{"id":490,"date":"2011-10-29T22:08:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-30T05:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/blog\/?p=490"},"modified":"2012-05-18T13:03:39","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T20:03:39","slug":"my-love-affair-with-skydiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/my-love-affair-with-skydiving\/","title":{"rendered":"My love affair with skydiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a spring day in 1981 I made my first parachute jump\u00a0under an old military T-10: A big\u00a0round olive\u00a0green ‘chute\u00a0blossoming over my head\u00a0just seconds after letting go of the strut of a Cessna 205, 2500 feet above a snow covered Colorado wheat field.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of North London Skydiving\u00a0Centre<\/a><\/p>\n

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I was 27 years old.\u00a0 My life at that time was proving quite a challenge.\u00a0 \u00a0I was\u00a0divorced; a mother, a nursing\u00a0student.\u00a0 Money was scarce, I was working and going to school, trying to rebuild my life.\u00a0\u00a0 Jumping out of an airplane was one of the scariest thing I had ever done.\u00a0 So frightening and so exhilarating that I had to do it again.\u00a0 And again.\u00a0 And well\u00a0over a thousand times more.\u00a0 I became a certified freefall jumpmaster, then a skydiving instructor.\u00a0 I made lifelong friends and I competed in Nationals on a four-way team with Bob Russell, a man who I’ve been married to for nineteen years this November.<\/p>\n

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Two freefall jumpmasters with a student in the middle.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of North London Skydiving Centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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For more than a decade, skydiving was my passion.\u00a0 I still dream of it.\u00a0\u00a0Some of my best\u00a0friends are skydivers or\u00a0former skydivers, and once a skydiver always a skydiver, it’s like a secret society.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Skydive Arizona<\/a>, in Eloy; a skydiving resort and home of the U.S.P.A. 2011 Nationals<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of North London Skydiving Centre<\/a><\/p>\n

I haven’t made a skydive in\u00a0over a decade but I still have my gear.\u00a0 Bob just took his in to have his reserve ‘chute repacked — just in case.\u00a0 We’ve been\u00a0temporarily living in Tucson, 50 miles from one of the premier\u00a0drop zones in the\u00a0world:\u00a0 Skydive Arizona\u00a0<\/a>.\u00a0 Home of the United States Parachute Assoication National Skydiving Competition<\/a>.\u00a0 Which Bob and I competed in twenty years ago<\/strong> this month with our friends Steve and Mike.\u00a0 Yesterday we met Steve at Skydive Arizona and enjoyed a heartwarming reunion.\u00a0 Also at Eloy this year is my first jump course instructor and friend, Ellen Bakke Monsees; a world class competitor on Moxie, a winning all-female team.<\/p>\n

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Moxie: A world-call, all-female skydiving team.\u00a0 Like them on Facebook \u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

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Two of my teammates, twenty years after<\/p>\n

I gave up skydiving\u00a0a decade ago but I still dream about it.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u00a0remember how it felt to leave my cares on the ground, to live\u00a0an entire lifetime in fifty-five seconds of freefall,\u00a0 the earth far away but not forgotten and too quickly approaching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a spring day in 1981 I made my first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddsnends","tag-skydiving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}