Skydiving as a Middle Age Hobby???

Once we reach middle age most of us start to look back over our lives and think about what is it that we have forgotten to do. Was it world travel, learn to fly, take those tennis lessons, buy a farm, hike the Appalachian trail, or one of a million other things that we thought about when growing up, but didn't have the time, finances or family support to do?

All of those things crossed my mind, but like all of you I was too busy with a career, and family to do most of those things. Well, alright I did get my pilot's license, but after a few hundred hours the time away and expense was far too much of a sacrifice to continue. I confined my non-work activities to running, sketching, and dreaming of riding a motorcycle around Europe like my best friend and I thought about in high school.

One Christmas when I was 53, I opened an envelope from my wife inside of which was a beautiful card containing a gift certificate for an entire Accelerated Free Fall skydiving course. Trying to talk with my mouth wide open and tongue on the floor was difficult, but I managed to thank her and ask why. She calmly told me that she knew I loved it when I was 17 and that I should try it again, because it was now safer, and because she guessed that it was something I would want to do again.

It had been 35 years since that first jump and things had changed dramatically, which was something I would soon find out. For most of the non-skydiving population the sport has been labelled as "extreme", dangerous, and crazy among other adjectives. While I know that the sport is definitely not for everyone, and may be extreme, it is definitely not crazy nor as dangerous as one may think.

When I started skydiving, or parachuting, for the first time in 1970, I was lucky to survive it. And the only reason I did was because my equipment worked, and not because it was great equipment, properly maintained and packed...but just because I was lucky. My "training" consisted of about one hour of learning how to do a "parachute landing fall", taught by a "jump-master" who had maybe 30 skydives. There was no introduction to the equipment, safety procedures, packing, and forget using the belly mounted reserve since a jump from 3000 feet gave one no time to do anything other than watch your life pass before your eyes if the main canopy failed. The "adrenaline rush" trumped safety and education, except for a very few pioneers of the sport as we know it today.

These Pioneers include men like Jacques-Andre Istel, Lew Sanborn, Bill Booth, Ted Strong, Joe Kittinger, Bill Ottley, an Lowell Bachman to name a very few. Their contributions to safety, procedures, technique, equipment design, and their overall love and dedication to the sport has transformed it into something I didn't even recognize as the risky activity I participated in during my first year of college.

The goal of this article is to demystify the modern sport of skydiving to the point that it will seem as acceptable an endeavor as sailing, flying a private plane, or backwoods backpacking. In reality, it is just as safe these days.

The very first introduction to the Accelerated Free Fall course is an introduction to the equipment followed by emergency procedures. This didactic portion of the course takes roughly eight hours of ground training and follows a very strict syllabus published by the United States Parachute Association, called the Skydivers information Manual. It is required reading and takes a novice through an understanding of the equipment design, possible emergencies and malfunctions, through landing patterns, canopy flight, freefall positions, deployment procedures, landing and many other more advanced procedures.

In order to don the equipment, board an aircraft, and exit the aircraft the eight hour course must be taken, and understood, and the principles reiterated to an instructor who has many hundreds if not thousands of skydives, and who has taken a rigorous instructor course comprising of both didactic knowledge, and practical demonstration of skills.

Following this the student will take his/her first skydive with two instructors who maintain physical contact until the student deploys the canopy. Student gear is worn which allows deployment by either instructor in the event the student fails to do so. Following this the student follows radio instructions from a third instructor on the ground who guides the student through the air, into the landing pattern and then cues the student when to flair the canopy for landing. The equipment is then returned to an FAA certified rigger whose responsibility it is to maintain, pack, and instruct the student in proper equipment maintenance.

After successfully completing this all the student must do is successfully perform six more skydives with his/her instructors demonstrating progressively advanced skills before being cleared for self-supervised skydiving. A minimum of 25 structured skydives followed by a written test and practical demonstration of free fall skills with an instructor results in the award of an A license, a coveted accomplishment.

The A license is just the beginning. The Skydiver Information Manual along with the instructors and fellow skydivers opens up an new world of achievement should the individual care to partake. There are well defined objectives to obtain the B, C, And D licenses all of which require passage of a written or oral test and accomplishment of specific practical objectives.

While all of the above is necessary, it is meant only to outline the industry's emphasis on safety and in now way describes the absolute thrill that acompanys exiting an aircraft at 14,500 feet and free falling for over 1 minute at 110-118mph only to deploy a canopy, fly like a bird for 3-4 minutes, land, pack your parachute and do it again.

This kind of training has been accompanied by the quantum leap the equipment has taken in 35 years. It is lighter, simpler to use, reliable, and immensely safer. In fact the equipment I now own bears no resemblance to the equipment I used in 1970. If I knew then what I know now I probably would not have made that first skydive, although I am glad I did. An entire world of thrills and the friendship of fellow skydivers would have been lost, and that would have been truly a loss.

As a last word to those of you who have the idea that skydiving attracts only young, deranged, tatoo-bearing, 20-somethings, my list of skydiving friends includes professional pilots, mortgage brokers, dentists, physicians, retired military colonels, factory workers and yes...a lawyer!

This has not been a mid-life crisis, but a sojourn into a world of excitement and friendship that will last the rest of my life. You should think about it...USPA.org