Don’t skydive in the rain

Jump #11

Wow, this is kind of sad… the novelty is starting to wear off… normally on the drive to the dropzone i’d get butterflies in my stomach… but not so much anymore. It’s definitely something that I love to do, just not with the same anxiety as before. Today I was hoping to get a few jumps in, but the weather turned for the worse, so I only got one. Actually, I could.ve had one more, but after the first, I was done for the day.

This will be a quick post here… nothing real exciting about this jump, just my first coaching jump, and i had to practice ‘tracking’. Tracking is basically forward movement in set direction… you try to maximize your forward speed horizontally vs vertically. Anyhow, when the load before got done (about five minutes before we’d go up) they said they noticed it just started raining at altitude, my coach, Brian, said he’d still go if I wanted to, and I was like “yeah, why wouldn’t I?” and all he’d say is don’t be surprised if I saw him on is back and I was just like okay, whatever..

So anyway, long story short, rain falls at about 15 mph… Standing on the ground, rain hitting you at 15mph doesn’t hurt… but do the math, if you’re falling at 120 mph out of an airplane, and hitting raindrops that are going a slow 15, the effect is being hitting by raindrops at 105 mph. Lets see.. This isn’t as bad as a paintball or BB gun… but close… imagine a raindrop sized paintball… lots of them… all over your face and hands… according to local myth, it’s hurts because you’re falling on them from the top.. aka, the pointy side.. 😉

Also, do to the fact that I was doing a tracking jump, I couldn’t block my face at all (to track effectively, your legs are straight out behind you, and your arms are swept back to your sides) so I was literally diving face first into the rain. My coach, like he said he would, took the easy route and just flipped onto his back and watched my dive from there.

Once we got down, I could’ve taken the next load… but i thought i could just as well wait for next weekend. Oh well, just wasn’t worth the rain to get in two today. Better luck next time.