Most skydivers quit. Knees, kids, mortgages, a bad cutaway, a friend who didn't make it back, or just drift. The sport will see you out one way or another, and when it does there's no exit interview. There's just a jump number that stops moving and a rig in the loft that you keep meaning to sell.
Before that happens, there's a list. Not the licence ladder. Not the disciplines. Not the rating chart. The other list. The one nobody hands you when you finish AFF (accelerated freefall, the modern student route), but everyone in the canteen has at least half-finished without realising.
Print it out. Pin it inside your gear bag. Keep a red pen handy.
Static line or AFF, doesn't matter. The first time you stand up because the canopy did it for you, that's the moment you accidentally signed up for the next ten years.
The first time the rig is yours. Also the first time you lie awake at 2am wondering if you closed the pin properly.
Cumulus at 1,500ft, manifest goes quiet. Some people leave. Some get on their one-wheelers and ride laps round the hangar. Someone in the corner is explaining aliens to anyone who'll listen. By two o'clock the day is over whether the cloud lifts or not.
The tradition is older than the licence. Pay it.
Most jumpers go their whole career without ever doing it. If you do, you'll remember it in HD for the rest of your life. The handle, the snatch, the silence after.
Spinning mal, line twist, bag lock, horseshoe, your pick. The drills will get you down. The shake arrives in the canteen ten minutes later, beer in hand. That's normal.
Wrong field, wrong direction, wrong everything. Walk back through some farmer's stubble with your canopy in a binbag and try to remember which name to apologise to manifest with.
There's a jump where the terror lifts and is replaced by something else. Quieter. That shift is the whole reason you're still here, even if you can't articulate it.
Most people will tell you that you can't. Most people are wrong. Try it.
It builds character. Your pack times also drop, because you can't be arsed to fluff anything.
Out, count, throw. It feels wrong every time and never gets less weird. Worth doing anyway, the canopy ride at altitude is medicinal.
Climb, descend, climb again. Forty minutes of confused looks under the helmet. The beer at the end of that day is the best beer of the season.
One day the door isn't a door. It's just where the air starts. You won't notice when it happens. You'll notice three jumps later, when you realise you can't remember the last exit.
Battery dies, dytter goes quiet, the beep that should have fired at break-off doesn't come. Now you're flying off the visual altimeter alone, second-guessing the dial, hand drifting closer to the handle. Pull conservatively. Always carry spare batteries from now on.
Your CI plays the freefall video on the canteen telly. He pauses at the bit you didn't realise was happening. You age four years in eight seconds.
Someone catches something. You go cold. You owe them a beer for the rest of your life. You also become the person who checks pins on strangers, forever.
You either think "that's me, eventually" or "that's never me". Both answers are correct. Both will change.
Take the slag. Be alive in the packing shed. The jump will be there next weekend. You might not be.
The last load of the day. The light goes gold, the queue dies, manifest goes quiet. Everyone left on the plane has nothing to prove and knows exactly why they're there. The whole DZ exhales together. There is no other load like it.
Neck up: red. Goggles: white. The skydiver's raccoon, immediate, ridiculous, identifying.
For a community of so-called outsiders, we can be remarkably good at making each other feel small. File it away. Be kind. Especially to the new B licence asking a daft question. Be the opposite of that prick.
Two miles through a stubble field, rig on your back, canopy slung over your shoulder. The walk is the jump now.
AAD: automatic activation device. The little electronic brain that fires your reserve if you're still in freefall too low. Most jumpers go their whole career without it firing. The ones it fires for talk about it for ten years and pay for new AADs without flinching.
Eight, ten, twelve canopies, one above the other, gold light, no wind. There is nothing else in life that looks like this.
The forecast is dogshit. Your mate didn't show. Manifest is queued forty deep. You're tired. You get out anyway, and that's the jump you remember twelve years from now, when you've quit, when the rig is in the loft, when somebody asks if you ever skydived. "Yeah," you'll say. "There was this one time."
Your tally
How many have you done?
Your progress is saved on this device only.
Closer
If you've ticked off more than fifteen of these, you've stopped being a tourist and started being one of the people who knows where the kettle is in the canteen. If you've ticked off fewer than five, good. The list is more fun ahead of you than behind.
The rig in the loft is patient. Until it isn't.
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