I fell out of Boo Radly's apple tree, and oww my arm is killing me.

So, I went skydiving. This was a few weeks ago, but I've been meaning to write about it for a while now. I jumped out of an airplane!! It was a little Cessna-182 with a suped up engin. I didn't even go to full altitude, it was just what we call a hop-n-pop because you go up to 4,000 ft and just hop out of the plane, and pop your chute without much freefall. I like hop-n-pops because it gives me a chance to work purely on canopy control. Something which you can never have enough work on, plus they're cheaper than full altitude jumps. So it was a beautiful Sunday morning, I got on the first load, planning on stuffing plastic easter eggs full of candy after the jump. The climb to altitude was pretty uneventful, just a boring ol' climb up.

Jump out of the plane at four grand and oh what a feeling! I took a very short delay, maybe 2-3 seconds and threw my pilot chute. That's a little chute that pulls the pin holding my main bag in my container, and ultimately deploys the main parachute. Chute comes out, great soft opening as expected since I packed it. Once under my fully inflated canopy I grabbed my toggles and released my breaks, putting the canopy into full flight. Looked around for the landing area so I knew where to ultimately head. Did a few spirals for fun and to burn off some altitude, and started heading back to where I would like to set up for my landing pattern. I should've probably done an extra spiral because by the time I got to the second leg in the landing pattern I was a bit too high. I made that turn and was flying with the wind heading toward the grass runway. You are not allowed to go over any runways under canopy if you're under 1,000 ft. I was at about 800 ft when I hit the edge of the runway, so I made the next left hand turn in the landing pattern. Going crosswind again, and much slower than when I was flying downwind. Still pretty high, so I overshot the landing area a bit, could've gone a bit farther though. Made my last left hand turn into the wind and was going good and slow. Also at this point I was starting to get pretty low, under 200 ft. Held my arms up allowing my canopy full flight so that it would get as much speed as necessairy to have a good flare when I pulled my toggles down far.

The wind was comming from over the trees, the trees were right in front of me, perhaps 150 yards away. By the time I got to 15 ft I was maybe 75 yards from the trees, maybe. The wind comming off the tops of them went downwards back toward the ground to level out a bit. I experienced a little turbulance once I dropped below 30 ft. So at 15 ft, there was a downdraft of some sorts. I'm preparing my landing and getting ready to flare in a second or two, when all of a sudden my canopy more or less stops flying and it feels like it collapses. I go damn near straight down and a 4 second decent becomes about a 1.5 second decent. I hit the ground, hard. I didn't really remember to do a PLF, which is a type of roll you do so you don't get hurt. My PLF was pretty lame and my right fibula snapped. I didn't hear the noise but I felt a whole hell of a lot of pain.

After I landed the wind grabbed my parachute and wanted to start dragging me, I pulled in one of my toggles as quickly as I could to re-collapse the parachute, then disconnected my RSL, which would deploy my reserve if I were to cut the canopy away. If the wind was going to keep pulling me I would've just cut the main away and worried about it later.

There's a sort of understanding amongst the skydiving community. It's a very important rule, it states in much looser terms: No skydiver shall every lie on the ground after a landing unless they are either 1) Hurt so badly they can't stand up, or 2) Willing to buy a case of beer for scaring the shit out of everyone else. Well after my landing, I didn't stand up, and I fell under the first situation. I found out what happens when people don't stand up and why if you can you better, because damn near everyone on the dropzone ran their ass out to where I was to see what was what and how badly I was damaged. I convinced them not to call in an ambulance since it wasn't quite that horrible, and besides that shit is expensive as hell.

I got carted back to the clubhouse from the landing area, or at least the area where I landed, which wasn't quite in the designated circle, but still an acceptable place if the winds were different. Loaded myself into Mur's car since she offered to cart me out to the hospital, got some ice packs put on my leg and off we went. The first, and closest hospital was closed since this was a Sunday, and apparently around there no one ever gets hurt on a Sunday.... So we turned around and went to the next hospital. Having Mur with me was a huge help since she's been in and out of hospitals more times than I like to think about. She made sure I got drugs and everything which was good because I got a 10 mg shot of morphine before ever even seeing a doctor.

I didn't see a doctor until after I got my x-rays, and had I not got that shot of morphine I probably would've punched the chick doing my x-rays in the face... more than once. Even after getting pumped with morphine my leg hurt, and when the chick who wanted to take x-rays decided to not let me turn to get my leg in an appropriate position for her to take a picture of the inside of my leg, she just twisted the broken fucker however she liked. I still almost hit that bitch in the jaw. So I got my x-rays all finished up, the doctor looked at them and it was a grim look he gave me. When I saw the x-rays myself I understood, there wasn't a whole lot he could do for me. My fibula was ker-snapped in half and pointing in two different directions. Surprisingly enough my leg looked mostly normal, only slightly swollen at this point, but it hurt like hell. The doc gave me a temporary cast type deal and sent me to Waukesha Memorial Hospital to see a specialist.

Dr. Merkow is the man with the plan. They guy with the tools to fix a leg by cutting into the bad-boy and doing whatever it is he does best. I spoke with him briefly about his plans for my leg, and before log a beautiful nurse was rolling me into the OR. She put an oxygen mask over my face and just kinda smiled at me. I stared up into her beautiful deep green eyes and heard a doc behind me tell me he was going to put in the drugs to knock me out for the surgery. I felt them go into my arm and within a couple of seconds I was out.

The next thing I remember I'm being carted back to my room, my phone is ringing so someone gives it to me, and I start talkin' on the phone and being generally belligerent. I didn't care what was going on, I was hopped up on whatever it was that they used to knock me out, plus morphine, plus who knows what, and perhaps a little bit of shock since my leg had just been cut open, a plate added in, 8 screws put into my leg, and 2 more into my ankle.

I've now got the beginnings of an inspector gadget leg, I can't skydive for perhaps another 2 months, I'm currently wearing a goofy looking boot thing (at least I'm done with the casts), and I'm rip-rearing-ready to go.

Moral of the story: Ask the cute nurse out before the doc knocks your ass out for surgery, otherwise you may never see her again.