Michael In search of ever new, more exciting newsletter topics, your intrepid reporter Michael sometimes has to take unconventional paths. To stay at the top in the cutthroat news business, it's not enough to keep churning out the same funny stories; every now and then, you need a real blockbuster: Drumroll... Ladies and gentlemen... Three... Two... One... the bomb drops... ka-booooom!: I jumped out of an airplane from a height of 15,000 feet with a parachute. And here's how it happened: A friend at Netscape told me about the so-called tandem jumps, which are currently all the rage in the USA. You get strapped to an experienced skydiver, fly in a small plane to dizzying heights, jump out, and race towards the earth in free fall for 60 seconds before the skydiver pulls the cord and the parachute opens, allowing you to leisurely glide back to the starting point.

And so it happened: On a Saturday, we drove up to Davis near Sacramento, where "in the middle of nowhere" at the end of a road called "29a" lies a small airfield--within a 50 mile radius, there are only sugar and cornfields. We registered, attended an hour-long course on the most important safety regulations, and had to sign about 15 different documents, assuring that we would not sue the parachute company if something went wrong during the jump.

Boarding a skydiver's airplane

Then we were put into overalls, a parachutist named "Zach" introduced himself to me, and like astronauts heading to the Space Shuttle, we walked across the tarmac to a small propeller plane waiting there, which we squeezed into. The plane took a short run-up, took off, and spiraled upwards. After about 20 minutes, we reached an altitude of 15,000 feet, and it was time to go! A hatch was opened, and an icy wind rushed in, the experienced parachutists laughed their heads off when we said we were, uh, slightly unsettled.

My jumper tightened the straps that I was fastened to him with, and we hobbled forward to the hatch. I went, as we had discussed beforehand, up to the edge so that my toes slightly protruded over it, looked down--and I tell you, my dear ones: In front of me was nothing but an abyss, and down below was ... California. Meanwhile, Zach grabbed bar above the hatch with his hands, I crossed my arms over my chest, he counted "One ... Two ... Three !!!!" and I let myself tumble forward. The adrenaline rush that surged through my brain was incredible as we fell and fell and accelerated to about 120 miles per hour within a few seconds (Figure 1).

I fell forward, horizontally, with my belly towards the ground, Zach was strapped above me. Once we stabilized in free fall, he signaled to me with a "thumbs up" that I could extend my arms (Figure 2).

The cameraman, another skydiver with a video camera mounted on his helmet, had jumped right after us and was now circling around us to take some snapshots. It felt completely surreal: after the acceleration phase, you fall at a constant speed and feel completely weightless. It’s as if you’re floating in space, except you feel the wind and hear the roaring sound. This lasted for 60 seconds. The Earth slowly came closer, and I just looked around in amazement, unable to comprehend it.

During the free fall

Suddenly, there was another signal, and Zach opened the parachute, abruptly slowing us down from 120 mph to about 20 mph. It felt as if someone had yanked us upward by a string, and everything suddenly went silent. We could talk again. Zach handed me the straps of the parachute, and I got to pull them to the left and right to steer and get a sense of how the landing would go. Pulling both straps simultaneously slows you down, almost like hovering in midair.

We discussed what I needed to keep in mind for the landing: stretch my legs forward, pull the straps, and land on my rear. And that’s exactly how it went. After several minutes of gliding, we arrived safely back on Earth (Figure 4)).

I was still utterly confused, in the video that I was allowed to take home, you can see a landing Michael, the man behind the camera asks, "Mike, what do you think?" and the main character says -- ... -- nothing at all. A few seconds pause, then gesticulating wildly: "Amazing!". Don't try this at home, kids. We are trained professionals.

• More topics you might be interested in:

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	News from the Darkroom
  	New at Netscape
  	Photography Hour
  	Hawaii -- Maui