My wandering mind on paper...

[lifewithoutanet 0]

The guy sitting next to me thinks I'm fcuking nuts. Not a direct quote, but that's what he'd say if he could muster up even the slightest bit of indecency and drop the F-bomb to a perfect stranger. Frankly, I don't think he has it in him and he confirms that with a dismissive shake of his head.
He's been watching DVDs over my shoulder. I'm on another flight for work. It depresses me most every time I board a plane on which I know I'll be landing. I comfort myself with a library of BASE and skydiving vids, both DVDs and what I've saved on my laptop. But I'm living this life and watching someone else's, at least when I'm not watching clips of my last few jumps, looking for anything I've missed the last few hundred times. Some people watch over my shoulder openly, others pretend not to, but the occasional gasp proves otherwise. I'd wondered what questions he'd ask when I took off my headphones.
"Is that you?"
"Only in a couple of very short clips."
"You DO that?"
I smile ear to ear. Sometimes I can contain it and I'm a little more subtle, but not this time...and less and less recently.
"What's it like?"
I tip-toe into a generic, almost rehearsed speech about the feeling; about the clarity of the moment as I leave the exit-point. It's as much as he'd understand. I remember a quote from a climber-writer, Greg Child, about the impossibility of duplicating the enormity of the moment with the written word and the failure that inevitably leads to "you had to be there". "Vernacular butchery," as he called it.
I hope he doesn't ask about the danger or if I know anyone who's died doing it. This guy's idea of a horrible experience is terrible service at a restaurant. He just wouldn't understand and I don't want to go into it. I don't dare mention the fear and how so early in my BASE life, it grows with every jump, but fuels my reason to continue. We're in different worlds. His works for him and that's alright. Hell, I rent a house in that world, too, but it's not for me and I don't want to stay any longer. I've found something else.
I'm starting to learn more about myself and in talking to other jumpers, see different paths to knowledge that I hadn't expected. I've always considered myself to be pretty damn self-aware. For years, friends have told me I think too much. I overanalyze everything. I've been trying to do less of that. Live more, think a little less. Make a decision without considering every single possible consequence. And then I got into BASE and that's been the one exception, but even still, I've fallen short when it comes to jumping. With each jump I learn more and more about how little I actually know. Sometimes, it's how little I apply the knowledge that I do have. I often wonder what I did in my life to get to where I am.
I started climbing in high school after first overcoming a petrifying fear of heights while traversing a knife-edge ridge in Bavaria. I'd been fine before the clouds cleared. And then I froze. To my left was a 500 foot drop to scree, ice and snow. To my right, another thousand feet to scree. I was too close to the edge. That's the last time I thought that way. Now I can't get close enough.
I climbed through the rest of high-school. I climbed in college; 'often' was never often enough. I kept climbing when I moved back to Washington DC; weekends at Great Falls and the occasional trip to Seneca or The New. I'd look up at the bridge. I knew about Bridge Day and always planned to go, but never made it until 2004, when on my first visit to BD, I made my 5th and 6th BASE jumps. I was alone as a jumper, except for a few people I knew from California or Colorado, but none of which I'd jumped with. They looked out for me, but I truly felt alone at the time. There's really no good reason I should have.
In the meantime, I'd left DC and moved to Colorado when I got laid off. For the first time in my life, I really LIVED. I didn't have a steady job. I didn't have homework or class to skip in order to climb or drink with friends. I didn't have health insurance and I didn't have family nearby to fall back on when I needed help or did something irresponsible with money (which was often). I waited tables a few nights a week. I started brewing beer for the same suck-ass national restaurant chain. Then I bartended. All the while, I skied a minimum of 5 days a week during the season. Then I cycled 250 miles a week and climbed whenever I could. Then Corporate America beckoned and my cupboard full of ramen persuaded me to answer the call. I found a "real job", which I now define as something all too consuming that just plain sucks the life out of you. For a while, though, what I found was different. I was still in Colorado. I climbed after work. When I didn't climb, I went for a long ride. When the season rolled around, I took PDO...Powder Days Off. Then I started skydiving.
Life was great. I had a job I liked with a company I believed in--important, if like me you need to rationalize your reasons for doing some things--and it went well, for the most part, for a good amount of time. When I stopped believing in it, timing worked out and they offered me a new role in another part of the business. It amounted to less work for more money, but these golden handcuffs included a move to Southern California. I've always had a certain wanderlust and a desire for new experiences, so I packed up and the pups and I made the move.
Now I drive everywhere. My bike sits in storage back in Colorado. It's in pieces, actually, from an unplanned ejection from my roof-rack. Climbing gear sits in my haulbag, neglected save for a trip to Joshua Tree and another to Moab, where I didn't even use it. I never liked climbing indoors, but I gave it a shot recently. The comraderie of other climbers was there, but the experience was lacking. It was like running on a treadmill. I take my dogs to a dog-park, because the nearest trails are too far away. Everything is in Southern California. I wonder if they reminisce about the Front Range.
I live and die for my weekends because my weekdays are no longer mine. I was gone five consecutive weekends (seven, depending on who's counting) as much for the destinations and jumping as to just get away from all these damn people. I never had to escape before. I was already there.

I don't know who I wrote this for, exactly, but a few sentences in I realized it was something I was going to have to share. It was more than just another exercise of talking to myself. It's as incomplete as most of my thoughts, but it was one stab over one sitting. I could send it to some of my close friends. Maybe a few in DC, a few more in CO (the non-jumpers), but why? It's not that they wouldn't understand it, it's that they wouldn't appreciate it as much. They wouldn't know where I was coming from. When they ask about what I did last weekend, they sit in awe, but I know that comparatively, it's nothing. There are far many more people out there doing much more than I do. I'm just not there, yet. So in the meantime, I share this with you, the people who do understand...and with them, I'll discuss in more detail the absolutely horrible waiter I had at dinner earlier this week.
-C.

[leroydb 0]

wow, I love hearing stories such as these.

Leroy


..I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw my bath toys were a toaster and a radio...

[lifewithoutanet 0]

Glad you liked it. For such a personal thing there's only a small audience who will really understand. Tag, you guys are it. Funny how I haven't met the majority of you.
-C.

[pBASEtobe 0]

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...I'll discuss in more detail the absolutely horrible waiter I had at dinner earlier this week.

I look forward to hearing about it for 13 hours!

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Interesting story. Now don't forget to tie your slider down on your slider down jumps. If you look at the vid from two weekends ago when you jumped with us in potato land, you can see that your slider down jump was more like a slider up jump.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[lifewithoutanet 0]

You expect either of us to get a word in edgewise? Remember who we're travelling with.
-C.

[op5e 0]

Thanks for sharing. I found out how important my weekends of jumping (from planes until i get the jumps) are to my sanity, only when I was grounded due to a broken leg. Alot of your story rings home so true. Thanks again.

[lifewithoutanet 0]

My slider-downs are normally slider-off, but not on the second rig that weekend. Jumped that rig once slider up, the second time slider down. Did see that, though. It floated up a foot or two on deployment.
-C.

[linny 0]

thanks col. i needed that piece of you.

your words shot to a place in me that i've been too consumed to confront lately.

i miss you right now. see you sunday. rain or shine ok

[cornishe 0]

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ooO Ooo

Abbie Mashaal
Skydive Idaho
Snake River Skydiving
TandemBASE

[lifewithoutanet 0]

That mean you're sticking to sign language for the trip? Awesome!
-C.

[Peej 0]

Nice post dude. It's cool to see that my friends on the other side of the world are thinking the same things i am.

Advertisio Rodriguez / Sky

[lifewithoutanet 0]

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It's cool to see that my friends on the other side of the world are thinking the same things i am.

Great. We're both losing our minds.

Good to hear from ya, man. Check your PMs.
-C.

[crazydiver 0]

Colin...awesome post. You have done a far better job putting most jumpers' beliefs and values down on paper than I could even speaking to another jumper. I hope life keeps looking up even more for you and that we can jump in the future. Perhaps i'll see you at the bridge in idaho this summer where i'll be living.

Peace,
Travis

Cheers,
Travis

[lifewithoutanet 0]

Quote

You have done a far better job putting most jumpers' beliefs and values down on paper than I could even speaking to another jumper.

Nah, I can only speak for myself...and poorly at that, most times. Glad you liked it, though.

Living at The Bridge... Rub it in why don't you? Fucker. Cya up there.
-C.

[neiljarvis 0]

I'm with you brother. I get 4-weeks a year away from the corporate plus some unpaid leave. I make sure that my free time is spent entirely jumping, usually in nice locations. Switzerland is only 15 days away........

Then when the boss is away....I tend to snuck off early and go diving.....After 6 years they still haven't cottoned on....