O

Skydivi n

↓

GETTING

STARTED I N...

N THE WAY to Skydive the Ranch in Ulster County, New York, a pastoral expanse

encompassing a shallow pond, a runway, and an aircraft hangar that houses a couple

of 22-passenger Twin Otter airplanes, Red Bull–sponsored professional skydiver

Jeff Provenzano (nickname Jeffro) assures me that he too was petrified on his first

tandem dive. “We’re more likely to get hurt on the drive to the drop zone than we are

during the jump,” he says. Then he immediately makes an ill-advised U-turn in front

of a speeding SUV.

Over his 20,000-some jumps, Provenzano has performed stunts for movies, trained special-

forces teams, and hung from helicopter struts as if they were tree branches. The man is unflappable

in the face of the absurd. Later, when the door to our Twin Otter rolls up like a movie screen at 5,

feet, revealing a portal to certain doom, his heart rate doesn’t budge. I can feel it through my back.

In the plane, we straddled one of two parallel benches that

stretched from the cockpit to the middeck, me hanging off Provenz-

ano’s chest like a wild-eyed toddler in a Babybjörn. Provenzano

shuff les us to the door and makes his body into an X by holding

on to the exit’s top railing. We bow out-in-out...a trash bag in a

car window... and we’re airborne 14,000 feet above the dizzying,

curved earth. It feels remarkably like jumping off a high dive, only

a beat or two longer, and somehow wider. And then we are floating.

The closest experience to which I can compare skydiving is the

time I went diving in the ocean and turned away from a coral wall

to face a volume of blue so deep and infinite I may as well have been

in space. What was formerly above or below was now around—a great scrubbed nothing of such

irrational hugeness that some earthly proprioceptive tether snapped, and I had no idea what to

do with myself. I could move here, or there, or do a flip, or not, until the inevitable end rushed up

to obliterate the whole grand time. And isn’t that just like living?

YOU WANT a safe, pleasant, reputable

drop zone, which is the in-the-know

term for a skydiving center. You can

check Yelp reviews or look for mem-

bership in the USPA—the United

States Parachute Association, which

is the governing body for the sport.

As for size: Smaller drop zones tend

to have smaller airplanes and may

go only to 10,000 feet. Larger drop

zones will have bigger planes and

will go to 13,000 or 14,000 feet.

“A larger place can mean more time

in the air and more comfortable

airplanes,” says Helen Woznack,

manager of manifest operations at

Skydive the Ranch in New York.

AFTER YOU pony up

about $200, your tan-

dem instructor will

explain how the para-

chute system works,

then help you put on

a harness. Then he’ll

run through the jump.

On the plane, he or she

will connect the two of

you, then you’ll shuffle

to the door and jump. At first, you’ll probably hold on to

your harness so you don’t flail around. Then you’ll move

into a free-fall position (like an X, but with your back

arched) until your instructor pulls the parachute. To

land, your instructor will tell you to lift your legs to about

waist height so they’re not in the way, then skid to a stop.

Where

You Do It

What Happens

When You Get There

I HAD NO IDEA

WHAT TO DO WITH

MYSELF. I COULD

MOVE HERE, OR

THERE, OR DO A

FLIP, OR NOT.

The author, moments

before her first jump.

That sign at top left is

a joke. Sort of.

16 April 2019 _ PopularMechanics.com