She fell from the sky!

[elfs]

A human body falling from 9,000 feet is still just a speck in the sky. You can't tell if it's whirling around out of control, if it's merely plummeting, or if it's dropping with any sort of aerodynamic behavior.

When that human body is your beloved wife, anchor of your existence, you really hope the parachute works.

Omaha before the jump. Photo by Kouryou-chan
Hosted on Flickr!. Click to enlarge.

Omaha jumped out of an airplane today. I had promised her that she could do that sometime this year, the weather was beautiful, fallenpegasus had suggested it and since I had just undertaken a minor project for him he drove her down to the airfield. FallenPegasus pointed out that it could not be considered a "perfectly good" airplane as, after all, the door was open. Kouryou-chan and I followed a half hour later after I had made lunch for the two of us. We arrived at the field in time to watch Omaha suit up and talk to her cameraman, and then she trundled off to the airplane while the rest of us raced down to the landing spot.

There wasn't much to see. The plane was a tiny speck in the sky, and then so were the bodies falling to the ground. Eventually, we saw some chutes and watched as

Coming in for a landing
Hosted on Flickr!. Click to enlarge.

they came towards the ground. Some of the more experienced ones were quite impressive as they did pinwheels less than fifty feet from the ground and then came racing it towards the landing field as speeds that scared me. The first tandem landed much more sedately, and I stopped worrying too much about Omaha. I hadn't seen anyone falling out of control from the aircraft after all.

She was the last to land, so we felt safe

Kouryou-chan runs out to Omaha
Hosted on Flickr!. Click to enlarge.

running out to her.

The first words out of her mouth were "Wooo! I have to do that again!" She was obviously very happy and quite thrilled with the whole adventure, and we'll have film from the cameraman that went down with her in a couple of days. I'm just glad she made it to the ground in one piece. Yeah, I know, FallenPegasus has done this a dozen times and he's still intact, but still.

Comments

[spiralsong.livejournal.com]

We got my Dad a tandem skydive with video one year for Father's Day. I thought my Mom was nuts, suggesting it, because Dad is one of those charcoal-suit-and-maroon-tie businessmen-types, and I could never see him doing something like that. But apparently he had talked about it when they were in college.

Anyway, he loved it. The first thing he said when he landed was "DAMN that is better than sex." (Which, of course, made us as his offspring cringe a bit, but hey - expression is expression.)

Talk about the untoppable Father's Day gift. Unless I can, at some point, afford to buy him a Jaguar X-type - he's wanted one of those since before I was born. ;)

Glad Omaha enjoyed it, too, and that all was safe. :)

[tehrasha.livejournal.com]

Hats off to Fallenpegasus for the best description yet, of the point at which the definition 'perfectly good aircraft' ends.

Personally, I dont think I could jump even if it were a significantly crippled aircraft. Definitely not until the pilot had jumped, and I had taken a stab at the controls anyway. :)

[fallenpegasus]

The rule is, the pilot is the last one to jump out.