Lessons from skydiving (2) - consequences or how mistakes can bite you in the a**

Some mistakes are simple: you make them and the consequences hit you in the face immediatly.(sometimes literally...)

With skydiving it is a bit differnt:

You have packed your parachute, you get a spot on the next plane up. All good, right? Yeah, so far...
After you checked your gear you get on the plane, take your seat( well, it´s more like you sit on the floor of an extremly small air- vehicle and get cramed into a spot between a 60- year old man who just got a coupon for a tandem- parachute- jump for his first day of retirement and a ridicilously hot girl who is diving out of that plance in a way that makes me wonder if she got more balls than I...).

During the 20minutes it takes the plane to get to the 4km altitude you think about the jump, what you got as your goals, what you need to practice(stuff like posture, different movements, etc.), where the wind is blowing from(so you do not get lost or end up on the freeway south of the airport or the military training area north from it), who is jumping in front of you, who is coming after you...

Immediatly before you exit the plane you give yourself another check, at least all the things you can see and/or reach and feel on the outside of the parachute.

Then it is time to exit... You wait your turn, get into the door on your knees (not because you can´t take the agony but because the plane is so damn small...), get into your position, take a look down to the ground to get a sense where the pilot is dropping you off, take a deep breath and push...( One thing I learned about in gynecology).

The free fall... To be honest, I can´t really describe that one...You open yourself up, the whole body belly down while you keep falling faster and faster towards the earth. You body accelerates up to 200km/h which you feel from your partly covered head, out at the tips of your fingers, down to the back of your foot, an awesome power developed of the one medium we hardly ever notice, like fish hardly notice the water they are living in, still so powerfull only a small adjustment of your body position causes an enormous change in dynamics, like suddenly you start accelerating like crazy, start spinning like a mad yo-yo...

You routinely check your altimeter, still enjoying the seemingly endless view.

Check! You reached you altitude, it´s time to pull the chute.
You start to reinforce your stable free- fall- position, with one hand you reach back to your hand- deploy, the other one executes a compensating motion to remain stable, you get a grip on the hand deploy, rip it out, get back in to stable position, start counting...

21...

22...

23...


Nothing.
That´s not right...

Nothing...
I already should have been yanked like crazy by the unfolding parachute decelerating my fall...

Nothing...
CRAP!!



I will not tell you what to do now because that was the topic of the first lessons from skydiving- post ("Have a plan...Then another one")

My point this time: Nothing wrong was done during the free- fall.
Nothing wrong was done in the plane.
Nothing wrong was done during the check before the flight.

The mistake happened a while back, one hour before, one day before or even one week before the jump.
Packing the parachute, while you or someone else(I´d like it to be someone else so I can complain for eternety about it in heaven...) were joking around with a buddy, looking at the scared faces of people about to jump out of a plane for the first time in their life thinking "Maaan, I´m way cooler than that!", twisting a little cord, making a mistake when closing the bag which carries the folded parachute...


Overall skydiving is quite a safe sport, I´m not trying to display myself as a bada** here.

But one thing is for sure: if you make a mistake at a critical point each following step will unleash a whole new group of problems and those problems...You catch my drift.


My martial arts teacher once said "Wing Tsun is basically a straight punch. Only if you make a mistake you will need all those fancy hand positions and movements."

I think this is something inherently true for a lot of things.

If you have a plan (in which you put a fair amount of time), stick with it and have mastered the basics you will basically get through whatever you you are doing.


The earlier you make a mistake (and are not man enough to take care of it, be it out of pride or embarrassment) the harder it will come back to you...
Be it cheating on your new girlfriend, hitting the big weights without a proper athletic base or trying to do a job without a base of knowledge...
Most of the time life is giving us the chance to correct a mistake wether we want to or not.

One tends to ignore small mistakes in the beginning and brushes them under the rug. Because one still can...But the longer you drag them with you, the wider the consequences spread into other parts of your life...


Making a plan, re-thinking it, repeat the step before, work diligently and one will be fine most of the time.
And the other times? Well, call it bad luck or bad karma but you better have a plan B.


Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry