Saturday 25 May 2013

History Repeating

Skydiving is expensive and heavily weather dependent. At the start of last year I had no choice to take a long break from it, first because the English winter does not provide many days a sane man would jump in, and then because my bank account became stretched to its limits with other pressures. When I finally did jump, in May, I had my first ever malfunction. In training you drill and drill but until you actually find yourself at 6000' with a parachute that has failed to deploy in a land-able configuration you don't know how it's going to go. Seeing as I walked away from it, I think it went pretty well.

The weather this year has been very poor, and though it's picked up in the last couple of months I've chosen to spend a lot of money and time doing other things that could not be rescheduled. I don't regret these choices for a second, but it has meant jumping has had to take a back seat again. Tomorrow I hope to make my first jump in months. And it's May. Damn.

The jury is still out on exactly how much the mal was my fault. Lineovers are mysterious things, poor body position on my part may have contributed, but equally it could have been dumb luck. In truth, knowing how well it turned out, I'm glad it happened. It's a real test I've passed, and a great story I'll tell for the rest of my life. But I'd rather not go through it again.

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