This video from October 1999 has been gathering dust for a long time. Since everyone desperately needs to have their own obligatory one-time skydiving film, I figured it was high time to digitize it and share it with an appreciative world. I edited out all of the promotional material the skydive company weaved in (it was originally over 10 minutes) and dubbed over the original techno track with a little De La Soul. Enjoy my hard to hear but still brilliant one-liners like “See you on the ground”, “Mom and Dad all is forgiven” and my personal favorite, “See you in the next world”.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A9WAQAGwGI[/youtube]
In closing, you haven’t lived until you’ve jumped out of a rickety prop aircraft at 12,000 feet with a 7-foot German tied to your back. This was a BrainGEM company trip, and Colin, Brian, Gus, Tanya and many others were with us. The wind was so bad on the Saturday that we all had to sleep over in tents on the airstrip and wait until the next day to jump. True to what I say in the video, we had been at the location in Lebanon Maine for over 24 hours before we finally got to pitch ourselves into the wild blue yonder.
One of the girls who jumped out of my plane (after me) was doing her first solo jump. After I landed we all watched in horror as she drifted off course and hit the side of a nearby house. Having partied with her the night before around a campfire with all of the professional divers, we were more than a little concerned. We were told she was OK and left shortly after without a second thought. The next day we learned (incorrectly) that she had been killed in the accident. While calling various places to get more details and figure out where to send flowers we finally figured out that the article we’d seen on a Maine website had been falsely reported. A very strange conclusion to a very strange weekend. I got the skydiving out of my system, but the bruises on my inner thighs from the parachute straps took over 2 months to fully fade my smile at the end of the video was forced and my descent to Earth was spent biting my lip, determined not to let the fact that my legs felt like they were being sawn off ruin the incredible view and experience. Guys as big as me were not meant to skydive.
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Thanks for the tip. No skydiving for Nikos.
One of the worst episodes of pain I’ve ever felt, and my careless ass has many to compare it to. I literally said to myself after the chute opened, the straps jerked an inch into my leg muscle and we were drifting to Earth, “I’m not going to let this ruin the view… block it out, block it out…” and it worked. Glad I did it – won’t do it again.
I lost my video! Sometimes I think that I’d do it again. So many good memories from back in those days. If I could go back & relive it all over again, I would. Sans a few things, of course.