Didn’t Jump, But Nakedness Ensued

It was a beautiful day in Wisconsin today.  It was in the mid to lower 60’s, sunny, and breezy.  I’ll come back to the breezy part. 

The family and I headed out to the drop zone this afternoon for me to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.  The day was just gorgeous.  We sat on the deck and watched dozens of skydivers drifting from the plane to the ground.  Some of them came in fast.  Some of them came in slow.  There were a lot of tandem jumps.  We sat and we sat and we sat. 

For better or worse, I was scheduled for a static line jump.  That’s where you jump out of the plane with a tether attached between your container and the plane and it deploys the chute for you.  I wanted to do it this way instead of the tandem because then I’d be alone for the under-canopy descent.  Unfortunately, a static line jump requires less than 12 MPH winds.  Winds today were 12 MPH gusting to 16 MPH - and they didn’t let up.  After four hours of waiting for Mother Nature to cooperate, we scheduled for another day and headed home. 

We did see one entertaining episode - beyond the scores of canopies floating to the ground.  There was a group of Navy guys there to do some tandem jumping.  That’s where there’s an instructor strapped to you and two people descend under one chute.  One of the guys decided to go naked.  Yes… stark naked.  He was only wearing the harness for the jump.  He did a decent job of covering his bits and pieces, but there’s only so much one can do when one’s hands are required for other tasks.  We did a good job of keeping the kids distracted.  They never knew it happened.  I’m just glad I had my long eyes! 

I’m disappointed that I couldn’t jump today, but I would rather do it safely on another day than risk it today.  My time will come soon enough.