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You know, when I went skydiving at age 26, I was scared out of my freaking mind. No matter what happy-go-lucky Disney-ride atmosphere surrounds the modern sport, it's highly unnatural to will yourself to fall out of a plane at 13,000 feet, trusting that your chute was packed correctly by the gomers that you witnessed goofing around while folding and packing the nylon just outside the waiting room. When I was circling upwards in the plane, I wanted to shake the perpetual smile off of the face of this silly German tourist who treated the entire affair like a trip to a 3-D IMAX movie. I wanted to shout at her, "WE ARE JUMPING OUT OF A PLANE! The only thing separating you from death is a thin sheet of nylon and blind faith in a complete stranger's competence!"

The free-fall was the most amazing/terrifying thing that I've ever experienced, with the exception of some notable car accidents. No protective cocoon of machinery, hydraulics, or jet engine, just you and a disturbingly lumpy(?!) stranger strapped behind you, plummeting towards Earth at something like 120 mph. My heart didn't start beating until I successfully deployed the parachute. Maybe I'm just a wuss (likely, given that my fear seemed uncommon), but that's why this really blows my mind (not to mention the elder Bush's recent jump):

A 101-year-old man is believed to be the world's oldest skydiver after he accepted a dare from his friends and jumped out of an airplane Wednesday.

My instinct would tell me that there's at least a reasonable chance that someone that old would just drop dead from the shock. This is very unnatural. 80 years old? Maybe. 101? Much more complicated than it may seem from the headline of a special interest story. Unbelievable.

PS - The risk stats on skydiving are alternately good and bad. Only about 30 skydivers die a year, but in terms of fatalities per million hours of exposure (a misleadingly skewed risk I'm sure), it's almost 15X more deadly than riding a motorcycle, and 84x more deadly than everyday life. It's pretty creepy to note that about four months later, I happened to catch one of those reality video shows just as it featured a small plane accident at the exact same skydiving ranch where I took my jump. All on board died except for one passenger. Needless to say, I haven't been back.

Posted by Bill at June 17, 2004 01:22 AM | TrackBack (1)

Comments

Posted by: Val Prieto at June 18, 2004 09:54 AM

Posted by: Bill from INDC Journal at June 18, 2004 10:12 AM