I can't believe I didn't remember this one a while ago, especially since I have told this one so many times to various people. The time I went sky diving.

So my roommates Kevin and Thuc, Thuc's girlfriend Angela, and I were waiting in line to ride the Batman ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Southern California. The line was pretty long, so we were trying to think of cool rides that we would add to our own park. It got silly, with rocket car rides and ejection seats and all sorts of weirdness. This put us in the mind of sky diving, and we recalled that one of our friends from college, John Akerboom, had gone sky diving a few times and really enjoyed it.

Well, that was right at the beginning of August, 1994. I returned to my job at Apple Computer, and a day or so later (Tuesday, in fact), I was walking along the hallway of my building when Bob Heger approached me and asked if I would be interested in going sky diving. Weird.

I said yes, and he was amazed and impressed. He had apparently asked a few people, and got some nervous declines. Bob, another guy, and myself agreed that we would go, and we set the date at August 14, which was only four days away. We were going to Skydive Hollister.

Hollister is near Gilroy in Northern California, and is basically a wide-open space. There are a few hills and an airport, so there was plenty of landing area. We met at our building at Apple early in the morning and headed down there to the airport. The three of us were rather nervous, but didn't show it, so we entertained ourselves with discussions decidedly not-sky-diving-related. We arrived that the airport at around 10 in the morning, and signed up on the list. It was relatively crowded, so we would not be jumping for a few hours.

There was a strange sense of calm that came over us after we signed up and plunked down the cash to do it. It was something on the order of $170 for the one jump, tandem. That seemed high, but this jump was one of the highest tandem jumps in the area, at approximately 13,500 feet. When I mention this number to people who actually jump, they seem impressed at the first-time altitude.

Seeing many other people preparing for their jumps, including both seasoned veterans and tandem first-timers, we relaxed and prepared ourselves. One of the silly tasks was watching a movie of a tandem jump where the instructor dashed the common myth (common to those who didn't quite grasp high school physics) that, upon the 'chute opening, the jumper does NOT fly up, but instead the camera simply continues falling without an open parachute.

I remember thinking when I left for the jump that wearing shorts and sneakers would be somehow inappropriate or unsafe for the task at hand, but the promotional video tape we had watched earlier in that week suggested this would be fine. Once we were there, I saw that many people were similarly attired, with one rather hard-looking woman wearing short-ish shorts, and tank top, Tivas, and a parachute.

As our time approached, we met with our tandem jump partners so that we could practice stepping out of a mockup doorway together. My partner (his name escapes me) had 800 successful jumps, and would eventually have 801 when we were through. He and I practiced waddling up to the door and rolling forward out of it. I say waddling since the two of us would be linked by the oh-so-important harness in a rather friendly manner. Luckily, we got along just fine.

We donned the traditional jump suits, apparently according to their insurance requirements. I think. They were ill-fitting and mine was ripped, but they were mainly to protect against scrapes and cuts on landing. We were also given cheapie little goggles, which would actually prove to be rather essential. Suited up, final visits to the restroom out of the way, we headed out to the tarmac where our twin engine jump plain was just taxiing in from a fine landing.

My partner and I got into the plane first, which afforded us a seat next to the pilot. I found it somewhat amusing that she was wearing a parachute along with the rest of us, which seemed perfectly normal. The plane was modified for this sort of load, with normal seats replaced with two bench-like seats running the length of the plane. We sat straddling the starboard bench, facing aft, so the pilot was on my right, my tandem jump partner behind me checking our connections. The rest of our jump crew was situating themselves, bringing the total count to around 25 people. We were off.

The takeoff was uneventful, smooth, and loud. Creature comforts were nonexistent, which was to be expected, as were seatbelts. I guess it didn't matter after the first few minutes if the plane had ever come back to earth anyway. We began a fast climb to 13,500 feet above sea level, which was almost 13,000 feet above the ground there above the landing zone.

Right around that time was when sky diving films were popular, with Point Break having set the tone for others like Freefall and Drop Zone. My tandem partner, the pilot, and myself were commenting on these as the jumpmaster opened the door at the rear of the plane and dropped a streamer to check wind and the condition of the landing area.

The pilot stalled the plane to slow it down to a safe speed, and the jumpmaster was giving the Go. I was still talking to the pilot as my tandem dude checked our bindings one last time, and suddenly, he suggested that we start moving. I looked up to see an empty cabin ahead of me. This was sort of shocking. We waddled along, for real this time, toward the rear of the craft.

Once at the doorway, we waited until the last jump pair was far enough away and stepped up to the doorway. As we practiced, I stood with my heels on the edge of the doorway, toes hanging off, hands crossed to opposite shoulders to stay out of the way as much as possible. He grabbed the sides of the doorframe and prepared for the jump. I remember at this moment looking out at the ground below and thinking that it didn't seem quite real. Far too far away to be troubling, so I wasn't at all reticent about jumping.

The moment came, and on a count of three we were rolling out of the plane. I could feel the plane sort of give under my feet, like a diving board pushing back. The shock and excitement of what we just did completely distracted me from the actual sensation of the freefall, which was sort of disappointing. The next thing I remember, after thinking something like "I just jumped out of the airplane, " was that it was incredibly difficult to breath.

They had told us during the orientation that we would probably be moving at about 120-150 MPH. The two of us together were pretty heavy and formed a pretty dense rock hurdling toward the ground. Standard procedure was to toss out a small drogue chute to slow the pair down to that speed, since I guess we could have been going even faster.

I would characterize the breathing experience as similar to standing up in a convertible while flying along at very high speed. Disorienting. I had to force air out through my mouth, and slowly inhale from the rushing air through my nose, while the cheapie goggles I was given allowed me to see the ground below. It didn't look like it was approaching as fast as it was.

We were freefalling for something like 20 seconds or so, with a few maneuvers after assuming the spread-eagle freefall posture. Simply moving an arm or leg sent us off here and there, but we never managed to roll over. The entire time it just didn't seem like we were getting any closer to the ground.

At the appointed altitude, he prepared to pull the rip cord and pushed my head forward and down to prevent a whiplash-like injury for me and a possible broken nose for him. When he actually pulled the cord, it felt as though I was sent tumbling out of control, completely and totally disoriented. In reality, we were simply decelerating to something like 20 MPH and changing direction from face and toes pointing toward the ground to an upright position with the feet bottoms facing the ground.

The four-point straps on the harness all made themselves known shortly after the parachute opened, but I could see now why they stressed that they had to be cinched tight before the jump. Had they had been loose at all, each strap would have been like a small whip on the arms and legs. While that was not the case, the sensation once the chute was open was similar to having blood pressure cuffs on each limb.

My partner released the lower two clasps that joined our harnesses, which allowed the lower half of the harness to loosen up a bit. As he was doing it, I got a completely frightening chill, since he was actually unhooking something that seemed critically important. In reality, the harnesses form a sort of inverted Y with the parachute connected to both harnesses at the single part of the Y and each person hanging on the legs of the Y. The hooks were holding the two legs of the Y together to stabilize the arrangement during the freefall.

Once the clasps were undone and I had my hands on the control lines, I was able to steer the chute left and right rather comfortably, and it was completely fun. The controls for direction change are relatively intuitive, with the left cord causing a left turn and the right cord a right turn. The strange maneuver, though, is pulling very hard on both cords, which slows decent to almost nothing. Each cord causes its respective side to close into a sort of cup, so that less air escapes from the side of the chute. By closing both, the chute traps more air and really stops the fall.

We practiced this stopping maneuver a few times in preparation for our landing. This is called flaring and allows for a standing landing without injury, with a little luck. They had told us before we took off that the most likely landing would be a " butt-slide " landing moving forward slowly and coming down as slowly as possible. A standing landing would be difficult, since it would require a tandem running action once we hit the ground, and this would be difficult attached to one-another.

We could see the ground coming pretty close now, having popped the chute at 4,000 feet or so. It seemed like 20 minutes had passed, with periods of extreme silence and calm, especially when we practiced flaring. The jump master and several other tandem jumpers were already on the ground preparing to capture others when they landed, in order to deflate the parachute and prevent it from taking the tandem pair aloft again. They formed a sort of runway that we aimed for as we lined up and prepared for the real flare.

The moment of truth was at hand, and at the last moment he pulled those cords as hard as possible, bringing us to a complete stop about ten or fifteen feet from the ground. A light release allowed us to fall again for a standing landing, coming to a stop after a few steps through some underbrush. Some slight heel pain from the landing and heavy steps coming to a stop certainly seemed more pleasant than some of the other landings we saw as we were approaching. Very cool.

We all piled into a van that had tracked us to the LZ and headed back to the airport. I got my jump certificate and we headed for the car. The ride home, along with the next several days, were spent recounting ever single moment that had passed between the time we decided to go and the time we left the airport to go home.

Would I do it again? Not sure. It is an expensive hobby, to be sure, and while it is completely safe, it is still a pretty tremendous risk to take for fun and excitement. I did it, which is good, but I really prefer roller coasters now, which seem somewhat tame by comparison. Tame, but decidedly closer to the ground.