Skydiving

Another nonagenarian celebrated his birthday by skydiving from an airplane. He was a young one, at 95. I remember a granny in Australia did a skydive at age 100 in 2015. Those oldies are usually harnessed to a younger skydiver in a tandem jump and basically take a ride. They don't dive independently or pull a rip cord. Still, what a daring thing to do at that age. One would think a heart attack or, joint injury broken bone might be the norm, but the oldies almost always are unhurt and joyful to take skydiving off their bucket list. They must have great genes.

I read that over half a million people of all ages skydive each year. I did it long ago but have no desire at my age to do that again. As for safety issues, skydiving is not overly dangerous. The average number of fatalities to skydivers in the U.S. each year is only 25. Statistics say that skydiving is about as risky as driving an automobile. That's an improvement. I remember when I did some skydiving, long ago, a woman who made her first jump died when her line chute did not open and she failed to pull the cord on the emergency. I'm glad that I didn't see that. I was told she bounced skyward on impact. Had I seen that it would be have been enough to make me stop doing it.

I am not sure why people. Everyone seems to have a a singular reason. But I remember that what was attractive to me was the quiet I experienced in the float to the landing spot. There is absolutely no sound 10,000 feet above the earth., and it's weird. The first impression I had experiencing that was that it reminded me how much noise our earth has down below. I guess a person 90 years old can't hear well anywhere, so the silence might not be special to that one.

So if skydiving is on your bucket list here are some death probability stats that will embolden you to put on your parachute.  Skydivers have a 1 in 101,083 chance of death from a jump. Boxers have a 1 in 2,200, scuba divers 1 in 34,400, motorbike riding 1 in 1,000, canoeing 1 in 10,000, mountain hiking 1 in 15,700, and mountain climbing 1 in 1,750. But before you jump I have one request. Can you add me to your will before you do it?