Why I Jump Out of Airplanes

When I tell people what I do for fun, the typical response is "You've gotta be crazy!". What's my hobby? I hurl myself out of airplanes. The bigger the plane, and the higher the altitude, the better. I can't remember how many times people have asked me why I would jump out of a "perfectly good airplane". Skydivers deal with this sort of reaction all the time. We're perceived as crazy, reckless, exhibiting some sort of death wish. Yeah, we're crazy but few of us are reckless and none of us wants to die. On the contrary, we love life and that's why we skydive.

Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to fly. This was no passing childhood fantasy it was an obsession. At the age of seven, I saw some military footage of a paratrooper in free fall and realized that THIS would be the means by which I would fulfill my dream: by exiting an aircraft with nothing but a parachute on my back.

In the meantime, school and piano lessons dominated my life as I pursued a future in music. The dream of flying had to be put on hold, but it was never forgotten. My dreams while sleeping were frequently dominated by scenes of overcoming gravity and floating above the earth.

In university, the demands of studying as well as the tightening of the purse strings put my dreams of flight on hold. Three university degrees later, with a "real job" under my belt, the demands of teaching music classes and performing concerts (I'm a classical pianist) took over my life. Jumping from an airplane was still one of those unfulfilled promises to myself. And now that I was older, presumably wiser, and much more aware of my own mortality, I even wondered whether I'd have the courage to drop from several thousand feet above the ground.

My dream came true suddenly and unexpectedly. Skydiving was the last thing on my mind on a summer day in July of 1992. The college where I was working had terminated part of its music program and I was faced with the heartbreaking prospect of leaving a job and a home that I loved.

Walking down the college corridor in a wave of despondency, I stumbled across a brochure offering a first jump course by a big city skydiving school doing a "satellite school" in our small town. The decision to go and forget my problems was made in a flash, and the next day found me sitting through six hours of "ground school" in preparation for my first skydive.

They took four of us up in a small Cessna airplane: my flamboyant instructor, myself, and two other students: a young fellow from B.C. and his terrified younger brother. When the instructor opened the plane door, I was more scared than I had ever been in my life. This fear was intensified by the blast of cold air and the deafening roar of the engine- a chilling and deafening assault on the senses.

The next thing I remember was floating under canopy at 3000 feet above the ground. This was more than the fulfillment of a dream this was the beginning of a new addiction! Floating under a canopy is a philosophical and esthetic kind of fulfillment. You enjoy the peace and the quiet. You soar with the hawks, drift with the clouds, and peek down at the farm houses and the animals as if they were all part of a miniature display.

But the true adrenaline rush, the thing that really feeds the addiction, is the free fall. Your pulse quickens as you approach your exit from airplane to airspace. Your concentration becomes intensely focused whether you are flying solo, or in formation with other skydivers. You don't feel like you're falling, but you do feel the wind as you plummet towards earth at 120 miles per hour.

Perhaps there is such a thing as addiction to the adrenaline rush. The sensation I feel in my heart and stomach prior to exiting a plane is remarkably similar to what I feel standing in the wings of a concert hall, eyeing a grand piano sitting in the middle of the stage and hearing the rustle of an expectant audience waiting for that piano bench to be gainfully occupied by myself.

In both cases, the thought often crosses my mind: "why subject myself to this kind of stress? And inevitably, the exhilaration of a successful performance whether on the concert stage, or in the sky, makes me want to repeat the whole process again and again.

Airplane pilots speak of flying, yet piloting a plane is no more like flying than driving a motorboat is like swimming. Skydiving gives you the illusion that you're defying gravity. You are actually flying your own body. Skydiving fulfils my childhood fantasy and makes It a reality. I am one of the few, privileged people who can say that the sky is my playground.

Tiiu Haamer, November, 1998