[Cowperson]

About 10 years ago, a guy named Slug told me to let go of a perfectly good airplane at 3,500 feet or so over Drum . . . . so I did.

My heart beat didn't bump at all as I went out and then let my feet flutter out behind me as I held onto the wing strut. Seriously, that was fun and it didn't bother me at all to look down and see nothing but air.

Slug told me to let go, so I did a very nice butterfly, looked up and saw the plane rapidly receding and then snap, the chute opened and my feet were unexpectedly and almost instantly pretty much straight up over my head, meaning I was in danger of doing a loop-de-loop and getting tangled up in the lines. The heart rate went from zero to a billion an instant later.

But the feet flopped back down where they should be. The heart rate went down again.

Then I got a little cocky, pulling harder and harder on one of the control handles, a guy on the ground encouraging me in a earpiece. So I'm spinning around and around and feeling pretty good and then look over and see the right side of the chute starting to collapse. So up goes the heart rate again in an instant and I ease off on the handle, finally noticing the guy on the ground was getting a little frantic. I guess I'd tuned him out.

Then he guided me over some very ugly looking hydro electric wires - the big voltage kind, six or eight wide, and I'm thinking he's got it out for me because I'm not so far from the ground now . . . . . but, it was all to line me up with the landing zone where I plopped down with no problem.

Generally, aside from those two incidents, I actually found it pretty boring and haven't done it since. Scratch that off.

Been there, done it.

Cowperson