Decades of skydiving memories

Me in front, SG behind at Skydive Snohomish

September is a memorable month for the two of us, because we both started skydiving in early September, albeit a few decades apart. He made his first jump on September 1, 1962, and I made mine on September 3, 1990. I have written about some of our adventures in many earlier posts, but today I want to return to the incredible story of us together in the 1990s, never considering that we would end up getting married and, even more incredibly, find ourselves happily together more than three decades later. I will be lifting some earlier writing because I feel some of it doesn't need to be improved upon. Two years ago, I wrote this excerpt about what he remembers, all these years later:

There I was, scared shitless! Jack, the pilot of his Piper Cub, had me sitting in the back seat, and he said, "okay, climb out!" It was a very tight fit, so I scraped the back of my container across the back of the door, and then there I was on the strut, and my parachute was falling out, so Jack pushed me off the airplane. I don't remember much after that. But what I do remember is that when I was about to land, I was steering and it was looking okay, but suddenly I realized how fast I was coming down. The ground jumped up and hit me! I was twenty years old. I could hardly wait to do it again!

There wasn't even a Drop Zone for him to find to land at, but he managed to figure it out while he was under the round canopy, landed safely and was back again as soon as he could, eventually making many thousands of skydives, much of them under rounds, rather than the square canopy design that I would learn under and use, almost three decades later.

I was only going to make one tandem skydive with my instructor, but that isn't what happened. I was completely and totally in love with the feeling of being in freefall and wanted to experience it again. I made two more tandem skydives before enrolling in the First Jump Course at Skydive Colorado in Longmont that September. Before the year was over, I had purchased my first skydiving equipment and would end up making more than 4,000 skydives in the quarter century before I made my last one in February 2015, at Skydive Snohomish here in Washington.

I met SG on a now-defunct skydiving message board, where he would post stories about his skydiving career, and I couldn't get enough information about skydiving there, so I sent him a private email, and the rest is history. We corresponded by email and then phone calls for several months, before deciding it was time to meet. After several months going on like this, he eventually quit his job in San Francisco and moved to Boulder. It was a rocky beginning, but we eventually decided to get married, which we did in freefall over the Longmont Drop Zone.

May 5, 1994 over Loveland, Colorado

I was wearing my "wedding dress," a custom-designed jumpsuit with rainbow grippers, since he loves rainbows. He passed to me what we called the "baton of commitment" in freefall, and we specified in our marriage certificate that we would be married when we passed through 5,500 feet of elevation on May 5th. (We left the airplane at 12,000 feet above the ground.)

So, as you can see, this post is about several anniversaries: our wedding anniversary and our first jumps. Although we are no longer active skydivers, we will always be connected to the sport. Some couples might say (for example) that they still have Paris, but we will always have skydiving. Although the memories might fade as time goes by, the amount of time we spent in freefall will never change.

Since it has now been so long ago, we have incorporated a kind of shorthand in our language that recalls some of those moments, but other than that, we are simply octogenarians with an interesting past. The sport has moved on, and much of what people attempt in freefall these days doesn't interest me. I learned how to fall and control my body in a belly-to-earth position, but now people like to make formations while attempting to hook up in a vertical position, head down or feet first. It makes for a faster fall rate and therefore a shorter skydive. I was quite accustomed to having almost a minute of time in freefall before needing to separate from my companions and open my parachute. As I've said many times before, nothing stays the same, and change is the only constant in life. Even freefall positions.

I would never have been able to even dream of the life I have lived, since much of it was way outside of my ability to imagine it. Who would have thought that a casual incident of making a tandem skydive would have caused such a major shift in my life story? Certainly not me. But my partner of more than thirty years still sleeps next to me, and although I have some injuries that will never leave me, I wouldn't trade those years for anything. If I think about it, I can still remember the feeling of the nylon of my canopy as I prepared to repack it in order to make yet another skydive. But life moves on, and as amazing as it is to me, I have little to no interest in pursuing stories about the sport. It's like remembering my school days; they are still there in my memory, but don't hold much interest to the person I am today.

I do hope that the holiday weekend, Labor Day, will be a good one for you, if you live in the United States, that is. I don't think it's a global holiday. I am so fortunate to have plenty of sunshine without terribly hot temperatures, surrounded by signs of the fall season to come. My favorite time of the year. Please be safe and don't forget to think of all the reasons you have to be grateful for your life. It too is not permanent, and we need to remember every day how lucky we are to have this time. Be well, dear friends, until we meet again next week.