SkyDiving Duck III: Parachuting School (Chicken of the Sky, AFF version)

Thoughts pestered me as I drove to the dropzone.  Parachuting class?  You?  This is the stupidest thing you've ever done!   You're clumsy!  You're a slow learner!  Dropping out of a plane freaks you.  You'll break your legs!  You'll get killed!  Why are you doing this?
Why was I doing this?.  I wasn't a thrill seeker.  It scared the @#$* out of me.  It was something I'd watch from afar. That's cool, I'd tell myself, but I could never do it.  This seemed reasonable.  Then again, really something I could never do?  What would happen if I tried?
A level 1 AFF class is the first of many required to earn a parachuting license.  You spend several hours learning the basics, then jump out of a plane (with instructors.)   This promotional video shows a jump similar to the one I did*
I looked forward to meeting my fellow students.  Would they be nervous too?  At least we'd have that in common.
Then I met my classmate.   He was my age.  He was also a war veteran who knew no fear.  He wasn't nervous, he told me.
That's who's supposed to be a skydiver, I thought.  This guy has dodged bullets and bombs!  What the hell have I dodged?  Telemarketers?  The meter maid?   I so don't belong here!
The skills I needed to demonstrate were easy... ...on the ground.  What would happen in the sky?   What if I freaked out?  I practiced over and over.  Out loud, in my head, in the door of a mockup plane, and on the ground.  Thoughts like "you'll get killed," and "you'll be sorry" tried to butt in...

Then I was in the plane.
 The engine roared like a lawnmower as I watched my altimeter slowly dial up to 12,000 feet.  Other passengers began dropping out, each  with an alarming whoosh.
What was I doing here?  I was off my rocker to try this.
Jumping out of a plane is about as counter-intuitive as jumping into meat grinder.  It didn't matter that I had a parachute.  My  instincts said "Get the away from that door!"
 Then it was my turn.  To exit, I was supposed to crouch in the doorway.  Instructor 1 poised to my right, Instructor 2 hanging out to my left.  To  make sure we jumped together, I was supposed to lean forward; "Ready!" lean back, "Set!" and step out "Arch."
The "Ready" and "Set" went as practiced, but the arch was more like this:

Holy $#!+;!!  I'd jumped out of a #!(*ing plane!
 The initial drop is very different than any plunge  I've felt on land.  It's like being sucked into a roaring vortex of wind mixed with being shot downward from a cannon.  This lasts a few seconds and is replaced by a "head out the sunroof at high speed" sensation.
It was time to demonstrate my skills.
The "circle of awareness" was easy:  Check the altimeter (left wrist), check the horizon, check your right instructor, then your left.  Got it.
Now for three "practice touches."  This reaching back to tap the pilot chute** handle while counterbalancing with the other hand.  Touch one went perfect.   I reached back again.... ...where was it?  The instructor nudged my hand in place.  I missed it completely on the third try

Oh no!  I'd blown it.  Now what?  Should I try again?  No!  Time's running out. Next task!  I changed position to fly forward  for four seconds.   Okay, time to check that altimeter again.  Should be 6000 and almost time to-
-Whoa!  It was already 5500 feet.  Time to wave off, reach back and-

I jerked upright.  The chute rose over my head like a smoke cloud.  Huh?  How?  As it  settled into place I figured it out: an instructor had pulled my chute for me before he let go.  I'd botched it!  My inner critic let me have it:

Seriously, I wanted to focus on what I was doing.  I could scold myself later.

I grabbed the steering toggles and did some turns. This is pretty cool, I thought..  The landing area floated below.  Okay, I'm facing it, I'm heading toward it...

"Turn left," an instructor's voice crackled through the walkie talkie, "Now right..." Later I learned that, while I was looking at the landing area, I wasn't heading towards it.  For all I know I might have landed in the next time zone if I hadn't gotten directions.
Then came landing time.   You're supposed to land standing up, but even after flaring my chute (pulling the steering toggles all the way down to slow forward motion), I was still zipping along, so I did a PLF.  (That's the army style landing where you roll to distribute the impact.)
I did it!  I was on the ground without a scratch!  Whoohoo!
No, wait.  I didn't do it.  The instructor had  pulled the chute.  I'd failed.  I was a bad student.  A bad parachuter.

I gathered the chute and headed for the instructors,   I was sure I'd be scolded.  Surly I'd get a "You know pulling your parachute is important, right?" lecture.
But the instructors seemed glad to see me.  They went over the details of my jump, focusing on what went wrong and what I did well.  I paid attention, figuring I'd still be learning stuff even if I flunked the thing.
Then the surprise came:

I hadn't failed.  I passed!  Sure I lost points for the pull-the-pilot-chute fumble, but the instructor said that he saw me wave off and reach immediately after he'd deployed it (it takes a few seconds after the pull to feel the parachute take effect).  My body position (in freefall) was good they said, and my PLF landing was "perfect." I suspect they go easy on first timers so not to discourage them, but still, I passed!  I couldn't believe it.
I could throw in a smug ending like "Don't tell yourself you could never do something," but there are many more classes to take, each with increasingly complex and scary (to me) tricks that I could never  do.  Or could I?  Maybe....


To find out how my AFF level two class went, click here.

*I could have filmed my jump, but I was nervous enough without having a camera pointed at me.  This was made at the same place I had my class, but the gal in the video is way more poised than I was!
**A pilot chute is a mini parachute attached to the main.  Instead of pulling a ripcord, you grab the pilot chute by the handle and toss it.  It inflates and pulls out the main chute.

Skydiving Duck II: Chicken of the Sky (continued)

For the first half of  this story, click here:

Edit: Not long afterward I tried the AFF level one class.  To find out how I did, click here.

Sky Diving Duck II: Chicken of the Sky

 

For the second part, please click here. 

Painted Planes

If I ruled the world, every airplane would have a face painted on it.
(This probably has something to do with why I don't rule the world.)

From July 24, 2011

From July 24, 2011

From July 24, 2011

"I Liked Goldfinches Better When They're South for the Winter"

Guest Blogger: Cheeps,  Purple Finch

I don't hate Goldfinches, but, to be honest, I like them better when they're south for the winter.  Each spring they fly into town like a bunch of damned locusts.  They act like they own the place.  They perch on our trees and eat at our bird feeders.  Can't they find their own bird feeders?    And aren't there any trees in Florida or wherever the hell they came from?
And then they have to go shove their Goldfinchyness down my throat.  They just have to flash those gold feathers and make their weird goldfinch sounds.  Hello?  This is California.  We speak Purple Finch here.
What really frosts me is how I have to explain to my own fledglings about them, like why we suddenly have to share the birdbath  with a completely different kind of bird.  What if my kids grow up thinking it's okay to be a Goldfinch?  That's we're we're heading.
 Maybe some of us should take a stand.

"This Acorn PROVES the Sky is Falling."

Guest Blogger: Chicken Little

The haters were quick to ridicule me.  "That's an acorn, stupid!" they said.  "The sky isn't falling!  It's not even a solid object!"
The major media and folktale outlets pilloried me.  The academic elites mocked me.  Turkey Lurkey called me a "Dumbass."
Yet Professor Grousey Lousy of Matchbook University bravely observed, "Well, technically I suppose one could argue that much what appears to us as 'sky' is, in fact, bluish light scattered from particles of nitrogen, oxygen and so on.  These particles are subject to the laws of gravity just like everything else, so, in a sense the sky is solid and falling."
So I've been proven right.  Yet the media and children's books remain silent.  Even the Foxy Loxy News Network won't touch my vindication.  Shocking!
So far Ducky Lucky is the only one who weighed in.  "I can reluctantly understand how the sky, in a sense, is falling," he sniffed, "but that doesn't match Chicken Little's notion that it was crashing down in dangerous chunks.  A freaking acorn landed on his head.  Did he turn around to investigate what hit him?  No.  He ran off screaming about the sky.  He's barmy."
Isn't it just like those know-it-all jerks to call me names?  They can't argue logically so they just attack me.  Cowards.
Yes, it's true that an acorn hit my head.  But do you know why?  Because a piece of falling sky knocked it loose!  Prove it didn't!  Prove it didn't!!

Sky Diving Duck

I'm not the adventurous type.  I'd never climb a mountains, bungee jump, surf or ride a motorcycle. Skiing frightens me.  Even elevators make menervous.  So why was I about to jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet?

 

 Curiosity did it.   Skydiving sounded freaky, yet the more I thought about it, the more I wondered what it was like.  It's as if I have two minds.  One is cautious and terrified, the other one looks for novelty and just has to know what something is like:

Curious Namowal:  Let's try skydiving.

Cautious Namowal: Have you lost your mind!? 

Curious Namowal: C'mon!  It'll be the craziest thing!

Cautious Namowal: You don't like to jump off the high diving board and now you want to jump out of an airplane?  You know that can potentially end very badly.

Curious Namowal:  We'll do the kind we're we're strapped to an instructor.  He'll know what he's doing.  And you know they carry a second parachute in case the first one fails, right.

Cautious Namowal: Yes.  And I know the term "double canopy failure" means chute number two doesn't open.  Spatula City!

Curious Namowal won.
So there I was, strapped to an instructor in a roaring Cessna.  There's something counter-intuitive about swinging your feet over the doorway edge  of a plane that high.  The wheel spoke hung nearby, pointing to the ground below.
"Put your head back," the instructor said.
Good, I thought, because then I won't see what happens next.
We swung back and leaned forward...
Whoooosh!  The "Oh $#!!! you're falling!" sensation kicked in so hard that I screamed. 

What had I gotten myself into?
Then the falling sensation stopped.   The chute hadn't opened yet, but I suppose we'd reached terminal velocity.  Since we weren't gaining speed, the "you're falling" detector in my head decided I wasn't falling and turned off the danger sensation.  Now I was "floating" in a strong wind.    Patches of green and brown farmland spread below.   Clouds hung in the distance.  This was bizarre.  Crazy.  Cool!

Curious Namowal:  Holy Crap!  We did it!

Cautious Namowal: Not so fast, Cannonball.  Let's see how well this parachute works.

Something tugged me upward.  I looked up as the blue and gray chute plopped open.  Now we hung there, floating down as the ground slowly grew closer.  It was a live action session of Google Earth, but more fun. 
It was over too soon.
I could babble on and on about it.  Instead, here's the video.



 Wanna come with me if I do it again?

Skeptics: Real life vs. Television:

As a skeptic, this kind of thing has always driven me a bit crazy.

When Bob Clampett went to Mars

Footage from a Bob Clampett presentation, featuring a project he worked on in 1936, "John Carter of Mars." It was never completed.
I find it interesting for three reasons:

1.  Effective use of a limited color palate (reds and blues).
2.  Remarkably good animation for the mid 1930s.
3. Clampett is best remembered for his insanely brilliant Loony Tunes cartoons: Porky in Wackyland, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, Big Snooze ,  Russian Rhapsody etc..   Yet this master of goofy characters could draw, animate and direct realistic characters too.  Did his skill at the latter help with the former?  Did the skill, planning and thinking required for projects like "Mars" help prime his brain for becoming a Warner Brothers legend?

I wouldn't surprise me.

Pose Woes

When posing for a picture, I think I'm standing like this:

The problem is, I'm really standing more like this:

There's a gap between what I'm doing and what I think I'm doing.
So while I think I'm standing up straight  I'm actually posed like a pile of old tires.  Or I think I'm leaning in towards the next person when, in fact, I'm bent sideways like a broken pencil.   It drives me crazy.
 

Dingbats! Dingbats! Dingbats!

If you've lived in in Los Angeles, you've seen dingbats.  They're those boxy apartments that sprang up the 1950s and 1960s.   You know the ones:  Stucco blocks held up on poles (or walls) so you can park under them.   Some are plain, but many are adorned with garish details- glittery tile, funky sconces, and often a name splashed across the front.
These names always suggested something far different than "Standard Issue Boxy Dwelling:"

The Capri!
The Monte Carlo!
Camelot!
Kona Kai!
The Argyle!
The Stardust!

Some great (and ugly, and so-tacky-they're-wonderful) examples can be seen here, here and here.
And to think when  I was a kid I thought all apartments looked like this. 

Circus Peanuts: Something's Rotten in Candyland.

Guest Blogger: Fred, Maple-Nut Truffle

What is it with Circus Peanuts?
Nobody likes them.  Yet they're on display at every store. Meanwhile class act candy like Swedish Fish, Spice Drops, Dumdum Pops, and Wax Lips get second-class status.
Why do Circus Peanuts get all that shelf space?  They're gross:  Band Aid colored.  Rubbery.  Ugly.  They look like something  that should be floating in a lab jar.  And why are they called "Circus Peanuts?"  Did they get their start as a sideshow exhibit?  Maybe you'll find them, if you're lucky.
Let's compare myself, a Maple-Nut Truffle, with a  Circus Peanut.

Properties:	Maple-Nut Truffle	Circus Peanut
Decadent cocoa butter coating
Rich Buttercream center
Made with 100% pure Vermont maple syrup, farm fresh dairy, and spring harvested Hawaiian cane sugar
Looks like a pupae
Erases pencil marks
Probably emits toxic vapors when heated

So clearly I'm the superior candy.  Yet can you find me at most supermarkets and drugstores?  No!  But you'll find plenty of Circus Peanuts What's going on?
The Dumdum Pops and I have a theory.  The Circus Peanuts are blackmailing their way onto the nations shelves.   I suspect organized crime is involved.   It's the only explanation, I tell ya.