You get 60 seconds of freefall when you tandem skydive from 13,000 feet.  They figure that’s enough time for you to collect yourself and handle parachute duties without the help of your instructor, who is hooked to your back.  You’re supposed to check the altimeter, a large gauge strapped to your wrist, and deploy something called a drogue chute when you reach 6,000 feet.

I said, “Listen, I’m the kind of guy who forgets to turn his car lights off, and that’s when I’m standing on the ground.  You expect me to remember to check this ‘altimeter’ thing and pull the cord--while in freefall?” I wasn’t trying to be a difficult.  I just wasn’t sure I’d have time to fit all this in between screaming for my life and showering the earth below with freshly-made urine.

“Dude, I can always do it for you.” My tandem instructor had a ponytail and multiple earrings, and looked like he went straight from the skydiving company to the beach.  In fact, he probably left work each day by parachuting to a waiting surfboard and then popping a Mountain Dew or something.

“No, that’s okay, I can handle it.” Note to self: Pull parachute at appropriate time.  Do not die.  I said to him, “So, how you feeling today?  Hangover or anything?”

He chuckled, then grew solemn and reflective.  “Actually, I didn’t drink at all last night.” If he had a beard and robe he could have been saying “Actually, I parted the Red Sea last night.” Sobriety seemed to be a new experience for him. I had only been joking, but now I felt good: he was teaching me how to skydive, and I was assisting him with his 12-step program.

Although they teach you how to kneel down and arch your back when you’re at the open door of the plane, the leap into the wide blue yonder is all about the instructor, who kicks off with his feet and shoves both of you into space.  My freefall was different than most: it was an overcast day, and we fell through clouds.  And you know what?  My mother was right.  Riding in airplanes as a kid, I would suggest that you could bounce up and down on clouds like a trampoline.  She said, no, you’d fall through them.  Mom wins again.  You do fall through them, and a band of freezing cold wraps around your head while streams of white shoot past you and seemingly through you like gusts of dry ice.

Even in freefall I did manage to check the altimeter.  In fact, I checked it two or three times.  11,000 feet, then 10,000 feet, then 8,000 feet--and I started feeling bad, like the instructor might think I was checking my watch out of boredom or something.  I thought, I’m not bored; I’m frickin’ freefalling.  It’s not like I’m flossing my teeth.  So I thought I’d give the altimeter a rest, and right that millisecond the instructor taps my wrist, a special signal that means Dude, you’ve hit 6,000 feet, pull the damn cord or we both DIE SCREAMING.  We had hit 6,000 feet?  So fast?  I looked down, saw a checkered green and brown landscape spiraling up to meet us.  Thanks for the welcoming committee, but I’m not quite ready for you yet. At least, not like this.

I pulled the cord, and suddenly the world was snatched away from me as the parachute seemed to yank us all the way up to where we started.  I wondered if I’d bang my head on the underside of the plane.

But no, a moment later we were quietly parachuting down to Earth.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see my friend Tuan above us; his parachute seemed to be working too, so bonus, we had at least survived freefall.  My instructor shouted, “Do you get motion sickness?” I thought about it, and realized I had seen The Blair Witch Project on the big screen with no ill effects, although it did give me kind of a disturbing dream a week later, but I figured that didn’t count so I said “Hell no.”

And he began steering our parachute so we turned and twisted and tumbled.  In mid-air!  Fun!  Except, well, I started getting motion sickness.  I wondered if the skydiving company would get sued if I threw up on someone’s lawn, house, or head. 

But then he let me steer the chute and I was a much more cautious driver.  My personal brand of parachute dancing turns out to be more “macarena” than “lambada.”

And then only a few minutes later we were heading towards the landing area, and I kept my feet up so the instructor could use his own his legs to break our fall.  We landed and I sat there on my butt in a pile of gravel, and the instructor said, “We need to move and clear the space so your friend can land too.” And I started to move, but my butt said, “Hold on, give me a damn second here; I didn’t expect to actually touch earth again unless I was splattered across it.” So I humored my butt by sitting a second longer, and above me the clouds curled around each other and moved swiftly onwards, completely indifferent to the fact that a boy had just tumbled through them.