The sign on the wall said, “Why gamble with your money, when you can gamble with your life?” At first it seemed a bit absurd to me, but then again I was in Vegas, a few hundred dollars in the hole. At 3 a.m., standing on the floor of the Venetian Hotel, what once was a crazy idea that I had shrugged off several times before suddenly started to seem a lot more plausible. I had another drink at the bar, lost a few more bucks on the slots and went upstairs to my room to get some sleep. While I tried to sleep, I kept thinking about the words on the sign and wondering whether or not I had the guts. “Maybe,” I thought. By the end of the next afternoon, however, I had committed myself to a lifestyle change. I was no longer “maybe” Matt. I was going to go skydiving; the driver for SKYDIVE Las Vegas would pick me up the next morning.
At around 8 a.m. I jumped into the van to drive out to an airstrip about 30 miles outside of Vegas in a small town called Boulder City. (A nice name?I imagined slamming into the rocks at 100 mph.) The drive took about half an hour and while I would have liked to have sat back and watched the road, there was no time for that. The driver popped in a video and a strange face appeared on the screen. “Hi,” it said, “and welcome to SKYDIVE Las Vegas. Before you have the thrill of your life there are some important questions you need to answer and some forms that you must sign.” Now normally this part would not have bothered me, except for the fact that the guy on the video looked like a member of the Branch Davidians and spoke in such a monotone voice that I wondered if he had sniffed glue before they filmed it. The video lasted about 20 minutes and stated that if any mishap were to occur during my dive, even an act of God interrupting the jump, I would have no right whatsoever to sue the fine people of SKYDIVE Las Vegas. By then, I was scared shitless.
Soon after the video ended, I arrived at the jump center and hopped out of the van. I met the tandem-dive instructor, who would be jumping with me that day and had a brief lesson on the “banana position” which is the curved-body, arms-extended thing that you do when you jump out of the plane. Then I was ready to jump. Tandem sky diving is the type of skydiving where an instructor is strapped to your back for your jump and handles the important things, such as steering and, most importantly, pulling the rip cord.
While the training seemed frighteningly short, I was ready. The plane took off from the runway, and I don’t recall the ride up much except for noticing that there seemed to be a lot of duct tape holding the plane together. Fortunately the loud drone of the engine distracted me from any thoughts of my own mortality. Finally, we leveled off and I was ready to jump. I was strapped in, and as my jump instructor pushed me towards the door of the plane I realized that there was no turning back. I took a deep breath, bent my head and jumped. Whoosh?the air hit my face with such speed that it took my breath away for a second, but I wasn’t really thinking about that much as I quickly realized I was plummeting towards the earth at 120 mph. The feeling of skydiving is not at all like falling; it feels like you are flying. While most of the jump is spent floating after the cord is pulled and the parachute opens up, the initial freefall is the most exciting part. The wind rushed up in my face during my freefall as I floated and dived; it was the most exhilarating experience of my life. When the parachute opened, I was disappointed that the freefall was over, even though I was obviously glad that the parachute had indeed opened. As we glided to the ground and I looked down upon the beautiful, open desert, I felt a sense of accomplishment. The rest of the trip down went according to plan and we touched down on the ground: mission accomplished.
That night back at the casino, as I rolled the dice on the craps table and actually won a few bucks for a change, I looked up at the wall and saw the same sign I had seen just 48 hours before. I smiled. Been there done that, I thought to myself. Now it’s your turn!
