Anticipation and Anticlimax

Today I did not toss myself out of a plane.

NO, I didn't loose my bottle and cancel. I was completely willing to do it - ok, not completely willing, but I was prepared to go though with it, for the most part.

I headed out to the air strip with a combination of excitement and dread - in what proportion I don't really know.

The adrenaline got the better of me as I headed up the highway - and speed limits seemed to become more of an suggestion than a rule. I arrived in good time for my excursion.

T - who was to be my tandem partner, was just getting ready to go up with another set of tandem jumpers. So I paid my money, signed the waiver and tried to limit the growing panic I was beginning to feel.

I heard the plane take off as I was finishing off the last of the paperwork; then went outside to watch, wait and try not to completely loose my nerve.

So I stood on the grass listening and watching as the plane climbed higher and higher into the morning sky - getting smaller and smaller as it went. Half an hour passed and then, there they were, with the clouds as a backdrop, four parachutes and six sets of legs. The first two parachutes (with one set of legs each landed first). The first to come down rocketed toward the ground - making the knot in my stomach both larger and tighter - just before pulling up sharply and landing as if he had just stepped off a front porch; in a manoeuvre I found out was called swooping.

I watched as one parachute seemed to hang in the air above my head four legs dangling down and continued to watch as they came in for a landing.

As all this was going on, I was also watching the sky for other things that were also approaching - the nasty set of dark clouds that formed a wall that approached ever closer as the jumpers landed.

T approached from the landing zone, grinning, with his parachute collected in his arms. A few minutes later he returned, sans parachute and harness and took me and four other tandem wannabes into the office to "allay" our fears about the safety and security of rig and harness.

As he spoke, a voice in my head kept asking me what the heck I was doing there, so some of what T was saying didn't penetrate. Out at the plane, T went over how we would exit the plane and what we would need to do in order to do so. My anxiety grew - I was actually expected to have functioning legs at 10000 feet!?!

The clouds had set in quite completely by then, and we were left grounded, until the clouds cleared - the plane flew by sight, not instruments so a reasonably cloud-free sky was required. One requirement that sadly remained lacking as I waited and waited. The longer I waited the more my legs shook, but as time wore on I knew they shook more from cold than trepidation.

T and I sat and chatted and he joked about how he was overdue for having to use his reserve parachute; almost as helpful and C last night wanting to know the definition of "Terminal Velocity" - I have such supportive friends.

Two and a half hours later, clearing was little more than a pipe dream and T and I decided I should cut my losses and try again on Tuesday night. All a bit anticlimactic, really.

Feeling like a prisoner on death row who just got a last minute postponement - I rumbled down the dirt road with the grounded aircraft receding in the rear view mirror.

Dread filled me again on the way back down the highway; now, after telling everybody that would listen that I was jumping today, I will have to tell them all I didn't. Unless I'm lucky that they'll all read my blog tonight and not need to ask.

I should be so lucky.