Flying the Friendly Skies

Megan in FreeFall

Fiancée has some quirks.

One of her quirks is that she loves being surprised.  You may lazily yawn and say that you enjoy a good surprise, too.  But that is not at all what I'm talking about.  I mean that she LOVES it.

Think last-day-of-school-summer's-here-now kind of excited.

Think winning a billion dollar lottery kind of excited.

Think the-kids-are-gone-for-the-weekend kind of excited.

If you're female, think bubble bath, a glass of wine, and no one yelling, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy," kind of excited.

If you're a guy, think kids are being quiet, she's shriveling in the bath, and I'm not in trouble for something that I don't really understand kind of greatness.

She gets like a little kid.

Not kidding.

Needless to say, I noticed this pretty early on in our relationship, and, to my credit, I have created some cool surprises for her.

Redfish in Venice, Louisiana

Once, I took her fishing in Venice, Louisiana.  She had no idea where we were going, much less the reason for the trip.  We were at the end of the continental United States, right before one disappears into the Gulf of Mexico, and she still didn't quite know what we were doing all the way down there.  She didn't do very well at guessing that surprise, but she caught plenty of redfish and speckled trout that day.  She was excited.

So, keeping with the tradition of random surprises, I found a skydive place and booked a reservation for her.  Unbeknownst to her, of course.  Then I told her the date and said that that day was all mine because she had a surprise coming.  I even handled the child-care issues.

She says that I'm amazing.

Who am I to question insight when it's so perceptive?

Before I go further, you need to know that I knew that she loved to fish, so the fishing trip really was for her.  I also knew that skydiving was a bucket-list item for her; I didn't force it upon her.

As if one could force her to do anything.  She's not really the forcible type.  But, as usual, I understate the case.  If you think that a mule is stubborn, then ... well, you get the idea.

As we got to the end of the road on the way to the airstrip, it looked as if we were just going down a poorly maintained road en route to a cow pasture.  She figured that I had arranged a horseback riding expedition.

Even when she saw a fellow repacking a parachute and a couple of planes parked on the tarmac, she
still didn't quite understand that this was a skydiving outfitter.

But she was pretty damn excited when she had it all sussed out.

Mission Accomplished.

And all of this without yet getting out of the bus.  Hooray for me!

So, we opened the door and descended into the pasture.  As I was holding the door for her (as a gentleman should do for his princess) I heard a metal pinging sound.  Then the door suddenly lurched in my hand.  I suddenly (and with no small degree of terror) realized that the door was twisting on its middle hinge!

Luckily, I caught it and didn't allow it to twist off.  On the other hand, I was stuck holding a door about to fall off completely.

Turns out that the metal ping I heard was the top hinge pin falling out and hitting the bus steps.  We managed to find it and get it back into place.

The bottom hinge, however, wasn't missing its pin; it was sheared off.  Yes, the bottom hinge was in two pieces, and, therefore, unfixable.

Fiancée happily pointed out to me that we'd now had five trips in the bus and we've had five mishaps.  It all seemed symmetrical to her; perhaps that's why she was so happy about it.

Sometimes women are hard to figure.

She then happily bounced off to the skydiving office to sign her life away in preparation for being tossed out of an airplane.  "Oh ho," I thought, "things are looking up.  Someone is going to throw her out of an airplane today."

I was beginning to think that Freud might have a few things to say about my idea regarding this skydiving thing.

I also thought, "serves her right.  Heh, heh, heh."

Sometimes the word freefall has quite a nice ring to it, wouldn't you agree?

Turns out that signing her life away isn't really an exaggeration.  The contract she had to sign and initial in about a zillion places was 20 pages long, and every page mentioned in bold print that she would likely die as a result of this jump.  If, on the short-odds chance that she plummeted to her death, it wasn't their fault.  Therefore, no one could sue them.

Crap.  They were already figuring ways to separate me from my hard-earned settlement money.  I would have thought that her splattered corpse would be worth at least a few happy meals.  Maybe even a lobster dinner.  With bisque.  I really like lobster bisque.

Instead, I was dealing with our horse of a dog (sometimes referred to as Dutch the Wonder Dog) and a door falling off of our bus.  But at least she was happy.  That's all that counts.

Later on when she was skipping off to the plane, she said, and I quote directly, "If something happens to me, marry up."

"Yeah, don't worry about that," I thought.  Heh, heh, heh.

But I said, "Oh honey, as if that could even be possible."  Then I flashed my 100 watt smile.  Gotta keep things moving forward, n'est–ce pas?

Then she got on a small cramped airplane and snuggled up against a handsome, fit, six foot, four inch dude with a charming accent.  Oi vey.

In the Plane: Happy

In the Plane: Scared

Prolly gonna fly non-stop to a landing strip a long, long way from here.  Just my luck.

Still, it wasn't all bad news: I still had an unruly dog and a bus with a bad hinge.

Jokes on him, though, because she was babbling on about something to do with the effects of giving birth and the physics of a short urethra.  I didn't really understand it all, but I did figure out that it had something to do with peeing on the handsome foreigner.

I kind of liked that part.  Heh, heh, heh.  Jerk.




FreeFall Begins

As luck would have it, she made it back to earth safe and sound.  Prolly just as well, because she, in her pre-mortem haze, signed away my right to profit from a parachute malfunction.  C'est la vie.

To the cynics out there: I have jumped several times before.  Twice without the tandem deal.  I pulled my own 'chute and flew myself to the ground those two times.  I didn't go this time because I didn't want to.  Plus, I'm a few pounds over the weight limit.  Not sure which was the more important factor there.

But, shut up about it, ok?

Happily trudging on terra firma,

TheCurmudgeon

p.s. The guys at Texas Skydive in Madisonville, TX were great.  They were professional and a lot of fun all at the same time: not always easy to do.  The edited a video of her experience and gave us copies.  In addition, they posted Megan's video on their YouTube channel.

Check out Megan's Skydiving Video