The second week of the jump course consists of 5 jumps. One jump during the day without any gear, three more day jumps with gear, and two jumps at night with gear.
Sunday was a review day. We spent the day doing a lot of rolling, which I tried to skip out of as much as possible. The week before, when practicing our landings from the swing, I fell about 5 feet and landed on one of the metal clips from the harness when doing my roll. It left a pretty big bruise and made all subsequent rolls extremely unpleasant (It is actually a little bit funny, because the jump course is the one place that people try to hide their injuries. Any other week there are people complaining about injuries left and right in order to get out of things that we are doing. However, at the jump course being injured means that you don't get to jump). Anyway, I made it through Sunday and our first jump was Monday morning.
We were the first group to jump on Monday, so we woke up extremely early, around 3:30, and got all of our gear together (the first jump was without our vest or weapon, so it wasn't too much gear). We got to the runway, put on our parachutes and reserve 'chutes, sat down and waited for the plane. We ended up waiting for about an hour and then the plane pulled up. We jump out of a Hercules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-130_Hercules), and when it pulled up you get a sense of where the name comes from.
My group was assigned to the right door and we all lined up and entered the plane. They broke us into three groups of 8 people. I was told I would be the first person to jump in the 3rd group. They closed the ramp at the back of the plane where we had walked up and within a few minutes we were in the air...
A quick side note on my state of mind at this point. There was a time when I had a pretty significant fear of heights. There was the time at Lake Martin when I spent 15 minutes getting up the courage to jump off Chimney Rock, or the multiple times I backed out of various other height-related activities (i.e. - when my mom and sister did the bungee swing or on spring break when everybody went bungee jumping, etc.). Anyway, there was a time when I think this would have been a problem, but in actuality I think the week of drills made it a lot easier. Having jumped so many times from the different machines made it seem somewhat routine. By the time I was on the plane I really wasn't scared at all.
...We jumped from 1,200 feet, which is relatively low. To give you an idea the normal sky dive is done around 13,000 feet. When we reached the right altitude the first group of eight stood up and moved to the door. I watched as they all made their way out the door. When it came time for the second group to jump things did not go as smoothly. There were two people who decided that they couldn't jump, they were too scared. Instead of what I assumed would happen, the instructors would push them out, their parachute lines were removed from the cable and the first two people from the 3rd group were asked to join the second group. I stood and took my place as the 6th person in line. When it came time to jump things moved very quickly. The red light comes on, the first person moves into the doorway and after the green light it is like lemmings. There is maybe 2 seconds inbetween each person. All you hear is, "Jump!...Jump!...Jump!"
As I approached the door I put my hands outside and bent my knees I felt a hand on my shoulder (the signal to jump) and started to make my way out the door, when the hand suddenly pulled me back in. At first I had no idea what was going on, then the instructors pointed to the light which had changed to red. Apparently, the people in front of me had taken too long to jump and we had left the jump zone. The plane circled back around and this time I was first to jump. Being first you have a long time to stand in the doorway as the plane gets back in position. We flew over a small town and it gave me a chance to really appreciate how low we were. To give you a better idea they said that if your parachute doesn't open you would have 12 seconds before you hit the ground (not very comforting when you're think about that in terms of how much time you would have to open a reserve 'chute).
When it was finally time to jump everything went according to plan. I jumped out and the parachute opened after about two seconds. After that I floated to the ground and landed after about another 45 seconds. The landing was actually a little scary because you hear a lot of stories about people breaking their legs, and as you get close to the ground it starts to come up at you pretty quick (I later learned that a lot of the rolling upon impact is not necessary, the only thing that is really important is keeping your legs together).
I actually have to go get ready to go back to the army tomorrow (I broke my watch when I was practicing the rolling and I have to go to the mall and get a new one), so I'll have to finish the rest of the story in two weeks when I get home again. I hope it doesn't spoil the next post, but I finished the course and there is a picture of me with the pin you get at the end of the course, a picture of me, my instructor, and the other five guys who finished the course with me, and two pictures I took from the air (if you look closely at the parachuter in the picture you can see the gear that we jump with in the later jumps hanging down).
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