Having ultimately passed the ground test, I was ready to jump on the next scheduled jump day (three weeks away). When the time came I traveled the four hours to Tokyo, spent the night, then rode with the other jumpers in the club van for another hour to Ryugasaki (dragon peninsula). Unlike most of Japan which is mountainous with terraced rice fields or dense cities, here rice fields spread across flat land.  When we arrived, the wind came up and it started raining, typical for Japan where the weather report is either, “Cloudy with some clearing” or “Clear with some clouds" or Raining with some clearing.”

Well, that sucked. Next scheduled jump day was five weeks later. Ugh.

The next month rolled around and off I went again. This time nothing was going to stop me. The sky was a perfect deep blue – what Japanese call a “tall sky,” the kind of clear autumn sky that seems to go on forever.

On the ground I turtled up into my gear, waiting until more senior jumpers than I had their turn. At last I boarded the Cessna for the long ascent to jumping altitude: half an hour of biting cold, roaring engine noise, and the noxious smell of gas.

Finally, the small craft turned for jump run and the jumpmaster slid the door up. I stood in the open door up looking down at the endless newly harvested rice fields. Months later, the same fields flooded for planting, would mirror the mood of the sky. But now they were our dropzone. The jumpmaster clipped my static line on the bar over the door. Awkwardly I climbed out into the blasting wind. Clinging to the strut, getting my right foot on the step with my left leg dangling, trying not to be blown off, I turned my face toward the open door and waited for the jumpmaster (not the drill sergeant) to say “go.”  (He was nowhere to be seen and I later found out that he was stoned and forgot to tell me to go.)

Sensing it must be time, I let go and was folded into the sky.

My memory of that moment was one of immense peacefulness. The sound and smell of the engine that had occupied my senses while in the plane were far away in another world. Even my “hatsu koka, ni koka...” seemed to disappear in the void the instant they left my lips. Time appeared to stop, or to move in slow motion. I was acutely aware of being ALIVE and a deep calm swept over me. After so many years of dreaming about it, at last, I was flying.

Beer and more beer, the universal fellowship-bonding substance, was the classic end of the day, and especially for a “first jump” celebration.

Back in Kyoto I wrote a waka poem (a haiku with two additional lines):

十五夜
迎える日神の
ためにおどった

真っ青な空に
花の日傘と

On the day of
The harvest full moon
I danced for the Gods

In the sky
With a flower parasol.

And I didn’t even drop the damn ripcord!