The thought’s occurred to me lately that maybe I’m going through a midlife crisis. Of course, that’s arguable.  I think 31 is a little young to be claiming a midlife crisis, but then again if I live to be 62 then I’m spot on.  Regardless…

While I was in Iraq this last time, I had a revelation.  Read back a bunch of posts ago (start here and backtrack if needed) and you’ll see that I’ve been getting rather frustrated with the job situation (ie, my time in the job keeps getting pushed back and back).  Right now if my “going back to fly” date doesn’t change (again), I will have put in almost 3½ years in Savannah with the Army.  At Cannon (my prior flying assignment), I had only put in slightly over 2½ years there.  So back to my revelation: why let things out of my control dictate my happiness (or lack thereof)?  There are some things in life you just have no control over, and “the needs of the Air Force” is one of them.  So I got to thinking, why do I need the Air Force to tell me whether or not I can fly?  And thus was born the mentality I had when I got back home in February: if the Air Force wants to keep me pounding ground for a little longer, I’ll just go flying myself.  And I did.

Two weeks ago, a few of my guys were going to go skydiving.  One of them already went through the military’s HALO course and wanted to make some jumps to get his civilian A License.  The other guy is just starting out with no jumps at all.  Of course, every once in a while I can’t help but chime in that I used to skydive and had accumulated a little over 600 jumps from back in the day (between 1999 and 2001 – the pic below is in ‘99 when I had under 50 jumps).  I always get the standard “why don’t you come with us?”… instead of my usual “I have Grad School to do” reply, my wave of revelation kicked in with a “let’s do this!” response. I had already rented an airplane to go flying that weekend, so I just flew it down to the dropzone to check the place out. I had to get the plane back for the next guy renting it, so I didn’t jump that day. I did, however, get a good idea of what I’d need to do to get back into skydiving though.

The past two weeks have been taken up with an Army exercise (the one I dread the most): into work at noon, home at 8am the next morning, and repeat (through the weekend) for 2 weeks straight.  It all kinda culminates into a night jump with 500 other Joe’s in full combat gear.  The unit usually takes on a 2-5% casualty rate every time we do this (“casualty” being any injury that prevents you from completing the mission).  Yeah, I jumped for the exercise (static line only from 1000ft), but life was pretty much put on hold until the exercise was over (to include skydiving).

So this weekend was it; this was the weekend.  The Army exercise had allowed me time to renew my D License for skydiving as well as get my 9-year old skydiving equipment out of storage.  I rented a plane, this time for the entire day, to allow me to spend the day at the dropzone getting jump-recurrent.  A midlife crisis?  Perhaps not, because I’m just getting reacquainted with old hobbies… I’m not doing anything that I haven’t done before.

Sit back… relax… and I’ll fill you in on a wild “Pam & Trav Show” story.  Only most of this was my doing (but I think it usually is anyway):

Dude, I’m going skydiving!  By 7am, I finished packing up my gear and was starting to load it in the car.  Each trip to the car entailed passing my garaged motorcycle (the last time I rode it anywhere of significance was before Brenden was born).  The motorcycle beckoned.  Aw hell; I’m going skydiving – might as well start the day out right and make this a “wind trifecta” (bike, plane, skydive)!  So I transferred everything from the car, broke it down and fit it in my two saddlebags and a backpack.  Another five minutes and I was cruising down the road on the way to the airport to start my day.

The plane, a Cessna Aerobat 150, was waiting out on the tarmac for me.  I took my time for preflighting and ground ops since it was my first time ever flying it (they waived my checkout for it; how much different can it be from a Cessna 172?).  I flew VFR the entire way down to the dropzone, making a point to fly over our house for a better aerial photo.

Aside from that, the 60-minute flight (and landing) down there was rather uneventful.

Since I have everything but the parachute (which the container, main and reserve can run anywhere from $2k-$7k for the package), I rented a 190ft² rig for the day to keep the weight loading a little on the conservative side (a 1:1 loading would be square-footage equal to your weight, in my case 170lbs). Even with the docile weight loadings, the canopy was still a sportster with zero-porosity material and elliptical shape (there’s a paper here that explains parachute design if interested).  My first jump back consisted of a “hop and pop” from 5,000ft: just jump out, fall for about 10 seconds and pull.  Easy and uneventful in concept, and executed the same way; the landing a smooth touch-down with two steps to bring myself to a halt.

The rest of my jumps were from 11,000ft, allowing about a minute of freefall time before pulling.  I practiced relative work (formations with others in freefall) for jumps 2-4.  Jump #2 was a two-way (ie, with one other person) and we got 12 points in a pretty simple dive.  Not spectacular, but pretty good for not having done this kinda stuff in 8 years.  Jump #3 was supposed to be a three-way, but a missed count on the exit made it a chase down for two of us.  By the time I caught the guy, it was time to pull.  Jump #4 presented a four-way.  For those with jumping experience, we launched an open-accordion to a meeker, a round-turn-round, then rinse and repeat with the open accordion.  The exit out of the plane was perfect, but during the dive there were some minor fall rate issues (read: I was dropping like a rock – probably because I was pumped that this was my first four-way in 8 years and arching like a madman).  Despite that, we managed to turn about 5 points: all the way through once and halfway through a second time.  Not too shabby.

By Jump #5, it was already around 4pm or so.  Not only was my kitchen pass running out (Pam was calling wondering when I’d be home), but I needed to have the rental plane back before it got dark since I hadn’t been signed off to fly nights just yet. Five jumps in one day is a good start to getting back into it anyway.

I needed some sort of proof to throw up on the Snakesite here, so the 5th jump was just going to be me sneaking the camera up and having some fun. I was so worried about the digital camera in my hand (dropping it) that I kinda sacrificed a good exit from the airplane and slammed my shin into the landing gear on the way out the door. It sent me spinning for a little bit, but I recovered after a few seconds when I got over the pain. The damn video feature on the camera shutdown after 30 seconds or so, which pisses me off ’cause I had the entire thing through “pull” recorded. Oh well, here’s the resulting video:

From the 4th Jump, I noticed the winds were starting to pick up a little bit. I had a slightly rough landing on that jump due to a little bit of turbulence from the wind coming off of nearby buildings and such. For #5, I tried to pick a spot a little further away from the buildings. Everything seemed fine; I went into my flare and kept dropping… more flare to bring it full on… still dropping at the same rate. I sucked up my legs a little to buy an extra foot or two, but my decent never really slowed. I had more or less accomplished a Navy carrier-style landing with a parachute. Only as my ankles and shins touched down, I heard a few pops in my left leg before I skidded to a halt. *Sigh*

Should I get up or stay down? Stay down for a little bit at least… I rolled over to my back and sat there wondering if the pops meant I did damage to something or not. After all, I could’ve just cracked my ankle like people crack their fingers (and I can make my ankles crack normally). They didn’t feel too different yet. After about a minute of contemplating, I could feel myself getting a little light-headed… obviously I did something to my ankle. I called my buddy over to where I was and laid down to lower my head and elevate my ankle. They all took a look at it and it was starting to swell pretty good. They drove a pickup truck out to me and helped me into the bed to take me next door to the fire station (yes, there really was a fire station next door to the dropzone!).

After spending 5 minutes talking the EMT out of cutting my shoe off (just undo the damn laces and take it off was my argument), I was on a stretcher in an ambulance to a nearby hospital. I dunno if they thought I had forgotten to pull and miraculously survived or what, but they were asking some pretty stupid questions to keep me talking and kept pressing to see if I had chest or back pain. After another 5-minute long debate, the EMT talked me into letting her give me an IV (I hate needles) on the premise that if the ankle was dislocated bad enough, they’d have to force it back into place which would be painful.

Once we got to the hospital, they whisked me away to a room and brought in an X-Ray machine. From them fondling my ankle and talking about what they saw, they had me thinking I had displaced my whole foot an inch to one side! So I was relieved when the doctor came back and said it was just a broken fibula (the small leg bone):

They splinted the crap out of it (all the way up to my knee). I guess I need to get a cast on Monday or Tuesday, and the doc is telling me it’s about a 6-week healing period with the cast. Suck. I wish the story ended there…

But how the hell am I supposed to get home?! I flew an airplane down, remember? And I rode my motorcycle to the airport! There’s no way in hell I’m leaving the airplane there and paying an instructor gas money to drive/fly out with fees for him and the airplane to fly back! Tough nut to crack huh? Maybe I could still fly it back… after all, I haven’t received an iota of pain or any other type of medication. I think I was thinking aloud, because the doc and the nurses strongly recommended against me flying (to both me and to the guy that picked me up from the hospital).

I scratched that idea when I crutched to the truck to go back to the dropzone… my ankle was really starting to hurt when it was not level with the rest of my body. Alright, I think flying back is out of the question. Perhaps I should just hitch a ride back with my buddy and just let the rental place know about the plane. Besides, it was getting close to sunset/darkness (we left the hospital around 7pm) and I was butting up against that if I wanted to fly back.

We pulled into the dropzone and, after giving me shit for being the first one to break a bone on the dropzone, a few of the people there asked me how I was gonna get back. I gave them my two plans of action and one of them said, “if you go, go now… try taxiing around a little bit to make sure your good first.” Hmmm… my Army compatriot with me had taken maybe 3 flying lessons, so at least he knew how to operate the brakes (which is the only thing I couldn’t really do). So we scrambled to the airplane, I crutched my ass into it while my buddy cross-loaded all my stuff from his truck to the plane. He programmed Savannah airport into his car-Garmin so his girlfriend knew how to get his truck back to Savannah, then hopped in the plane with me.

We started the engine as I checked my watch: 7:30 pm. I can’t believe I’m doing this… not only am I busted up, but we’re gonna be cutting it mighty close on the daylight to make it back, too. I sped up ground ops and goosed the throttle to do the “taxi test.” I learned a few things:

• My buddy wasn’t so good with the rudders and steering.
• The splint was stiff enough that I could use it (gingerly) to activate left rudder/nose gear just fine (and safely).
• My buddy wasn’t too good at braking… good enough at slow taxi speeds I guess… we never left the taxiways onto the grass.
• With enough room ahead of me, I could use the right brake gently while counter-steering with the nose gear to stay centered up (so hold the left rudder pedal in while applying pressure to the right brake).

Safe enough that I’m comfortable… time’s up, let’s do this! We took the runway and with both my legs (err, a leg and a splint) manning the rudder pedals, I punched the throttle to full and we were airborne. Hack: 7:40 pm.

The most direct way back put us over the Georgia coastline for the first half of the trip. It was pretty peaceful: the sun was setting, the air was smooth and I even had company to talk to. As I was flying, Pam was frantically texting me on my phone, trying to figure out what the hell was going on and what the gameplan was. My “co-pilot” would text back to her for me so I could just concentrate on flying… which worked fine and well until Pam texted to see if I “wanted some pot pie and sexual healing when I got home.” That made for a chuckle, since I’m assuming Pam thought that it was me texting her.

It got darker and darker as we got closer to Savannah. We could see the city lights from 40 miles out (that’s probably about when they turned them on). I wasn’t necessarily worried about flying at night; probably a good third of my hours in the F-16 are at night. I just wasn’t sure how I was gonna explain it away to the rental place… I could just see it now: they probably thought I’d bring the plane back in the morning and all of the sudden it comes pulling in at night and once the engine shuts down, the pilot hops out and crutches his ass into the building with a cast from knee-to-toe on the left leg! Awesome!

At 8:30 pm, we were short final for the airport. It was officially “dark” outside now. The runway was all lit up and a while back I had turned on my cockpit lighting so I could see the instruments. I positioned my feet back to the rudder pedals for landing and rollout. The touchdown was smooth and I had about 4000ft of runway (a LOT for a small airplane) to slow down before I had to turn on a taxiway. For the time being, I used my counter-steer braking method to keep things under control. The only time I needed my buddy for brakes was when we turned into parking and brought the plane to a full stop, in which case I would just yell “left brake!” We stopped a little (ok, a lot) crooked in the parking spot, so I just had him hold the left brake as I goosed the throttle. Once we spun around straight, I tapped the right brake to stop it and shut down the engine.

I verbally coached him in tying down the plane for the night while I cleaned up inside. After everything was good, I crutched out of the plane and into the rental office. To my surprise, everyone had gone home for the night! Phew.

Now how to get my Harley back home? Fortunately, the Good Idea Fairy stayed with the parked airplane. So, no, I didn’t attempt to ride my bike back (though if it would’ve been my right ankle, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat – I needed my left ankle to shift which I couldn’t do). My Army buddy had a crotchrocket, so I trusted him in getting my bike home. It took about 30 minutes for his girlfriend to get there with his truck. I hopped in, he took the bike, and here I am at home now…

… with a cast… immobile for 6 weeks. This really does suck. On the plus side, I’m sure our bank account won’t mind 6 weeks of not flying or skydiving. In the meantime, maybe I should take up painting like Pam!