First and foremost, Happy Birthday Araks! She has officially turned 19 years old, and boy does she age well ;-)
So I woke up at 6am, and got ready to head on out. The one person who said she would come apparently changed her mind and never let me know about it (and still hasn't called back) but aside from that, it was a nice ride to Lake Elsinore. I misjudged how long it would take me (Yahoo Maps said an hour and a half) so I got there pretty damn early. In fact it only took me 40 minutes to get there. I end up waiting till 10am for the other students to arrive, and then we start our course.
I'll have some memorable quotes at the end of this entry, but let me just say that the training was very thorough. I would recommend people do a Tandem jump before they do AFF because you already know the basic procedures. Anyone who has never done skydiving and does AFF on their first try is going to get scared shitless from 5 hours of being told everything that can go wrong. What if your parachute doesn't open? What if the lines are tangled? What if the lines are twisted? What if there is a hole? What if the parachute doesn't completely open? What if you have to land into a tree (and the procedure was pretty funny: cover your face and neck, put your "furniture" between your legs, and head for the center of the tree)? What if you hit a power line? What if you hit another diver? And that's just a
few of the topics discussed. Having gone over "Look at red, hands on red, look at silver, pull red, pull silver" (Procedure to cut off main parachute and deploy the reserve) I hoped I would never have to do it again in my life.
So now it's about 5pm and we're done with the ground training. We go out, and it's too windy. The winds were at 16 mph, and we aren't allowed to jump unless they are at or under 14 mph. So we waited... and waited... and waited. By the time one of my two instructors told me we're going to go, it was 7:50pm. I got suited up, and went over the procedures. On your first 3 jumps, you jump with two “jump masters” who hold onto you during freefall and make sure you are stable and doing what you’re supposed to do. We got on the plane and at 11,500 feet I was standing on the ledge of a perfectly good airplane with half my body out doing my "CHECK IN, CHECK OUT, PROP, ONE... TWO... JUMP!" And there I was falling and, as they told me a million times, "arching like hell." The 55 seconds of freefall went by fast, by the time I did my 3 practice pulls and my forward dive, it was time to pull. When you are in freefall, you must always check to see if your two jump masters are giving any hand signals indicating what position you need to change or what you need to do. Once you deploy your parachute, you're on your own. There is a radio in your ear, but mine didn't work too well, so I only heard a few words. When you deploy your parachute, you’re supposed to count to 5 and check if it opened. I looked up and saw that it was open and in the proper shape. However, the lines were twisted. I remembered what I was told to do in such a situation during training and luckily was able to untwist the lines by 3,000 feet. If it was still twisted by 2,500 (and not controllable) I would have had to cut away and deploy my reserve. I’m very glad that it didn’t come to that. I didn’t want my first solo to be a training regime in emergency procedures.
Doing the flares and the 180 degree turns was damn cool. You spiral down pretty fast when you want to, so even then you could have a bit of fun and get a rush. There is an "X" that you try to land near, and anywhere within 200 yards of it is ok. I was able to get to roughly 15 yards of the X. Unfortunately, the winds picked up pretty strongly during my final 20 feet, so when I flared, it yanked me back. I did land on my feet, but the wind dragged me and I slid on my back. Then it proceeded to lift my parachute up and slammed me on the ground. It wasn't
too rough, but I didn't want to experience it a third time, so when I hit the ground again, I quickly pulled one side of the parachute down to and went around to the back (as I was trained to) so that it wouldn't rise again. Afterwards my instructors told me what I did well and what I needed to improve on, which is mainly my arching and altimeter checks, and I was certified to go to Level 2, which I plan on doing next Sunday. And that, my friend, was my first solo skydive.
Now for the quotes:
“When it's pull time, you pull. I don't care if you're upside down -- you pull!”
“Make sure that when you pull, you are belly-to-earth, or else your parachute might become your coffin cover.” (That was a very reassuring one)
“If you are about to land into a tree, make sure you hit it in the center”
"Make sure that when you flare for landing, you hold it. If you did it too high, just hold it, because if you let go you are going to fall flat on your face and crush your skull"
"The number one thing to remember for landing is to land in a straight line. I don't care if you aren't facing against the wind. Once you hit 300 feet, you land in the straight line in front of you. If you change direction, you'll start swinging like a pendulum and break both your legs and probably you're back too."
"What's the number one priority at pull-time? PULL!"
"Wanna hear a joke? When Frosty-The-Snowman and Dracula had a child together, what did they name it? Frost Bite!" - Another jump master trying to get someone to relax
"Drive safe. Remember, the safest part of your trip is over." - Recommendation by my jump master upon giving me my certificate and saying bye.
"Two things about parachuting, and you will always remember this if you continue your course: You can never jump too high or fall too long. It becomes a thirst you can never quench."
"Blessed be the altitude, may it always be below us." - Instructor's 'prayer' during emergency procedure training.
HAHHAHAH I LOVE THAT!!!!
