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Travel: A falling out between friends

What skydiving does to the human heart
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For about 20 minutes last weekend, dressed in a jumpsuit with a parachute strapped to his back, Merlin Cormier became my new best friend. It happened about 9,000 feet in the air, just below cloud canopy, when I, clipped via harness to him, shook with fear while seated at the mouth of an open airplane door. Meanwhile he, rippling with far more experience than me, calmly reassured my nerves, then coaxed them out of the plane and into the wide open sky, from which we both fell at great speeds.

Whistler Skydive has been up and running for most of the summer. Steve Smith is the owner. A long time pilot, his head shaved and eyes friendly, Smith fell in love with the dreamlike absurdity of skydiving about eight years ago.

“I did my first tandem in Switzerland,” he said, arms propped up on the patio railing of the outfit’s Pemberton airport digs. “That night in the bar, I was sitting with the instructor and my brother, and I said, ‘I have to figure out a way to do this for the rest of my life.’”

Come 2005, a business agenda began to take shape. Over the next three years, working closely with his brother, Whistler Skydive would make it from paper to reality. Asides from Cormier, with his 4,000 jumps and competitor’s stature, there’s also Kane Gray, the New Zealander with 4,500 jumps. He’s also thrown himself to the terra for competitive reasons.

While all this should be reassuring — and it is, if you let it soak in — there’s little comfort to be had when you’re about to hurl your body out of a plane. The whole concept seems so intensely inappropriate, so arrogantly unnatural. But maybe that’s the allure.

Most recently, skydiving made the news in a rather bombastic way with Michel Fourneir. The 64-year-old Frenchman planned to float from North Battleford, Saskatchewan, all the way up into the stratosphere, then jump the 130,000 feet back to earth. It was late May of this year, a Monday, but he had to postpone because of weather. The following day, he gave it another go, only to have his hot air balloon come untethered and make the stratospheric journey without him. A bummer, no doubt.

But people have jumped from the stratosphere before, no biggy. In 1960, Joe Kittinger sailed a balloon over 30 km into the air. Then, styling some fancy pressure suit, he simply jumped out, returning to earth some 14 minutes later. Undertaken by the United States Air Force, it was called Project Excelsior, and, after a failed attempt in which he passed out in 1959, Kittinger found himself earthbound at 988 km/h for 4.5 minutes before pulling the chute, all in the name of professionalism. Clearly, that is ridiculous beyond description. Imagine Kittinger trying to have a good jog later, maybe watch a movie with the wife — how completely dull and uninspiring. I bet he drank.

Whistler Skydive will not take you into the stratosphere, not propel you to alcoholism. I didn’t ask, but you can bet the insurance for that type of thing is daunting. They’ll take you up 10,500 feet, enough time for you to freefall 5,000 feet at about 200 km/h. Unless you’re certified, you have to jump tandem, and you have to be 16 to do it.

“My first time was stellar,” remembers Kane, who did it in New Zealand. “I was 17, and I pretty much shit myself.”

Like anything, first times only happen once. With many things in life, your first car or your first apartment, you have a fair idea of what to expect. But there’s no anticipating the freefall, and the process of getting there remains disturbing even with repetition.

“I’m at my most terrified getting out of the plane,” says Smith. “That’s the most unnatural part about it, the part where you’re thinking ‘I shouldn’t be out here.’”

That’s what I was thinking, despite my new best friend’s reassurances.

“Are you stoked?” he yelled into the wind.

I nodded and smiled, an utter phoney, a total fraud.

To get out of the plane, you pull your left and right feet out and just let them dangle outside, wind smashing into them at unnerving speeds. Then you dip your shoulder out, cross your arms, throw out your pelvis and put your head on your instructor’s shoulder. There was an odd moment when I seemed to be dangling in the wind, and then Cormier jumped, throwing us into a back flip as some bizarre, kinda humiliating noise burst out of my mouth.

All that fear, that bulging, paralyzing terror, immediately disappears, turns instead into intense, childish wonderment. It’s not quiet, far from it, but a deep, soothing calm takes hold as you spread your arms and feel your mind unravel in sweet, flowing ribbons. It’s easy to forget these things, but Gray had been with us, jumping solo, and he came swimming along through the sky, rolling over just underneath Cormier and I, close enough to touch and seeming to nod at me, maybe smile a bit, his face looking supernatural as the pounding wind etched odd lines throughout his features. And then he just swam away, like a magnificent fish paddling currents thousands of feet above the ground.

I was disappointed when Cormier pulled the chute. Forty-five seconds passes fast when you’re plunging towards the ground at terminal velocity, but, during that time, you get to feeling totally at ease, like a kid in a pool who, even though he needs air to live, doesn’t care if his lungs collapse. But pull the chute he did, and obviously for the better.

A gentle tug slowed our speed, set us to floating, and Cormier let me have at the canopy controls, which are just ropes hanging from either side. Pull hard to the left, and this nauseating corkscrew takes over, all the better to circle the landing strip below. Do it to the right, and the same thing happens in the opposite direction, the beauty of Mount Currie spiralling around you.

We descended safely to the grass, Cormier reminding me to put my knees and feet together and lift my legs parallel to the ground. We landed in what I imagine to be a graceful exit from a bonding freefall and meandering hang glide.

After unclipping me, he stood up and threw his hands in the air, double high five styles. But that wasn’t enough for me, for my new best friend, so I gave him a big hug and started stammering aimlessly, thanking him several times.

On the way home, hands shaking on my steering wheel and smiling foolishly, I realized my feelings towards Cormier were probably unrequited, that he probably has the same experience with all kinds of yelping twits, that our moments were nothing special. And that’s why he was my new best friend for just a short while. But what a haul we had, me and Cormier. What a haul, indeed.