Strange Geographies: On Jumping Out of Airplanes

There is a town on the South Island of New Zealand where jumping out of an airplane is considered normal behavior, and doing so will raise nary an eyebrow. While my wife and I were in country last week, we spent three days in the adrenaline-fueled hamlet of Queenstown, where if skydiving doesn't tickle your fancy you can bike down a mountain from a helicopter, rappel down a waterfall, climb any number of steep rock faces, take the controls of a small aircraft for twenty minutes ("absolutely no experience necessary!") or participate any other number of "x-treme" activities which all claim to let you feel the icy hand of death on your shoulder without actually shuffling you off this mortal coil.

In retrospect, I probably never would've skydived anywhere else; the fact that travelers in New Zealand (well, not all of them) skydive before tea and a nap on Sunday and seem otherwise sane and slip the fact that they jump out of planes so casually into their conversations (girl in a backpackers' hostel: "how was your skydive today?" other girl: "fine, not as good as yesterday though") slowly lulls you into thinking that this is a relatively safe, everyday activity.

But even so lulled, I couldn't quite bring myself to book the skydiving days in advance, as we had done most of our other, saner activities. I would've dreaded it the whole trip. Instead, it all came about on a day I had convinced myself was going to be my quiet one, after nearly two weeks of constant activity and more than 2,000 miles logged driving around the country. I could feel my rope beginning to fray a bit; maybe I was starting to come down with something. I'll just take a drive, I told myself -- 45 minutes north of Queenstown is an impossibly beautiful little village called Glenorchy, which sounded like a pleasant, low-key day trip while my wife did some shopping and climbed outdoors (Not me, I said. I hate heights.)

Glenorchy was pretty as a postcard, but pretty dull, as well. I pulled into a cafe to get an espresso (a "short black," it's called in NZ), and waiting in line in front of me was a woman in a "Skydive NZ" jumper. I struck up a conversation. "Are you throwing people out of airplanes today?" I asked, as casually as I could. "We are indeed!" she replied, smiling.

I met a lanky American guy, who paused his iPod to talk to me. He had been in New Zealand for six months, taking advantage of the kiwis' "working holiday" program, in which visitors from relatively affluent countries are issued yearlong New Zealand visas that allow them to work, ostensibly to finance their ongoing vacations with occasional stints waiting tables or working at hostels. Or in this guy's case, jumping out of planes for a living. He was the skydive photographer, which meant he'd be jumping out of the airplane a few moments before me, with a camera strapped to his helmet and a remote shutter trigger in his mouth, which he could use to take pictures during freefall, with just the flick of his tongue. I wanted to tell him he was insane for choosing this as his job abroad, but instead we talked about Los Angeles, where I'm from. "My car's parked there," he said. "I hope it's OK." (Apparently he was gambling with more than just his life.) Then he told me that LA County boasts "two of the world's best drop zones," a fact I had been blissfully unaware of; unlike New Zealand, extreme sports aren't my town's main industry.

A Brazilian guy named CJ appeared and shook my hand. "I'll be your tandem partner today," he said, and took me to get suited up. It was pretty simple: I pulled a jumpsuit on over my clothes, donned a funny little hat, and he gave me a fanny pack. "What's in here?" I asked him. "Life jacket," he said. "In case we go into the lake." Then he smiled. "But don't worry, I don't feel like getting wet today." A Japanese kid walked up to us. "You jumping too?" CJ asked him. The kid nodded, though it was clear he didn't speak much English. "How high are you going?" CJ said. (You could jump from 9,000, 12,000 or 15,000 feet, depending on how much you wanted to spend.) The kid just pointed at the sky. "Top," he said. "Top."

Six or seven of us squeezed into a tiny plane. There were no seats, just two low benches, and no belts. Two of us were paying to jump, two were professional tandem partners (CJ for me, someone else for the Japanese kid), one was my photographer, and two were jumping solo "just for fun," which I took to mean that they were hitching a free ride, because they had their own equipment and were jumping solo, without jumpmasters tandemed to them. It was cramped -- CJ and I sat on the floor, our shoulders pressed against what seemed like an awfully flimsy sliding door. The plane rumbled to life, bounced down the grass airstrip and we were airborne.

By now I was almost used to this: at this point in my New Zealand trip, I had taken several small plane flights and a helicopter (often the best way to experience the remote backcountry), the only difference being that I was sitting on the floor with no seatbelt pressed against a door that, in a few minutes, was going to slide open.

We started climbing. CJ was keeping an eye on what looked like a big funny watch strapped to his wrist, but was actually an altimeter. It looked like we were really high. "Only 2,000 feet," CJ reassured me. We climbed further. Everyone on the plane got quiet, partly because the engine noise was deafening, and partly because this was the scariest part of the experience, even for skydiving veterans -- if you don't get a few butterflies in your stomach right before jumping out of a rickety airplane, what's the point?

I realized I wasn't yet strapped to CJ, who was wearing the parachute. Seemingly on cue, he reached around my midsection and clipped two lockable carabiners to straps on my jumpsuit I hadn't noticed before, then pulled the straps so tight I couldn't breathe for a second. "Too tight?" he asked. I glanced out the window, and saw the imposing mountains that ringed Glenorchy well below us. "Tight is good," I said. My photographer aimed his camera-helmet out the window and snapped this picture:

I put on a pair of flimsy goggles. CJ slid the door open. The wind rushed in and I tried not to look out. The two solo divers squeezed past me. "See you on the ground!" I said, trying to sound calm. They smiled at me, then jumped:

My heart was beating like crazy. Up to this point I had been trying to do some Zen deep-breathing, but that went out the window with the first jumpers. Now I was just trying not to hyperventilate. Then my photographer squeezed past and jumped, and CJ shouted "put your legs out and fold your arms over your chest!" I was on autopilot. I stuck my legs out of the plane. He grabbed onto the inside of the plane and counted down: "Three, two, one!" There is a picture of this moment, right before he propelled us into the void, but it is far to embarrassing to post. I look like I've just taken a bite of a lemon: my eyes are squeezed shut and my lips are pursed, as if I was trying to close myself off to the reality of what was happening.

Then he pushed off and we were falling, and the noisy plane engine disappeared above us, and for a moment I thought I would die:

... but then I relaxed. CJ tapped me on the head and shouted "put your arms out, like a bird!" I did, and suddenly we felt almost buoyant, the wind rushing past us at an impossible speed but somehow lofting us as well. I started looking around: everywhere was beautiful, and the ground didn't seem to be getting closer to us very quickly.

So this is what all the fuss is about

, I thought. Then the photographer appeared, somehow, right in front of me. It seemed like he could fly. He took some photos:

That rope coming off our backs is attached to a very small parachute, called a drogue. When you jump tandem, you're falling faster than if you jump solo; the drogue slows you down to "normal" freefall. A few moments later, there was a great shock and I felt myself being pulled upward as our parachute opened:

"Thanks," I said. "That was great!" CJ shook my hand, unhooked us, and I went to take off my jumpsuit. There was another planeload of jumpers to attend to, and he had other responsibilities. He would do this 12 more times that day.

I realized that the wind, despite my goggles, had blown out one of my contact lenses. I drove back to Queenstown with only one good eye -- in retrospect, probably the most dangerous thing I did that day.

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