It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s Skydive Las Vegas (NASCAR.com)
February 26, 2010
No. Absolutely not. No way, no how. Not going to happen. Never. Not in a million years.
Jump out of a perfectly good airplane, as if there were such a thing? Uhhhhhhhhhhhh … let's put this as delicately as possible: you've got to be out of your ever-lovin' mind. When it comes to sane ways of having fun, there are a lot of options that come to mind before skydiving.
Like jumping into a pool of hungry piranha, for instance. Yeah, that would do the trick. That's bound to be better than skydiving. Way better.
Yet for 8,000 people or so a year at Skydive Las Vegas, that's exactly what they do. Based at Boulder City Airport, they willingly allow complete strangers to fly them to 15,000 feet above sea level. That's one thing, but then they … well … jump. Out of the plane. Intentionally.
Crazy, just plain crazy.
Brent Buckner, the manager at Skydive Las Vegas, has made approximately 4,000 jumps. If that seems like a lot, his chief instructor, Mike Burgess, has nearly 14,000 jumps to his credit. The company specializes in what's called tandem jumping, where customers are literally strapped to an instructor as they hurtle out the door of the aircraft.
What's more, they're 15,000 feet above sea level when they take the plunge. Considering that the area is a couple of hundred feet above sea level, that's maybe 13,000 feet above the ground. Two miles up … and they jump.
"Most people are anxious when they come in here," Buckner began. "They're a little bit frightened, which is, I guess, part of the fun. It's the same reason people go to scary movies. We try to instill confidence in what we're doing—our staff, the training, the equipment.
"This is what we do as a profession. It's not something we take light-heartedly. It's something we take very, very seriously. We've never had a tandem or student fatality in 17 years out here."
Incredibly, Buckner says that it's rare for someone to back out once they've made the commitment to jump. One of the only ones Buckner could remember was ready to rock and roll and do this thing, gung-ho and macho. You know the type.
Once the plane left the runway, however, Rambo got cold feet.
"Every thousand feet we climbed in that airplane, he got more and more scared," Bucker remembered. "We were strapped up, ready to go. We were [supposed to be] third out of the airplane, and when that first one disappeared out the door, he proceeded to yell and scream, 'No way … no blankin' way!!!' He did not jump. He changed his mind."
So what, exactly, is the allure of leaping out of a perfectly good airplane? Buckner begins to answer the question, but what he says isn't exactly comforting.
"There's no perfect airplane," he joked.
Then, he turns very nearly poetic.
"It's truly flying," Bucker continued. "It's a feeling of exhilaration that's hard to describe. … From that altitude, you can see as far as the eye can see. You can see all the way through the Las Vegas Valley.
"Going the other direction, you have a bird's-eye shot of the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and the Colorado River runs right through here. It's a spectacular sight. It's really beautiful. It's a view you don't get many other places."
After egress, there's a free-fall of 45 to 60 seconds before the parachute opens. In all, it's five to eight minutes to the ground. Amazing, simply amazing.
"Tandem skydiving is the way to go, especially for people who aren't quite sure about it," Buckner concluded. "It has opened skydiving up to people that never, ever would've considered skydiving before because they don't have to do it on their own.
"People should realize something, too. If you're not scared, something's wrong. It's perfectly normal to come in and be nervous. Upwards of 99 percent of the time, people say that they were scared up until they jumped out. Once they jumped out the door with the instructor, all the fear went away and they were skydiving."
