A few weeks ago, Jeff Prosise wrote about his “thrill of a lifetime” piloting a 737 simulator. Well a buddy of mine forwarded me a link that has some of the best movies I’ve ever seen of my actual thrills of a lifetime. Jeff lives for virtual thrills, mine were real (sorry, Jeff!). I can’t believe I did jumped 72 times because it scared the living crap out of me every single time. Just watching the video nearly made me hyperventilate. Why did I do it? Because if I wanted the other great parts of the job, I had to put up with the jumping part.
After the video, it dawned on me what they showed wasn’t that bad because it’s during the day. Try doing those same combat equipment jumps at 2AM in the morning with no moon. That’ll put some fear into you. I just checked my jump log and I had over 30 night jumps. All I can say is that I was an idiot in my young age. 🙂