Somebody Dies Here Every Year

Be Warned. The following story is not the usual sort of thing I write. It concerns the sudden and violent death of a skydiver. I wrote the first version of this story while hiding in my tent shortly after it happened. I  was trying to excise the sound of someones death from my memory and thought that putting the story to paper would help. It didn't. Read at your own risk.





Somebody Dies Here Every Year


The World Free Fall Convention. 10 Days of pandemonium and partying. Several thousand type A personalities, live bands, free beer, and an endless parade of every kind of aircraft you could imagine to jump out of. Skydiver heaven. And for those 10 days, it's one of the most dangerous places on earth. 


Somebody dies here every year. At a boogie this big it's difficult to maintain control and enforce safety rules because of the anonymity when someone does something they shouldn't. People will do things here they never would have been allowed to do at their home drop zone. They'll get on a formation far larger than anything they've been on before, demo a canopy much smaller than anything they've flown before, or attempt a high performance landing far above their skill level. At home, with the instructors and coaches who are familiar with your abilities, doing something stupid will at the very least result in a scolding, and if the offence is serious enough, you could be grounded. But here nobody knows who you are, or what you can't, or shouldn't, be doing. The causes of the fatalities here vary, but a common thread running through many of them is a mistake, sometimes several mistakes, that lead to your canopy getting away from you, ending in sudden impact with the ground, and death. It's usually anonymous, it's not someone you know, someone you would call a friend. It's silent, we often don't hear about it until hours after it has happened. The place is huge, a major airport with airplanes often on simultaneous jump runs hundreds of yards apart. With so much going on someone can go missing for hours until their absence is noted, or somebody sees a canopy lying half concealed in a corn field. We make jokes about it. "It's the bounce that kills you, so grab as much dirt as you can when you hit and hang on! Aim for something soft! Pick out somebody who's always pissed you off and aim for them!" Gallows humour.



But it's not always silent, distant, and anonymous.



We were in Load Organizer Tent 3 finishing up packing our gear after our first jump of the day. It was always the same group of people, we'd book all the seats on Mike Mullins King Air for the Dirty Bird load. We didn't want to be on the Early Bird load because as the first load of the day they often got a bad spot and had to walk back. Other people had arrived putting about 25 people in the open sided tent all talking in loud excited voices as we went over the last jump and started to plan the next. We were expecting to do 8-10 jumps before sunset, a typical day for us at the Convention. There was a pair of port-a-potties parked just outside the tent on the landing field side, and as we talked I was vaguely aware that a large pickup with a holding tank in the back had pulled up to perform the morning ritual of pumping them out.



I was on my knees, almost done packing, my pilot chute bundled in my hand ready to be stowed in its pouch, talking over my shoulder to Mathew Greene. Matt2 is an emergency room trauma nurse from Texas, a friend of long standing from previous conventions and skills camps.



Suddenly, with no warning, there was a huge bang that sounded like a high speed car collision and it seemed I could feel a shock wave pass over me. At the same intstant the engine on the idling truck stopped. I turned my head, looked past Matt, and tried to make sense out of what I saw. Someone was draped unmoving across the badly dented hood of the truck, suspension lines from a canopy dropping onto him, and the truck's front bumper was lying on the ground.



I couldn't process the scene in front of me. It made no sense. My first thought was that he was walking past the truck when the engine blew up, and that had somehow forced his canopy out of the container. It couldn't be a skydiving accident, not here, not right next to us, just outside the tent that we called home for ten days every summer. Accidents happened out in a field, off the end of a runway, silently, anonymously.



I found out later he had been flying downwind over top of our tent and had attempted a high performance landing, executing a 180 degree turn to dive and accelerate his canopy to enable it to swoop along at high speed with the pilot just skimming the ground. But he'd miscalculated, and was too low to complete the manoeuvre. Instead of skimming the ground he slammed into it a steep angle and hit the front of the truck a split second later. The impact was hard enough to stall the engine on the truck, and tear off the bumper.

Matt2 took two steps, placed two fingers on the guys neck as he checked for a pulse, and started pointing at people with his other hand as he firmly and calmly began to reel off commands. "You, run to manifest and tell them to call 911! You, run to the Air Boss and tell him there's been an accident! You, run to the end of the landing area and see if the ambulance station has been manned yet! You, ……."

Matt Dowling, Matt1, was a few steps away, cell phone out, already talking to the 911 operator. "We need a medevac flight now at the Rantoul airport to pick up someone who's been in a serious skydiving accident, paramedics are already on scene!"



The ambulance pulled up while Matt2 was still checking for vital signs, they had just pulled into their parking spot 50 yards away and had seen the accident happen. As the driver stepped out Matt2 looked up at him and said "He has no airway, I have to move his head and straighten his neck." The driver nodded and reached back into the ambulance for a cervical collar. Matt lifted his head, the driver reached in to slide the collar into place, saw the side of his head that had struck the truck, stopped, shared a look with Matt, and Matt slowly, carefully, put the guy's head back down on the hood of the truck. As Matt took a step back, his shoulders slumped, and his arms dropped limp to his sides. The driver turned to us and said in a shaky voice "Everybody please clear the tent, we're going to need this area."



Into his phone Matt1 simply said "Cancel the helicopter, he's dead." And snapped it shut.



There was a moment of quiet as everybody tried to process and absorb what had just happened, and then they slowly began to move, to gather up their possessions'.



I was still on my knees, my pilot chute in my hand, ready to be stowed.



And somebody I'd never met, who left behind a wife and 2 kids, was lying dead on the hood of a truck 15 feet away.



The rest of the day passed in a fog. We were put on a weather hold right then, a light rain had begun, and I fled to spend the next few hours hiding in my tent. I couldn't get that sound out of my mind. I had imagined many times what would happen when somebody went in, what would happen at impact, what the sound would be like. It never sounded like that when I imagined it. It was never personal, immediate, or nearby.



People who hadn't been there kept talking about the accident, how the truck shouldn't have been there, as if that would have prevented his death. To me, he was as good as dead when he started that turn. If the truck hadn't been there he'd have died when he hit the outhouses. If the outhouses hadn't been there, he would have gone hurtling through the tent, and it would have been impossible for him to get through that tent without hitting several people, causing serious and potentially fatal injuries to them.



Late in the afternoon a bunch of us met and decided to head into a nearby city for dinner and a movie. There was Matt1 and Matt2, Kelly, Bob, and me. I looked around the table in the restaurant, at the smiles on everybody's faces, listened to the jokes and the laughter, and wondered what the rest of them were thinking. Nobody mentioned the accident but I couldn't get that sound out of my head, and my meal tasted like paper Mache. It was surreal. A man had died, and we were carrying on like it had never happened, like it had nothing to do with us.



The movie we saw was Pirates of the Caribbean 2, but I have no idea what happened on the screen, instead I found myself wondering about that new widow, and the kids who'd lost their dad. I wondered what they'd been told, how they were coping.



By the time we returned to the airport an enormous storm had gone through and trashed the place. We pulled our sopping wet clothes from the wrecks of our tents and fled to a motel.



That day was finally over, but that sound is with me still.



Somebody dies here every year.

"If we build it, they will come" So said Baseomatic

Still flush with adrenaline after helping to set a new Canadian record for the Largest Formation Skydive (59), I sent this out to all the participants on my return

"If we build it, they will come" So said Baseomatic
They built it, we came, and a whole bunch of type A personalities who
normally all want to head off in their own direction, all went to the same
place, at the same time, and a new record was set. Thanks to everyone for
letting me take part. A special thanks to Bruce for putting my name forward,
to Guy for showing me how, and to Christian for some fine tuning that helped
me pull it off.
Some thoughts and observations:
1 TK is one BIG sonofabitch!
2 I actually can dive like hell, and fly like fuck!
3 Dianne will do anything for beer. I have video if anybody wants proof.
4 Garth never misses a line or a snappy comeback.
5 Being sober doesn't help. I still can't sing.
6 Rhonda may or may not be crazy, I'm hardly one to judge. It's not
important. She's a great skydiver, a lot of fun, and is probably only a
danger to herself.
7 Sherry is a pyromaniac - she doesn't just light fires, she sets them.
8 Shelly has a very nice pussy
9 It's easy to navigate to a place that serves alcohol, but not always easy
to navigate back. Turn left at the next right.
10 It's true - Guy Wright can herd cats.
11 To quote Ross "I know the coolest people on the planet"
I've attached a photo of the formation from a somewhat different angle, and
leave you with one question: 80-way anyone?
Crazy Larry, C-3082, Proud Member of Team Canada 2006

Ya didn't miss much

Ahhh, Gan on the Victoria Day weekend.
The sound of turbines, the smell of jet fuel.
The wind blowing the windsock straight out,
The sound of hail hitting the roof during the dirt dive.
The snow coming at you like some sort of bizarre Star Wars special effect as
you track away.
The rain.
And more rain.
And yet more rain.
Followed with more snow.
How bad was it?
Hop and Pops out of an Otter at cloud base - 2.5 - bad.
I brought my parka and winter boots bad. And was glad I did.
The most popular souvenir was a Gan neck warmer.
I don't jump when it's that cold in October, why did I do it in May?
My body temperature is only now returning to normal.
Thank God it's over. Larry

Do not leave this where your Tandem Passengers might see it

This is the original version of an article I wrote for CanPara magazine. I sent it in to the editor who returned it to me saying that she liked the article but it needed to be cut down to half it's size. I complied so she could publish it, but I like the long version better.

Printed without permission 

                                                       WARNING:

 DO NOT LEAVE THIS WHERE YOUR TANDEM PASSENGERS MIGHT SEE IT.                                                                                       

                      THEY WILL PROBABLY RUN AWAY AND HIDE

                                                       TanDamNation

                                                       By Crazy Larry

Imagine this: a buddy comes to you and offers you a job skydiving. A REAL job skydiving. You jump, you get paid. The Holy Grail of the sport. One catch. Well, two catches. Ya gotta depart the aircraft with an intentional malfunction (pilot chute in tow), and with someone who has never done a jump before strapped to your chest as a wild card... Did I mention having twice as many handles as you’re used to, creating an exponential increase in the complexity of the decision making process in case of an emergency? If this sounds like fun to you, then you too should consider becoming a Tandem Instructor!

In the spring of 2004 Dave Thistle started Adrenaline Tandem, and brought it to Mile High Parachuting in Arnprior Ontario, just west of Ottawa. He started with three Tandem Instructors:  Trevor Fitzpatrick, Jeff Dean and Dave himself. The business quickly grew, and with Dave volunteering for a tour in a certain middle eastern vacation spot in the summer of 2006, new Instructors were required.

After some negotiation, and juggling of schedules, Mario Prevost agreed to come to Arnprior for an extended weekend to teach a Tandem Instructor course.

This is where Gerry Cluett, Ross Redman, Buck Whalley, and I, come in.

On a gorgeous late April morning, the four candidates, Mario, and Jeff  Dean as Mario’s assistant, met at Mile High to start the training. We all approached it with vastly different ideas of what it would be like, and this showed in the stress levels experienced by the candidates during the course. The morning started with Mario explaining a general overview of the gear, and going through the paperwork. All the candidates having thoroughly familiarized themselves with the Tandem gear beforehand, the paperwork turned out to be more complicated than the gear.

Surprisingly quickly, Mario pronounces us ready to go up and do a solo jump with Tandem rigs. This is when the reality of what we had gotten into started to sink in. It was the quietest ride to altitude I have ever been on. Buck wasn’t worried; he had done several jumps with Tandem rigs as part of his work with various companies within the industry. Ross and I were very stressed, this being the first time we’d have to deal with all those handles and potential decisions if things went badly. I think Gerry fell asleep, displaying a level of comfort with the whole concept that he demonstrated throughout the course, and continues to this very day with paying passengers.

 On my jump, the launch went ok, and I got the drogue out in good time, but that's when the plan ran into some problems. As soon as the drogue was out I seemed to pitch forward to about a 45 degree angle, and start potato chipping like crazy. Everything I did to try and get it back under control just seemed to make it worse. I finally gave up and went on to do my handles check. That’s when the problems really started. None of the handles were where I left them. After repeatedly groping most of my gear and some parts of myself, I finally found them all, but I really didn't want to let go of any of them to look for the others. When I eventually remembered to check my altitude I was shocked to discover I was just passing through 7500 feet. I was positive I had already blown through my deployment altitude and was about to either get a planet stuffed up my ass or experience my first reserve ride when the Cypress fired. Deciding to run through another handles check, I reached down for my secondary drogue release handle with my right hand while still looking at my altimeter.

That's when it really went straight to f...... heck.

For the next 15 seconds I frantically grabbed my butt while watching the altitude unwind. Panic began to set in and I was about to give up and start  pulling any handles I could find, in no particular order, when I finally found the handle and released the main. I now have a new definition of the term "snivel". Take a 390 square foot canopy, hang 180 pounds underneath it, and it sure doesn't open with the alacrity of my Stiletto. Eventually, finally, reluctantly, the Damn Thing opened. The toggles were where they were supposed to be, the first thing that went according to plan on this skydive, and my heart rate began to return to normal. In the end, I landed fine, only missing the landing area by about a hundred yards. It took a while to calm down, I was bingin' off the walls when I dragged all that gear back in to the packing area, and I started to think I just might live after all.

Tell me again how much fun I'm having. We haven’t even got to the complication of a passenger yet.

After we get packed, Mario ran us through a thorough debrief, and then began getting us ready to do a jump as passengers. I go up with Mario, and  Buck goes up with Jeff.  You might expect that as experienced jumpers, we would be unhappy being strapped to someone else’s chest and not wearing a parachute. But in fact, we see it as just being along for the ride, and are quite happy not having to deal with all those pesky handles.

It was very instructive doing a jump with someone as experienced and professional as Mario, and I learn why he uses the term “Student” instead of passenger, and Tandem Instructor instead of Tandem Master.  As soon as the canopy is open, he hands over a set of toggles, has me find the airport, and begins teaching canopy control. A steady stream of coaching follows, and the potential of Tandems as a training tool was quickly made clear. We slide in to a landing right in the middle of the landing area. Maybe this course won’t be so bad after all. The day ends around 7:00 and we head off for dinner, making it an early night to prepare for the next day.

The next morning we start bright and early, getting ready for our first jumps carrying passengers. Mario takes us out behind the classroom one at a time to test us on emergency procedures. If you get the chance you should look at the emergency procedures flowchart for Tandem gear. With sport gear, you throw your pilot chute, and if it doesn’t result in a functioning parachute, you look reach pull, look reach pull. For tandems, the flow chart covering what to do when things don’t go according to plan covers TWO PAGES and looks like a wiring diagram for an Ipod! It seems to be mostly concerned with entanglements with the Drogue or the Drogue Bridle, and the eleven different options you have depending on exactly how you are entangled. Like I’m gonna be able to tell? No matter what the problem, once you work your way through the chart, all the paths seem to end with “Pull Your Reserve Handle”. It also includes instructions such as “Right arm incapacitated due to Student interference or dislocation – Bite or hit student to free right hand”. Aha! Finally! After all these years and all these skydives, a potential use for that hook knife I’ve been carrying around! Self defense! No stress here!

Mario’s approach is to keep running us through the scenarios again and again, until we start to get complacent, and then sneak up behind us to grab and yank at us, spinning us around and shouting in our ears until we start making mistakes, When we get too frazzled, he lets us calm down for a minute before starting all over again. Ross had the toughest time with this drill. He was at least as nervous as any of us, and hadn’t had a thing to eat all day. After he had made several mistakes in a row, Mario called a break, and Ross gave some serious thought to dropping out of the course. After he caught his breath, got something to eat, and screwed his head back on straight, Ross returned and aced the test.

For our first jump as Instructors, we took turns being each others passengers. Ross showed far more confidence in me as my passenger than I felt as his Instructor. I have to wonder what Mario was thinking, pairing the two hyper guys on the course together.

After another very quiet ride to altitude, and with the two of us cooperating surprisingly well together, we managed to manhandle ourselves out the door. The freefall portion of the dive went ok, except for Ross and I both trying to stop the potato chipping which resulted in making it so bad I had trouble reaching around to feel for handles. Again.

Mario had come along as an observer, and as a backup in case neither one of us could find a drogue release handle. That proved unnecessary as I was able to deploy the main at the assigned altitude, using the assigned handle.

That’s when the shouting started. Ross and I were both pumped with adrenaline, wearing frappe hats, with a good wind moving past our heads, so neither one of us could understand what the other one was saying until it had been repeated several times, becoming progressively louder each time. I released the brakes, gave Ross the toggles, and started trying to stow the drogue release handle while shouting canopy control instructions. He chose to ignore my advice, shouting back something about me forgetting to put on water gear and him not wanting to go any further out over the reservoir. After spending a couple of minutes waving the handle and cable around and accomplishing absolutely nothing, with the two of us shouting contradictory and completely useless advice at each other, I finally reach forward and shout at Ross to take the handle so I could get on with releasing the two hip attachment points. It didn’t take too long to get them unhooked and slackened off, but I spent a couple thousand feet trying to find the places to reattach them. They were about a foot further up my back than they were when I practiced this on the ground. Once they were finally reattached, Ross, his ears having popped and his hearing now restored, tilted his head back, and in a very quiet voice asked why I was shouting at him. Finally feeling as if I had things more or less under control, we started to set up for our landing approach. Once again I chose to use my private landing area well to the east of where everybody else was landing. Completely forgetting to give my passenger any instructions to prepare for landing, I started the flare about twenty feet too high, and when I tried to let the toggles back up, Ross held them down shouting about even first jump students not being that stupid. We tumbled to a stop in the tall grass, pinning each other down in a tangled mess of limbs, straps, strings, and nylon, giggling like schoolgirls. When we finally made it to our feet, Ross clapped me on the shoulders and said “To steal a line from a movie, We Jumped, We Lived, Good Start!”  And just to make clear that none of our antics had escaped attention, after we got back to the packing area Neil wandered over and inquired nonchalantly as to what all the shouting had been about.

Things continued on for another day and a half, equal parts drama, thriller, action-adventure, comedy and farce. But it sure wasn’t boring.

For his first jump, Ross had Jeff as a passenger, and Mario as an observer. Everything went fine until it was time to release the drogue. When Ross had some trouble finding the handle, Jeff and Mario both went in for it as well. Piecing the conflicting stories together later, it appears they all got there at about the same time, they all at least touched the handle, and they all figured somebody else had it, so they all let go, resulting of course in a lost handle.

Buck was geared up and ready to go for one jump about a half hour before anybody else, and spent the time quietly sitting on the steps to the gear room, outwardly calm, but inwardly slowly becoming more and more, shall we say, tense? We finally boarded the plane and taxied around the airport, eventually reaching the active runway, only to stop and wait. And wait. And wait. We started to look around, first at each other, and then our heads began bobbing and weaving like a bunch of gooney birds as we tried to see around each other and look out the windows for traffic. Finally reaching his limit, Buck, in a rather forceful manner, demanded to know what the holdup was. (More Shouting!) Warren replied that his headset wasn’t working, and Buck suggested, again in a somewhat forceful manner, that all we were doing was burning fuel, and there wasn’t much point just sitting around waiting for it to fix itself. We quickly returned to the clubhouse to swap headsets, and with a somewhat sheepish pilot, and a much more sedate Buck, finally took off.

Towards the end of the second day we are shown a video detailing “The Tandem Side-Spin Phenomenon”. It was like watching the movie with all the fatal accidents from Drivers Ed in high school. Some of the skydives shown in this video resulted in fatalities. When it’s over we’re left sitting there looking at each other, all lost in our own thoughts. Mario asks if anybody is having any second thoughts about getting a Tandem rating, and as I look around, I imagine we are all wondering how well we would deal with one of those spins ourselves.

Finally, on the afternoon of the third day, with a total of five jumps each on the course – solo –passenger – and pilot – we’re done. And pretty much done in.

Ross and Donna invited everybody back to their farm for a post-course party and barbecue, and while normally most of us would stick around till the end of the day to try and squeeze in ”just one more jump”, we were all happy to leave those fifty pound rigs with all the handles behind in favor of cold beer and a hot-tub.

The only thing left before we could start carrying paying passengers was to do five jumps with experienced skydivers. That provided some entertainment of its own, like Oleg dragging me out of the plane as soon as the door was open with me shouting “Wait! Wait! Not yet!” Or Dave G doing his imitation of a student freaking out in freefall and twisting around with a big grin on his face to see if I got the joke.

On April 28^th I had the privilege of carrying my first paying passenger, Cathy Becker. She had done a Tandem jump the previous year, and had returned to take lessons to become a Real Skydiver. She had been at the drop zone the weekend we had taken our course, and had volunteered to be the first “real” passenger for both Ross and myself. Her trust, and feedback, was gratefully accepted. And I apologize for the landing. I hope the bruise on her ass has healed by now.

We have all long since finished off the rest of the required jumps and have been set loose on an unsuspecting public, four new additions to TandemNation.

A very special and hard earned thank-you goes out to Jeff Dean for his work in organizing the course, for being our guinea pig on many jumps, and for gently guiding us as we continue to learn, and grow into our new roles.

When people found out that we had signed up to become Tandem Instructors, their reactions ranged from “I already know plenty of people who want to kill me”, to “Every time you jump you get the chance to introduce people to something you are passionate about.”  We all had different motivations, it may have been the challenge of learning a new skill, earning a “free” jump, the prospect of gaining more respect from our peers, or maybe just to look like a hero and meet girls.

The way I see it: I’ve got the best part-time job on the planet. I jump, I get paid. (And I don’t have to pack!)

Closing Note: Shortly before we did our jump, Cathy Becker was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She has since undergone surgery, many months of Radiation treatment, and Chemotherapy. Her attitude remains positive, and she expects to return next year to continue her training, and become a licensed skydiver.