In case I die…

Don’t touch my stuff. It’s booby trapped.

I’m kidding. Nothing is booby trapped, and I hope those in charge of taking care of my estate will give it to those who need it.

I will be skydiving tomorrow morning. Yes, I will be resisting a natural urge bred for millions of years and firmly ingrained into our very nature, and jumping out of a plane perfectly capable of landing safely on its own.

The truth is that I was running a much higher risk driving down to Corvallis than I will be tomorrow morning. It will essentially be a static line dive; as soon as I jump the chute gets pulled, so my time in freefall is in the milliseconds. I will have a reserve chute in case something goes wrong. I will have had hours of training. There will be a radio in my helmet with a guy on the ground giving me very explicit instructions the whole way down. If the radio fails he will have very large signs. The jumpmaster has had thousands of jumps. The scariest part was probably signing the waiver where it says “I understand that I will be jumping out of an airplane, which can be dangerous and kill or injure you.”

But my gut doesn’t care what the truth is, and my brain is still wondering what compelled me to decide to jump out of a plane. Tomorrow I plan to have fun and be safe. I just hope that by tomorrow afternoon I’m still having fun and being safe.

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