For my 18th birthday I decided I wanted to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. If you have never gone skydiving you will never understand the rush of it all. I was to do a static line jump. This means I jump out of the airplane alone with a rope tied to the parachute that pulls it open.

I was the first of 4 to jump that day. The instructor opened the small door of the plane and the wind was insane.

Step 1: Climb out the door and grab on to the wing strut with 100 mph + winds making the skin on my face flap

Step 2: hang from the strut and look over at the instructor for the thumbs up as I am dangling from the wing.

Step 3: Release !

I remember my neck snapping back as the static line ripped the chute out of my pack.. then I blacked out for a few seconds… then I remember grabbing at my emergency release… I think I was in shock.. then I looked up and my chute lines were twisted- (like a kid that swung in circles on a swing) I pulled the lines apart and everything seemed ok.  After all that it was an amazing view and a great descent down, floating through the air, it was so quite and peaceful.  As I neared the ground I realized just how fast I was descending. I had a rough landing – flaring up a second too late. It was one hell of a ride.

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When I was 19 or 20 years old and in the Army I injured my foot. I needed to have a foot surgery performed. I had never been under any type of anesthesia before and I was so afraid and worried that I would wake up. I spoke with the doctor about my concerns and he reassured me and made it clear that there was NO WAY I’d wake up. He said I would most definitely be “Out” the entire time. So after a student attempted to put a huge needle in my hand (about 10 times) and my friend nearly passed out watching, they wheeled me into the operating room. I fell asleep like he promised. Then I WOKE UP – WIDE AWAKE – in a drugged up type of state. I was chit-chatting away and tried to sit-up too. A man standing above me held me down so I would not do that. I asked him what the doctor was doing (and I also remember hearing music playing in the background and feeling really strange things being done to my foot). The other nurse told me the doctor was painting my toe nails. I kept chatting away as the doctor actually cut my big toe in half, then realigned it, fixed some things up and put a titanium screw in to hold it together. The sounds were quite memorable. I spoke with the doctor later and he said that has NEVER happened, and that I kept talking and talking and talking and wouldn’t stop. He said that I with my weight and size, the amount of meds they gave me to “Put me out” should have worked but that I metabolized it so quickly it wore off.

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