- Life is not measured
by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath
away. -
If you would like to skydive, there is no safer way than to take a tandem
skydive. And if you are only going to do it once, or are considering it as
a hobby, a tandem ride is the best introduction to the sport. If you live
in southwest Missouri, I recommend
Skydive Rolla
in Rolla, Missouri. The staff here is 100% into sharing
the joy of their sport, and making your ride the most memorable 2 miles you'll
ever take. They can be reached at (573) 299-4322. Call for current pricing
and gift certificates are available.
Chris and David
And thanks to my sister and niece for photo's and video of our landing
Exhilarated Calmness
I watched him strap on his harness and helmet, climb into the cockpit
and minutes later, a black dot falls off the wing two thousand feet above
our field. At almost the same instant, a white streak behind him flowered
out into the delicate wavering muslin of a parachute - a few gossamer yards
grasping onto air and suspending below them, with invisible threads, a human
life, and man who by stitches, cloth and cord, had made himself a god of
the sky for those immortal moments.
A day or two later, when I decided that I too must pass through the
experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of
exhilarated calmness. The thought of crawling out onto the struts and wires
hundreds of feet above the earth, and then giving up even that tenuous hold
of safety and of substance, left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with
the dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through
with fear. How tightly should one hold onto life? How loosely give it rein?
What gain was there for such a risk? I would have to pay in money for hurling
my body into space. There would be no crowd to watch and applaud my landing.
Nor was there any scientific objective to be gained. No, there was deeper
reason for wanting to jump, a desire I could not explain. It was that quality
that led me to aviation in the first place - it was a love of the air
and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It
lay beyond the descriptive words of man - where immortality is touched through
danger, where life meets death on equal plane, where man is more than man,
and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant.
-- Charles A. Lindberg
"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on
laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds-
and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of-
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along,
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue I've topped the windswept heights
with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod the high untresspassed sanctity
of space,
Put out my hand,
and touched the face of God
-Robert Vaughn
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every
experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face...You must do
the thing you think you cannot do."
Eleanor Roosevelt 1884-1962, Social Activist and Former
First Lady
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