It’s easy. Just step right up here to the open door…but I’m 5,000 feet up…and jump! That’s what I imagine skydiving to be like. “Imagine” being the keyword. When I was a little kid at camp, I couldn’t bring myself to jump off the high diving board. Once at Club Med they had a “Circus School” which featured trapeze jumping. Into a net if you fell. I didn’t sign up because the net was not enough to allay my fears. But this, this tandem jumping out of a plane like Marv did, this is something seemingly so benign, that George H.W. Bush did it when he turned 90. Not Andrew H. Landorf. No way Jose. But John, well he’s so unafraid he once went parachute jumping without a tandem partner. Just so you don’t think he’s completely crazy, he did it before he had children. As John put it, “First they have you jump off a four-foot platform into a sand pit so you learn how to fall without breaking your leg.” Kinda like that stop, drop and roll thing we learned in school fire drills.

They have a large landing area, a huge circle that you are supposed to land in when you eventually hit, err, I mean reach, the ground. They allow for the wind pushing you off course by dropping a 160 lb. sandbag from the plane and seeing where it lands. They said to John, “Okay Comic Boy, you first.” Alright, they never called him Comic Boy. I added that. John had a helmet on and was connected to the plane’s radio frequency in case anything went wrong. So he jumps and voila, the chute opens. But he finds himself drifting towards some apartment buildings which, you know, would sort of hurt if you smacked into them. So he attempted to radio into the plane to ask what he should do, but apparently the signal got crossed up and what he got instead was a conversation amongst a couple townies that went something like this: Radio Frequency: So dude, what’d you do last night? Oh dude, we went to O’Learys and got hammered.” Meanwhile John, with increasing urgency was saying into his headset, “Hello, Hello?”

This, according to John, was a little unnerving, Thankfully he missed the buildings, but now found himself heading for a thicket of trees. This time, unfortunately he didn’t miss. He hit the tree and though he didn’t break any limbs, the tree couldn't make the same claim. As he untangled himself he found he still had to walk several hundred yards through the woods to a clearing, dragging his massive silk chute along the way until he found his group. Sounds like fun, right? If you want to have the same experience with the same company, you’re out of luck. They are out of business. Due to multiple violations of the safety code.

Phew, I got nervous just writing that. If you’ve ever jumped out of a plane and lived to talk about it, send us a note to either John@thennew60comic.com or Andy@the new60 comic.com and tell us all about it. That’s it, have a great weekend and if you have an urge to go up in a plane, fly Delta, they don’t allow you to jump.

Andy and John