the San Juan Islands, The Olympics, the Cascades… and below us: patchwork of farms, roads, rivers, the city of Everett like a matchbox car. And then I crept to the edge of the plane, arched my back, looked up at the beautiful blue sky…
…and we jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.
The freefall lasted 60 seconds, but looking back it could have been 15 seconds or 15 minutes. It seemed like an eternity and a moment. I was told that if I found it hard to breathe, I should close my jaw and breathe through my teeth. I don’t remember breathing at all. I was afraid that my face skin would look dorky in the wind, but that was also not a problem: My enormous grin lasted the whole flight, and a couple hours beyond. My facial soft tissue was taut with the expression of joy, wonder, elation, and fantastic adrenaline.
I couldn’t hear Jordan count down from 3, but i knew he was deploying the chute when I heard a rustle, felt him shift his weight, and then felt a dramatic deceleration. First thing: clear my ears. Second order of business: let out my barbaric YAWP (which, on video, sounds more like an Arabic whoop).
As the rushing of wind changed to a soothing silence, Jordan pointed the camera toward my perma-grin face. “Anything you want to say to the people watching this video?”
What came out of my mouth next speaks to the overwhelming sense of jealousy I felt toward this guy, husband, father, professional skydiver, who gets to do THIS for a living. Who gets to hang from a bright blue and red parachute 10 times a day and make people feel INCREDIBLE to be alive.
What came out of me, held in the air by wind resistance alone, 4000 feet above the earth was, “What am I doing in my job?”
