From: Jeffrey
Subject: Finally, Barefoot Skydiving!!!
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 04:41:35 -0400

Hello everyone,

I have always wanted to skydive, ever since I first saw it done on
television when I was a kid. I got an opportunity to do it when I was in
college in 1991 (3 separate times) and then again twice in 1996. It's
quite expensive, though, so I was never able to continue on through getting
certified to do it alone.

Well, now I have the money to afford it, so I got back into it. A few
weeks ago I reported here that I had flown out from southeast Florida to
Pahokee Airport, near the SE corner of the big lake that you see in the map
of Florida (Lake Okeechobee), to start what is called Accelerated Freefall
Progression. It is the course that they use to get a person into the
novice range of being a skydiver. I fly the Cessna barefoot, of course.

I arrived at Pahokee, and stepped out of the plane to see a girl walking
barefoot in the distance, across the tarmac toward the skydivers' hangar.
I shouted out, "Nice shoes!" to which she stopped, paused, and then,
noticing that I was barefoot, got a good laugh out of it. That was Kim, a
really friendly cool chick who skydives regularly. I met a bunch of the
other skydivers, and arranged some details about coming out again the
following week to jump.

Now, I had emailed with Sam from Skydive Palm Beach, because I wanted to
confirm ahead of time that they would not give me any hassle about
skydiving barefoot. I had already seen that Kim did so; I was confident
that it would not be an issue. I believe that I posted the email repartee
on this forum recently. Sam told me that lots of the regulars skydive
barefoot out there, so it would be my choice. ("They're your feet," he had
said.) I was stoked!

So the next Sunday, I flew out (barefoot) to Pahokee.

Of course, soon after I landed, we got hit with a severe thunderstorm that
even included a few tornadoes! We tried to wait out the storm in the
hangar, but it outlasted most of the daylight. I finally flew back home at
about 18:30, after the storm had cleared, happy to have gone flying but
disappointed at having to wait another week to skydive.

It turned out to be two weeks. The first try was on the 3rd of August; the
10th was raining bad too; finally this week was nice. Little puffy clouds
but nothing threatening.

Rather than rent the Cessna 152 for the entire day again (you pay only for
the time the engine's running, but the difficulty was getting the plane's
schedule clear to keep it out there all day), I decided to drive to
Pahokee. I've been there over a dozen times, I figure, and this was the
first time I had ever gone by ground. :-) It takes about an hour to get
there; the drive is through sugar cane fields, mostly -- very boring.

When I arrived at about 10:30 there were a few people already there,
getting ready to go up. After a little ground discussion with Dave, the
instructor, I got suited up with his help. Not much to it, actually, just
a big robust nylon harness that goes around the thighs and shoulders. A
hand-held altimeter goes on the left hand and wrist -- it's very important
to have.

We boarded the Cessna Caravan along with about six others and rode on up to
about 13 or 14 thousand feet, which takes about 20 minutes. Along the way,
you get to watch out the windows and see really beautiful cloud formations
all around. Since we keep turning occasionally on the way up, you get to
see all points on the compass. The ground gets *awfully* small before
long. You kinda lose your connection to it -- it becomes unreal and
distant-seeming.

The whole way up, the door on the left rear of the plane is open. It's a
weird feeling, climbing into the sky with an open door out which you could
plummet if you weren't careful. Inside the plane, it is not so loud that
you can't hear people near you, so Dave and I discussed some aspects of the
coming skydive. Kim was in front of me, barefoot as usual. Since my feet
were on either side of her, she reached out to my left foot and rotated my
toe ring! :-) Once we attained out altitude, people gave high-fives all
around and, well, they proceeded to walk on out the door!!

Dave and I had buckled together at about 10,000 feet, and now he
crab-walked, with me attached in tandem to his front, toward the door. We
stood up, edged near the door... He (and I along with him) rocked left,
said, "Ready." He rocked right, said, "Set." He rocked left, said,
"GO!!!" and suddenly we both sidestepped out into air!!!

Gravity took over as we had hoped and expected, and for a few moments we
had our faces and bellies to the wind coming from the front of the airplane
(which was receding above us, but beginning its dive back to the airport).
Eventually, with our backs firmly arched and our arms and legs outstretched
in a sort of X, we settled onto our bellies. It is hard to forget (and why
would I want to?) the sensation of the first five seconds of freefall,
during which we were accelerating to terminal velocity (which is about 120
m.p.h.) Eventually, when you reach that speed, your drag and your gravity
are in equilibrium and at that point it feels as though you are lying on a
waterbed on your belly. No more stomach-churning feeling of motion,
really. I think that many people believe that a skydive consists of a
"stomach-drop" feeling the whole way down. It helps to think of it like
driving a car: you can rocket off from 0 to 60 in five seconds, and during
that time you feel pressed into your seat. Once you stop accelerating at
60, you feel normal. Same with skydiving.

So since this was a learning skydive, and not just a ride, I had things to
accomplish. First is the circle of awareness, where you check your heading
(by looking out toward the ground and horizon), then your altimeter, then
glace under your arm for the instructor's "thumbs-up". After that,
"practice throw-outs" (P.T.O.s), where you reach for the pilot chute (the
"ripcord" of old) and pretend to throw it out. (Note: instead of a
ripcord, the pilot chute is a small parachute that is stowed under the
container on your back. It has a grip ball that is reachable by the
skydiver; once gripped, it is tossed out and to the side. The drag from
this small chute pulls the main canopy out of the container, whereupon it
inflates and becomes your steerable parachute. I am told that it is a
better and more reliable system than the old ripcords were.)

After P.T.O.s I began learning to turn in freefall. What a wild feeling!
Lying on your belly, you look to the side and dip your arm down in that
direction, lifting the other arm. (You pivot at the shoulders.) This
causes air to spill across your chest toward the higher side, pushing your
body in a yawing motion toward the other side. Once you do a 360 degree
turn, you have to arrest the spin and neutralize it by doing a small dip in
the other direction. Then you do a practice turn the opposite way. It's
amazing to watch the world go wheeling by you -- and the turn happens very
very quickly. Before you know it, you're all the way around!

All the while, you're paying attention to the altitude, making sure that
you stop your maneuvers at 6,000 feet (after about a minute of freefall!),
give a sign that you'll do no more maneuvers (shake your head), and then at
5,500 you "wave-offf," a signal to others that you are soon to deploy your
parachute. At 5,000 feet, you reach for the pilot chute and throw! In
another few seconds you get an inflated canopy above your head, and you set
up for your ride back to earth.

The peace of being under canopy is incomparable. One of the first things
to do is to check control. On landing, you will need to flare the canopy,
slowing its downward and forward descent. You want to know that it will
happen as planned, so you do a practice flare at altitude. When the
parachute slows enough, it actually stalls like an airplane wing. For a
moment or two, you are just about motionless, 3 or so thousand feet in the
air, and there is no sound! Let up on the toggles again and you begin
going forward about 10-20 m.p.h. and you hear a bit of wind.

Dave maneuvered us, with my hands in the toggles and his on the cords above
them, to set us up for a landing pattern, and we glided in onto the grass
right out in front of the hangar. Others were landing or had just landed,
all over the field. Dave told me to pick my feet up, and as we swooped in,
flaring, we slid a short distance across the grass. He told me to just
slide down to my butt, but I thought better of it. I actually stood us
up!!! He didn't quite expect it, so his weight pitched forward. I ended
up holding him piggy-back style on my own two bare feet!!! What an amazing
way to end the ride!

A short time later, Dave and I discussed the events of the jump, he gave me
pointers, and we boarded up for another one. This time, another
barefooter-girl skydiver was on the load -- Lisa. She sat in front of Kim
(well, aft of Kim, between her legs), and the three of us chatted a bit on
the way up. Kim asked me how I get my toe-ring on, so I made a mime of
spitting onto my fingers and sliding them over my toe. That's pretty much
how I got that ring on, and it's been on there ever since (about five
years). Since it's a solid, unbroken circle, it's best to just leave it
on. Who knows if it would even come off without a fight.

The second jump (my last for the day) involved more of the same, but also a
maneuver to track forward, kind of like a dive. That was pretty cool, too,
but I still like the turns better.

So now I'm a student, going back for more jumps next Sunday. Next time
I'll be unattached to Dave, with a separate rig on my own back! I'll be
barefoot again, of course, and I expect others will be as well. In fact,
back in the hangar after today's jumps, I was hanging out and talking with
Kim and Lisa and some others, and talk turned to being barefoot (honest!
and it wasn't like I even steered it there!). I spoke of how I hardly
ever wear shoes, and how I'm so used to being barefoot, and Lisa chimed in
about how she lived for a time in Key West, and she said, emphatically, "I
NEVER wore shoes the whole time I was there!"

I have a stash of copies of "The Barefoot Hiker," and I'm going to bring a
few out to give to the two girls when I make my next trip. I think they'll
get a kick out it.

Oh, one more note:

One woman skydiver named Diana had her two boys out there: Alex, 7, and
Jacob, 9. They're two energetic, typical boys. They had some things
around to keep them occupied, but you could tell that they were a little
bored just hanging around. (They have a tendency to scuffle, too.) So I
kind of befriended them in a big-brotherly/baby-sitterly way and we ended
up playing frisbee and throwing a baseball and I pushed them in turns in a
wheelchair that was lying about. At periods during the day, they took off
their sneakers and socks and ran around barefoot. Other times the sneakers
went back on, for reasons I didn't really understand; but eventually they
came off again, and went on only when they were packing up to go home. It
was gratifying to see kids playing in such a natural state. I made no
mention of the observation; didn't mention to them, "Oh, you're barefoot
too," so as not to make them actually conscious of what they were doing. I
wanted to just observe the behavior.

The whole day was just fantastically good! I came home, had a well-earned
nap for a few hours, got up, made delicious dinner, and typed this to you
all. I hope you enjoyed it.

---Jeffrey

"Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying, life:
bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky."