So I jumped out of an aeroplane at almost 10,000 feet. Hmmm, it seemed like a great idea at the time. Myself and my brother, John, were on our way home from a snowboarding trip in which we careened down the Alps at breakneck speeds not having a clue what we were doing. So of course the brother broached the subject, "So, what do we do next?". "How about a parachute jump", I suggested without giving it any thought whatsoever. "Sure", says John, "set it up". That was that then, we were jumping.

When I got back to work I looked up places in Ireland that cater for lunatics wanting to hurl themselves from aeroplanes. I found a website, www.skydive.ie, or something like that. On it I unfortunately found all the information I needed. The types of jump were two fold. You could do a single tethered jump. This involved jumping by yourself from a plane at 3000 feet with your chute attached to the plane. This insured automatic deployment of the chute making you in essence a passenger. This seemed trite, due mainly to the lack of any freefall whatsoever. The second type was to be the very fellow for us. It was a 9,500 feet jump including a good 4/5,000 feet freefall accelerating all the while with a midget strapped to your back!! Oh, yeah, yeah baby, yeah! So it was. I rang my brother and bade of him "Shall I book it?", "YES", he said, and I booked it, I booked the biggest jump in the world!

On the morning of the jump I was at work in Limerick. I found myself wandering over to the window and staring up at the sky, wondering if I could do it. Bit late now of course I'd told everyone so weighing in against the fear of jumping was the fear of the shit I'd get if I didn't jump. This I had done on purpose. So I left work early and off to Kildare with me on a train. I meet John at the station in Kildare and we got a lift out to the drop zone. Quite an exciting little car journey too, I almost jumped out several times :)

First port of call when we arrived was the jacks. I had heard terrible things about first time jumpers loosing a load up there in the clear blue. I decided on balance that the best thing for everyone concerned was not to bring it up with me in the first place. When I resurfaced I found that, that prick of a brother of mine had elected to go first. Rather than the "flip a coin" option we originally agreed upon. The training consisted of "When I tap you on your head spread your arms out like that, I'll tell you the rest on the way down." Fair enough. There was only one tandem-jumper so I had to wait for John to land to get the rig, midget and Sesner attached. We took off and landed in a field full of sheep. Apparently they tried it with cows before but they tended to herd toward landing nutcases while the sheep through years of training ran away.

I was sitting in the plane backwards as it sped through the sheep and hurled itself at the sky. Looking out the window was quite scary, the safest thing I could do in a plane like this one was jump out. Ok, I thought, looks like I'm committed. There were two other jumpers as well, solo skydivers (bastards!). Anyway, up and up we went. The plane had to spiral up, on each loop I was thinking "We're high enough up, I'll jump from here". The plane seemed to be struggling immensely with the notion of not hurtling toward the ground. Quite the opposite to what was going through my mind at the time. There was no door as such on the plane, rather there was a plastic tarp with push button fasteners covering one side. At 9,000 feet, about 4,000 above the clouds the two pulled back the tarp to reveal a sky. The naked sky is a hell of a thing to see from this height. The two men jumped. "FUCK!" Ok, so now I was just a little unsteady. Looking down at the tops of those clouds and wondering if I'd bounce. The pilot had turned down the plane's engine so we were still travelling but slower when my camera man climbed out and straddled the back of the plane. Next was little me. I swung out my legs and there they dangled. I was now fully outside the aeroplane, in the clear blue sky, holding onto nothing. Waiting to fall. Waiting to plummet and twist and spin forever. After an unimaginably long 5 seconds my midget let go of the plane, we leaned forward and kissed the world goodbye.

It's a hell of a thing you know. The air rushes at you screams in your ears and flushes out your lungs! Terminal velocity of a tandem jump is about 120 miles per hour but you reach higher speeds than this depending on your angle to the Earth. Either way it's exhilaratingly fast and amazing. It's a consistent high, just when one rush passes another climax is well on its way to peaking. At various stages you really don't know if you can take any more but want it, Jesus save us all, you want it!

Then the midget deploys the chute all too soon and you're suddenly flung back up into the sky and everything settles and you remember than unfortunate pubic hair that wandered under a supporting strap. Then you hold onto the parachute strings and hoist yourself up while your little friend undoes all your leg straps. Strange one that, but yeah, unstraps you. Now there are still two unseen straps behind your back but everything you see goes. Then you have to slide the straps down your legs so that they support you in an amazingly comfortable sitting position. After that you get control of the chute and can spin like a demon, left, right and aim at a tiny little field miles below you. You can converse quite rationally at this stage, after the freefall all the shock is done with and the chute descent is just really, really cool. However, if you pull down hard on one side of the chute it goes horizontal to you and you spin around it shockingly fast like a maniacal waltser. Then you land, and, if your lucky, get drunk soon thereafter. You look at the sky differently after falling through it. On that day I quit my job and jumped. A lot changed that day, perspectives were firmly rendered in my mind.

Oh and after I landed I then signed the disclaimer, waiver, "I won't sue you", papers. I thought it was best to try it first. On the way to Dublin that night the brother broached the subject, "So, what do we do next?"...

Here's the jump: