In the Air

It's not so much like flying than tumbling groundwards with a lot of care.

When the aircraft took off from the runway it felt just like a holiday, with the same rumblerumblerumble under the wheels, the same G-force as in a Boeing 737 takeoff. Hell, it even had safety belt lights turned on. When the aircraft was in the air you could pick out certain buildings for fun, like the camp in Pasir Ris.

When they pushed open the door, it was an end to all that stoically pretending to be not afraid of the jump.

So there was a sort of a line-up and the jumpmasters pushed you out one by one saying "Go!", which means that when you're at the fore looking to the aft you saw the number of people standing between you and the door disappear unnervingly quickly. And the wind was loud and so were the deployment bags flapping in the wind.

So it goes like this:
"Go! frrfrr Go! frrrfrrr Go! frrrrrr Go!"

And then you were out. Whether you had jumped out yourself or was pushed out was not of your concern now. Your eyes are closed and you see white, because you are outside in the world of light, falling free.

And after a count of three (thousand) something tugs your shoulder gently and you look up and say oo, what a big flapping canopy.

You can see a long way off from circa 300m above ground level, all the way to the horizon and sunset. So it's a pity that your chief worry is about the direction that is downwards. The people in the drop zone look very, very small. The drop zone, fortunately however, does not look very small, so you can easily steer into it.
You can see the other jumpers too. Sometimes they get too close. You're supposed to scream at them to make them go away.

You feel that you're not going down very fast, even though you actually are. When you're close enough to the ground to make out the blades of the grass, you can see that the ground is moving very quickly upwards. When it hits you, you could fall gracefully to the side or crumple up awkwardly like an idiot, which was what I did. Crumpling up awkwardly is habit-forming as well as hazardous to your ankle, so it's something you shouldn't do.

Walking back to the hangar with friends was fun because everyone had a lot of things to say. Otherwise, it was all boring work from then on.