Musical Musings to Suit My Mood

There is nothing I could have done to prepare myself for the awe-inspiring experience of skydiving. I tried to wrap my head around it, to consider all it would entail, to imagine the sensation of free-falling through the open sky, but nothing I did or imagined compared to the real thing.

People who have skydived before say the feeling is indescribable. That’s a cop-out. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s not impossible. If it was impossible, I wouldn’t be writing this article. What makes the sensation of skydiving so difficult to convey is that, for someone who hasn’t done it yet, there’s nothing to compare it to. I can tell you what it’s like, but you’ll never fully understand it. Until you do it yourself (and I highly recommend you do it yourself), you have no comparison to use when imagining it. Despite this, I will do my best to paint a picture for you here.

I’ll start at the beginning. When I was asked to go skydiving with Tradewind Sky Sports and write this article, I was very excited. The death-defying, thrill-seeking, young man in me couldn’t wait to do it, but the practical, cautious side of me was definitely nervous. I was going to do something that most people only dream of doing, and I was getting to do it right here in Washington. People come from all over Eastern North Carolina, and even South Carolina and Virginia to jump with Tradewind (90% of their business is from out of town), but I only had to drive down the road to Warren Field on Market Street Extension. There was, however, a part of me that questioned the logic involved in jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. It took me a month, though, before the big day arrived, and I finally started to realize, “I’m really going to be jumping out of an airplane. This is happening.”

When I called John Rogers—the Drop Zone manager—to set everything up, he was cheerful and accommodating. He offered to take me up for the jump that weekend, weather permitting. I was told I didn’t need to bring anything, and the only training I’d require would be a brief instructional session right before we took off. “Alright man, I’ll see ya Saturday. It’s gonna be the most fun you’ll have in your entire life,” he said to me as I hung up the phone. Being 24 years old and hoping to have a long, fun-filled life ahead of me, I was still deciding if and in what way I wanted that statement of his to be true when the big day finally rolled around.

At some point you realize that, while you may be a little scared, people do this without incident every day, and the people running these operations are trained professionals with years of experience. Rob Dunn ,the instructor I was strapped to, has been on at least 15,000 jumps, and he claims that’s a conservative estimate. The real number may be closer to 17,000 or 18,000. Tradewind Sky Sports is open for business every weekend, and sometimes even during the week in the summer. Some days, they may do as many as 15-20 jumps. They take everyone from 18-year-olds to senior citizens. “We did an 84^th birthday the other day,” Rogers said. “He was telling about how he’d been to war, this, that, and the other, but he said he hadn’t lived a day until then.”

People come to Tradewind because the guys are good at what they do.These guys have experience because they love doing it. They started out as skydiving junkies and then found a way to do it for a living. If it wasn’t their job, they’d still be doing it, the only difference is that they’d be paying rather than getting paid.

It’s not all fun and games, though. Safety is taken very seriously. There are checks, double checks, and quadruple checks every step of the way to make sure nothing goes wrong. The parachutes are painstakingly packed, the harnesses are tightly secured, and I was strapped firmly to Dunn. Not to mention that Rogers and another instructor, Chris Latham, tagged along for the jump and were right there with us if anything had gone wrong.

As I was having everything explained to me, I realized just how experienced these guys were. Having done this as many times as they have, the guys at Tradewind have everything down to a science. Dunn was telling me things like the best way to sit in the plane and which leg to move out of the door first so it wouldn’t be awkward. These guys were pros. I guess a person can’t do something over 15,000 times without learning a thing a two about it.

Once we were in place and the plane took off, I got another experience that I hadn’t even thought about: viewing Washington and the surrounding area from the air. Not a single cloud was visible anywhere, and the air was clearer than I would have ever thought possible. There was an ocean of blue in front of me and the town sprawled out beneath. The river cut a broad ribbon through the countryside on its way to the Pamlico Sound, which was visible on the horizon. I was amazed at the beauty of it all.

Soon I began to realize that in a few minutes, I would be jumping out into all of that. That slight nervousness in the back of my mind returned, and I started to wonder when that door was going to open. Before long, it was time for Dunn to strap me to his chest, the door opened, and Rogers and Latham edged out of it by standing on a wheel strut and hanging on to a wing brace. With the doorway clear, Dunn and I moved ourselves into position, and before I had time to even process what was happening, he was counting down to three, and we were out the door. I had just enough time to think, “Well, I thought I’d be in that doorway for a bit longer…”

Rogers described the free-fall to me before I suited up, saying “It’s an indescribable freedom which you’re about to find out. It’s a total lifestyle thing.” I can see how he, Rob, and others get hooked on skydiving. There may be nothing in the world more exhilarating—more daring—than jumping out of an airplane.

Suddenly, I was tumbling through the air, and there was only one sound—the “white noise” of thousands of feet of air rushing past me. Nothing else was audible. I even started to tune the white noise out. I was left falling through the air in this strange sort of noisy silence. We leveled out, and the first thing that hit me was how utterly unnatural the situation was. This is the part that’s so hard to convey. It wasn’t bad or scary, just strikingly different from anything I’d ever experienced. At no point in my life had I ever been in a situation where there was literally absolutely nothing around me. Even in the most open field or on the tallest mountain there is always something beneath you. In the air, there is nothing. I had never experienced that. To make things even stranger, there were people floating around with me—Rogers and Latham—and there was a guy strapped to my back. Here we were, four guys floating in the air with nothing around us. It was both wonderful and bizarre at the same time.

Also, there was a tremendous sense that I had to take in everything, because this experience was only going to last a brief while before the parachute opened. Seeing the town beneath me, feeling the air buffet me, being so free and unfettered—it was definitely a sensory overload. 30-45 seconds that felt closer to 20 were over long before I wanted them to be, and the chute firmly tugged our plummeting bodies to a halt. I was left awestruck and quiet, hanging in the sky while looking out at a gorgeously clear day. We landed smoothly (after the lack of wind caused a brief scare where it looked like we were going to come down in the middle of traffic on Market St. Ext.), and I was left to the task of trying to explain to my friends and family what I had just experienced.

The best thing about skydiving is that this is an opportunity that’s in your own backyard. Washington is lucky to be home to a company like Tradewind Sky Sports that provides such a one-of-a kind experience. It was an incredible opportunity provided by exceptional people, and I would love to do it again.

My advice for anyone about to go skydiving: relax. Take it easy and enjoy each moment from the time you get in the plane to the time your feet touch the ground. It’s easy to get caught up in a “what’s next?” mentality about each step in the process, either out of anxiety or excitement. Appreciate each step for what it is, and take in everything. Focusing on when that door is going to open or when the parachute will deploy just detracts from the view from the plane or the sensation of free-falling. Leave the work to the professionals, and enjoy the ride.

Tradewind Sky Sports is located at 200 Airport Road, Washington, NC. The first tandem jump costs only $219. For an additional $89, Tradewind Sky Sports can take a professional film of your jump and put it to music of your choice. More information can be found at http://www.tradewindskysports.com/