AFF Program - Stage 2/Jump 2 - 13,000ft

It’s time for jump # 2 of the day. As you may have read, all went very well on my first jump and I’m feeling very confident. Besides not “Bouncing”, our main objective for this jump is to track and move forward. This is done by pulling your arms in towards the sides of you body and then straightening your legs.

On this jump most of my nerves are associated with who my new JM is. His name is Jim Wallace. He is the owner of the skydiving center we are training at and something of skydiving zen master. A legend if you will (but a very humble and nice person). So I’m nervous that I will screw up (which I end of doing). I’m a very competitive person you see as well as a perfectionist. Yes one of those.

Pretty much the same drill as the first jump except this time I go first and Seri goes behind me. We jump out and I proceed to count to 5 then breathe and report in my altitude. 11,000Ft! I get the sign to do test pulls (3 this time). Those go off without a hitch. Report my Altitude again. 9,000Ft! Jim gives me the signal to begin a forward movement. I straighten out my legs and count to 5 (actually at first I totally forgot to start counting so I really counted to 3 after what I had figured had already been 2 seconds), then report altitude. 8,000Ft!. I get the signal to begin forward movement again. They had warned us that if we are doing well and have enough altitude they may have us do the maneuver again. I straighten my legs and begin moving forward again. This time I take a moment actually look down. This is going to amaze some people, but during my first two jumps I only looked down at the ground twice and only for a couple of seconds. I count to five again and report altitude. 6,000ft!. I shake my head indicating no more maneuvers and lock on waiting for the altitude at which to pull. This is where things start to go sideways. I seemed to have gotten fixated on the altimeter and when it hit 5,000Ft I had to do a double take. This meant that I also brought my arm in closer, which made me slightly unstable and wobble a bit. I recovered from this, but stumbled when reaching to pull the chute. This meant that my JM had to pull it for me. F%$K!!!!!!!! I scream as the chute deploys.

After my screaming I began going through my checks on the chute. I saw this time that I had a little line twist. It was not too bad so I just reached up, grabbed the risers and pulled apart. This cleared up the line twist. The rest of the jump was uneventful. At my debriefing Jim said up until that point everything was going well and that he would just make a note in my logbook, but that I was cleared for level 3.

At this point I’m not sure if I will ever jump again. I’ll wait until this adrenaline high wares off before deciding.