What is a successful weekend?

Opportunities are plentiful here for those that choose to take a few risks. This weekend I jumped out of a plane at around 8,500 feet (2,500 meters). There were three people jumping with static lines in front of me. Once they went out the door around 2,500 feet (800 meters) the pilots hit the gas and we started going up. A few minutes later I was standing in front of my instructor who had a firm grip of my parachute straps. He was standing with his back to the small exit door. A light to my left turned green and made a loud buzz. He tucked his head down and leaned back with a little hop out the door. I went with him.

We flipped around a little but he kept a hold of my straps. We fell for what he later told me was around 20 or 25 seconds. I don’t remember the whole thing. I can’t recall it like a film, but there are a few moments that stand out. The first one is the image of someone pulling me out of a plane. The second is after we settled into a regular falling pattern and I had a chance to look around. The mountains here are already covered in snow and, because it was a clear day, I had a full view of them. That moment seemed to hold for a long time. The next snapshot I have is of him nodding his head and pulling my parachute open.

Last time I jumped out of a plane I only fell for something around four or five seconds. This jump, I had plenty of time and space to accelerate. When my parachute opened, it opened hard. It certainly pulled me out of the peaceful reverie I was in during the fall. The parachute I had this time was not the standard army issue one I had last time. Although it was still a parachute (not a canopy style one) it had a lot more forward glide to it than the last one. I turned against the wind thinking that I would drop down fairly normally but instead I landed on soft muddy farmland about a kilometer away from the drop zone on a farm.

One of the jumpers with a canopy landed near me to show me the way back. We were surrounded by young Kyrgyz boys who crowded around us to see the odd guys who dropped out of the sky onto their land. The Russian who landed near me was named Sasha. He started chatting with them in Kyrgyz, but it was nothing I understood.

I only know a few words in Kyrgyz so I just kept saying “Jak-she” which I’m told means “Good.” They enjoyed that and waved to us as we exited their farm onto the path back to the drop zone. We made it back and the instructors laughed at me. You can’t really do much more than laugh at yourself when you have a bunch of skydiving pros, instructors and a Kyrgyz Army lieutenant laughing at your parachuting skills.

The next time our group goes to jump I’m told that we will be able to pull our own cords. This weekend was a success.