time reversal

It all started Friday night. I finally finished up a nasty bit of data analysis around 7pm, and decided the leave the rest for Monday. Then the prof walked in. “Did you get the numbers from the data you collected today?” he asked. “No, I was going to finish it Monday,” I replied. “We could really use those numbers by the end of the weekend,” he countered. Great. I was going to have to break my no work on weekends rule. Ah well, I thought, I don’t have to do it tonight. I grabbed my bike and headed down one floor to the lab, where there were two grad students, a postdoc, and the other prof trouble-shooting a cryostat. After some discussion, the prof finally said, “It’s 7:30 on a Friday. You guys should get out of here. See you Monday.” I mentioned to the students and post-doc that I was going climbing for a few hours, and invited them to join me if they were interested. No one was, so I headed down to the gym by myself.

After a good 2 hours of climbing with one of Erin’s roommates who I had run into at the gym, I hopped on my bike and started to head up the hill. It was about 10pm, but I hadn’t had dinner and just had this hunch that some of the people in lab hadn’t taken the professor’s advice and gone home. I called up the postdoc (Brad) and said, “Hey, are you still in lab?” “Ummm, well, yeah…” he replied. “Great, I’m going out to get beer and food. You should grab anyone in the lab and come with. It is Friday after all.”

Shortly thereafter, I arrived at Jupiter’s, a bar in Berkeley. As I wandered around looking for people I knew, I heard a shout from the crowd, “Hey quasi-first-year!” I turned around to find a table of 10 first and second year physicists. Shortly thereafter Brad showed up, and we all soon had delicious food and delicious beer in front of us. Eventually the second years left to play pool, so it was just Kevin (first-year), Brad, and I left drinking the delicious Jupiter’s Hefeweizen. At some point, someone mentioned skydiving.

“Hmm skydiving. I’ve never been. We should totally go!” I said. “Dude, skydiving. That sounds awesome,” Kevin replied. Brad mocked us: “Well, I’ve never been in a bar fight. We should get in a bar fight! Oh I know, I’ve never been punched in the face, I guess I should go do that.” “You know, about 50% of the time you look at me like I’m completely nuts,” I replied. Brad said, “That’s because you are.” Eventually we all decided to head our separate ways, and on the way out I tried to explain that my philosophy on life is to try anything once that won’t get me killed or addicted. “What’s the statistical certainty you require on the ‘not getting killed’ part?” Brad asked. I claimed I hadn’t worked it out yet.

Saturday morning I woke up thinking about the skydiving conversation. How hard would it be to go skydiving? After a quick internet search I found Bay Area Skydiving. I decided, why the hell not? It’s not that often that one has the compulsion to jump out of a plane. I sent out e-mail to all the physics first years, as well as a few other people who might be interested, asking if anyone wanted to go skydiving with me Sunday afternoon. I got a variety of responses from, “I’m too much of a coward, or at least too hosed, to jump out of a plane tomorrow,” to “You know what, f*** it, I’ll go. I’d probably never have the guts to actually do it on my own,” to “Wow. You weren’t kidding. I’m in.” Eventually, three of us (all mostly first-years) decided to take the leap: me, Kevin, and Stephan.

The drive out to the drop zone was mostly calm, except for this one crazy person swerving all over the interstate. Eventually they got pulled out of the car by a cop and tackled. We arrived at the skydiving center somewhat early and filled out mounds of paperwork. I think I had to write my initials something like 50 times. It was blazing hot where we were inland, and we had to suit up in full body jumpsuits. The instructor I was jumping tandem with explained to me all the important things to remember, like flight and landing positions. “If the chute opens we’ll talk about how to fly it,” he concluded. “Hey, are we going to do any flips and spins? That would be sweet,” I said. “Don’t worry,” he replied, “there’s no way this ride can’t be exciting.”

We piled into a tiny prop plane with a flimsy looking roll-down door. There was a guy in a squirrel suit between me and the door, as well as a camera man, another solo dude, and a girl who was going to ride on squirrel-guy’s back and do some barrel rolls with him. We hit 13,000 feet and the squirrel-guy pulled the door open. The 4 of them leaped out and I watched them fall away. My instructor (ego Mike) said, “We’re up. Slide to the edge of the fuselage.” It was strange sitting on the edge of an aircraft at 13,000 feet, but not scary. Mostly just not a sight you see everyday. Mike slid forward and then we were falling. We immediately did a backflip and then stabilized. Then we started spinning left for a bit, then right. Mostly I was amazed at how strong the wind was, and how easy it was to do tricks just by changing body position. My vision blurred up after a bit, and then suddenly we pulled about 3 G’s as the chute deployed. Mike taught me to fly the chute (just like a kitesurfing kite!), and we flew into some thermal updrafts over the airport for more hang time. Finally we landed next to the building we’d started from.

I joined up with Kevin and Stephan. We were all kind of walking funny (heat or adrenaline rush?) and all had big goofy grins on our faces. “That was f***ing awesome!” someone yelled. Indeed.

I hear you can sometimes trade hours of grunt work for the necessary jumps and instruction for skydiving certification. I’m in.

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