Growing up in Brooklyn, driving back and forth to Jackson a few times a week is something you get used to. And of course it seemed on nearly every trip we’d pass the Napoleon Skydiving Center on M-50. As kids, we always said we’d do it as soon as we turned eightteen, but that didn’t happen. I never did get to take a jump there, thought I’m sure over the years I called and asked about it a half dozen times at least! Seems it always just cost to much or I just couldn’t get the time off.
Fast forward a few years to April 2007. I was working with my brother at the time and one morning I mentioned a TV show I’d seen the night before. It was Marta Empinotti BASE jumping off a bridge on the Discovery Channel. Talking about this brought up the old conversation of “we should skydiving someday” and then since my birthday was only a few months away, we decided we would do it to celebrate my 29th birthday – you know, one last crazy thing to do in my twenties!
With plenty of time research and learn about it, we’d decided to do AFF jumps as our skydive and called to book the jumps with Napoleon Skydiving Center. They had actually just closed their dropzone in Napoleon, but scheduled us to meet them at an airport in Frankenmuth, Michigan.
The morning of my 29th birthday I woke early in a nearby hotel room, dressed quickly, and made the quick drive to the local airport. Shortly after, I met my first skydiver and Instructor for the day and was told: “You’re eight hours away from jumping out of a plane two miles high and falling towards the ground at one hundred and twenty mph. If you listen to me from now til then, you’ll live.”
I listened.
Three years later, I’m a sport skydiver with 350 skydives and 1 bAse jump. I’ve jumped out of a Twin Otter, a Grand Caravan, a Caravan, a Beech 99, a CASA, a Cessna 185, a Cessna 182, a Helicopter, and a Hot Air Balloon. I’ve made jumps from as low as 330 feet to as high as 22,000 feet. I received my Coach Rating in July 2009 and I am hoping to earn my AFF Instructor Rating in 2010.
