Might as well jump

    Long, long ago, Robert, Mary and I jumped out of an airplane. As we didn't feel like undergoing extensive training, we did tandem jumps. The following is another writing exercise exploring third person narration, so the John in the story is me. As I'm not planning to publish this beyond bloggery, there wasn't any point in changing the names.

    Robert, Mary and John wanted an adventure, but couldn't afford a cruise to the South Seas. In Philadelphia in the late '80s, Alpine mountaineering and deep-sea diving opportunities were limited so they decided to try tandem jump skydiving. It being a time before the Internet, they probably learned about Skydiving Chambersburg through the Yellow Pages, but hell, it was a long time ago. Maybe it was a word of mouth thing.
    Chambersburg, though in Pennsylvania, is really more convenient to Baltimore or DC than to Philly, but it wasn't too long a drive. They enjoyed seeing the Susquehanna and it was a pleasant drive otherwise except that John, who had done a junior year abroad in Canterbury, insisted on pronouncing Carlisle with the emphasis on the second syllable, which Mary could have easily lived without. (But what was she going to say? "Go jump out of a plane"?)
    By the time they arrived at the airport, it had become quite overcast. The staff at Skydiving Chambersburg were not discouraging exactly, but definitely indicated that there would be a wait. The weather forecast, they told the prospective jumpers, said that skies would be clearing within an hour or so. Within that hour or so, the sky had not cleared, but cloud cover had risen to the point that a jump could be done from 10,000 feet, rather than the advertised 13,000. John decided to give it a try.
    John was in a contact-lens-wearing phase at the time, and wasn't sure which would be better: to stick with the contacts and hope that the goggles fit tightly enough to keep out dust, wind and flotsam; or to go with glasses and hope the damned goggles fit over them. He did the former and couldn't see a thing all the way down. But then, when one is approaching the ground at break every bone in your body speed, not seeing well might be a blessing.
    On the slow circling ascent to the jump point, the butterflies in John's stomach were doing rhythmic gymnastics. He was sure he was going to back out; he knew that he could do so up until the last moment with a loss of money but not noticeably of face. To his own surprise, he didn't. John was hooked to the instructor, who climbed out to hang from the wing, and John hung from the instructor. For what seemed like a year but what was actually at most a minute, this was the most alarming moment in John's life. Then the instructor let go.
    This whole skydiving lark, at least for John, sprang from a reverie he had once while trying to fall asleep wherein he was falling gently through clouds towards the Earth. It was lovely; it was peaceful. Skydiving isn't like that. Even without being able to see well, or possibly because of it, John was as adrenalized as it is possible to be. Never having actually grabbed a live wire, he couldn't confidently say that that was what it was like, but it was how he imagined grabbing a live wire would be, only not painful. You probably think you know what the word "hurtling" means; until you've jumped out of a plane, you don't.
    After these seconds of eternity, probably a minute at least, the instructor pulled the release. John had been warned of the jerk that happened at this point, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. The ride down under the canopy was comparatively restful, much more like the reverie that had gotten John into this in the first place. The hills of south-central Pennsylvania are lovely in the spring and nice to see from above. If the scenery was flavored with a massive sense of relief, well, that probably helped, too.
    Being an obedient sort of cuss, John balled himself up for the landing like he'd been told to do and let the instructor take the impact. Mary and Robert would go up on a later plane, and get to freefall all the way from 13,000 feet. And maybe that's why their landings were rougher, or looked it. Neither Rob nor Mary were injured, but Mary's landing particularly looked scary. But they agreed that the experience was worth the alarm. It wasn't even as long as six months before Robert's, Mary's and John's eyes quit bugging out and their hair stopped standing on end. But they had learned what "hurtling" means.

    Robert and Mary corrected my memories; I thought they had jumped from 10,000 rather than 13,000 feet. Maybe I was thinking of the length of the freefall. Also I thought they both sustained minor injuries upon landing, but apparently not. Oh, and I guess we didn't really do loop-di-loops all the way down. But it's a good story.