How do you work up the nerve to jump again?

[Cashmanimal 0]

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I'm not sure how I will feel when I climb in the plane.

I got on a plane to do a skydive 5 minutes after Cliff & Jay bounced. I can still remember the manifest speaker saying "Now call for DC-3"

I was amazed they didn't shut down.

I too was on that same DC-3 load. It was a big (by our standards) formation attempt by the Skydive New Mexico crew. We were all a the mock-up on the lawn when they bounced, not 30 yards from where we were. As the trolly took us out to the plane, the ambulance was pulling up. At the time, I only had 90 or so jumps, and was terrified, as well as baffled that operations did not stop.

I later found out that Cliff did a lot of jumping at Hollister. While I never met him personally, I felt impacted even more, as I had just moved out to California for college, and had claimed Hollister as my new home DZ.

I coped with the situation by reviewing with myself the nature of the sport. It is dangerous, and we have accepted that risk. The accidents at Eloy could have been prevented, but sport progression has thrown in some factors that obviously make exceptions, acceptable or not.

Every time I climb out, I think about how all I need to do is pull myself back in that plane to significantly increase my chances of landing safely, or alive. But I know that at this point in time I am conservative, and don't exceed my experience or skill level if at all possible. I rest easy knowing that I have the knowledge to inspect my gear and approve it for a jump. I always pack my own canopy, and do my best to follow the jump plan. I do everything I can to keep my life in my hands, and any factors that i do not have control of, I maximize the safety and comfort factor. For example, I may jump primarily at Hollister, and no disrespect to the packers here, but I always have my reserve repacked when I go home to New Mexico. Just a comfort factor. I learned to skydive there, I know everybody on a personal level, and trust them with my gear, and therefore, my life.

Whatever you decide, I hope it turns out well for you!

It's all fun and until someone loses an eye... then it's just a game to find the eye

[RogerRamjet 0]

Might as well add my two cents....

1) I'm sure you heard the saying that if you jump long enough, you will know (or see) someone who went in.

2) If you choose to continue, it WILL happen again.

3) This sport is dangerous, period.

You have to reconcile the wonder, freedom, and camaraderie of the sport against the very real dark side. I agree with those who went right back up and made a jump, it's the best way to get past seeing a fatality IMO.

I do not agree that you have the same risks in everything else you do. Somewhere around here is a thread on the "driving to the drop zone is more dangerous than the jumping" myth. Most who responded to that thread had not known anyone who died driving and if they had been in the sport more than 5 years usually knew one or more jumpers who died. In 7 years active, I knew 5. Since then (27 years), way into double digits. I am 54 years old and have not known a single person killed driving.

I saw my first fatality at Z-Hills in 1973 and I knew the person. I had just under 200 jumps and Z-Hills had not had a fatality since the mid sixties, so I was lulled into a false sense of safety. I went up on the next load because I wanted to continue and it seemed such an isolated incident (and entirely the jumpers fault). Two year later at the 75 Turkey meet, we had two fatalities 40 minutes apart and I knew both of them, one (Lou Jecker) very well.

Ok, this shocked me into thinking maybe I should quite or this might catch up with me. Here is how I rationalized what happened and why I continued. First, Lou always pulled low and many including myself and Roger Nelson had talked with him about it. He went in after a low pull, high speed mal, and inflating reserve on impact. I knew he would die eventually. Sabrina, the other fatality that day, had a mal, cut away, and could not pull her reserve due to improper tacking of the reserve housing (bad design really). By this time, I was building gear for Bill booth so I had a pretty good idea of why she died. Simply put, I felt these things were within my control and with some reasonable forethought on my part, I should not die this way.

Now on to the present. When those fatalities were happening, you could nearly always see the reasons and learn from and hopefully avoid doing the same thing. Today there are more variables that are out of your control mostly due to fast canopies and people with those fast canopies swooping in traffic. Roger Nelson was killed this way and I was once again shocked. He was one of the most aware people I have ever been in the air with. He also preached head on a swivel at all times to everyone he could. He was still taken out.

Here I am, 27 years after my last jump (# 1000) about to make a few more and struggling with essentially the same issues you are. What will I do? I will have to mentally overcome the layoff and other fears to get out of the plane for that AFF jump. I will be on a large slow canopy and will intentionally land away from the traffic area. In other words, I will as I did before, mitigate to the best of my ability the things I know can kill me. If the Blue Sky side of the sport is so good, part of that might be that there is a Black Death side of the sport. The "trick" if there is one, is to always be aware that it's there and do your dive as safely as possible for you.

For you to get back on the horse as it were, I might recommend a solo dive to start with. It will keep the pressure to a minimum and remind you of just how good it feels up there...

-----------------------
Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

[tbrown 26]

Fortunately I haven't witnessed a fatality this time around, since returning to the sport 4 years ago. But back thirty years ago I was pretty used to seeing one or two fatalities a year. Back then it was more often simply bouncing, there was no question that the person was dead, they'd just fallen out of the sky. Nowadays it's so much more often people who fly a canopy into the ground, or have a collison just a few hundred feet up. some of them live and some don't and it's not unusual to take a few days for the outcome to play out.

Most of the people I saw go in were strangers, but a few were friends I'd even jumped with earlier that day. At the smaller dropzones operations would shut down for the rest of the day. At the bigger outfits, especially with a boogie going on, things kept right on rolling and we would just make ourselves get on the next possible load. I know I used to deal with some terrible thoughts and questions about "why am I doing this ?" on the way back up. But stepping out into the sky helps a lot, it's a familiar feeling and your normal reactions kick in. Doesn't make the pain go away, especially if you've lost a friend, but it does help to sort out the fear issues a lot. I might add that in those days if you went to a big boogie, you pretty much expected somebody would go in before it was over. and unfortunately, somebody usually did. I think things have improved from those days.

But skydiving is a choice we all make. And we all constantly re-evaluate that choice. things happen around us, there are accidents, we get married, kids are born, we get or lose jobs, move across the country, get religion, get pissed off or burned out with it, all kind of things happen. The equation of whether or not it's worth it keeps changing all the time and nobody's got the right answer except what's right for them.

I used to notice that everytime somebody bounced, somebody else would quit. I think it still happens and it's completely understandable. If you don't want to jump, it's completely okay. It might even take ten or twenty years before you know you just have to do it again. Or you may never need or want to. Only you can decide and whatever you decide is okay. Because it's your life and only you can decide what to do with it.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[scottjaco 0]

I just wanted to post again to say thanks to everyone for all your kind words and to those who sent P.M.’s

This morning I drove up to CalCity and got on the early bird load. I hadn’t jumped since January but after reading all the positive thoughts from everyone, I wanted to see how jumping felt.

I have to say, it really felt great to be back in the air again. I did 4 jumps and met some really cool people. I even got on a jump with an inflatable raft! That was a new one for me!

I realized that it’s not worth sitting on my ass and worrying about every little thing that can happen to me. There are no guarantees either way. I don’t want to put restraints on myself just to appease the small handful of people in my life that might be upset if I were to be killed. I can’t live for them, I must live for myself.

To anyone else who has doubts about continuing in the sport, realize that in order to skydive, you must learn to let go of everything. Your entire life as you know it has been suspended, pending the outcome of your skydive. From the moment you leave the plane till the time your feet touch back down on the earth, nothing else in your life matters. Perhaps leaving one’s own life behind, for just those few minutes, is what keeps us coming back to the sport time after time, even if we know it might kill us.

Blue Skies!

[CSpenceFLY 1]

I'm not sure how literal you were when you say you watched everything. My advice would be that if you can't help don't be around the scene. Some people handle this stuff well and some don't. There is no need to have the mental pictures if you don't need to be there. In 9 yrs I have seen enough. In Dublin if it had not been my event I would not have even walk over to the scene.