The process is actually relatively complicated. You are in a tiny, five-person Cessna, packed in like the proverbial sardines. At 4,000 feet the jumpmaster opens the door and puts his leg out onto the platform above the wheel. He gives you the ready command, and you hold onto the door and stretch your right leg out over his leg and wait, half in and half out of the plane. The jumpmaster then gives you the okay to climb out; you grab hold of the wing strut and walk your hands out while standing on the platform over the wheel. Then you step off the platform so that your legs are hanging, unsupported.

Yeah, that's right. You're hanging by your hands from the wing strut of an airplane, traveling at 90 MPH.

From here you make eye contact with your jumpmaster and yell "check in!" so that he can verify that you haven't passed out (no joke there... that's really the purpose of the check in). He gives the command to skydive.

You look straight forward and throw your head back so that you're looking at the underside of the Cessna's wing. Take a deep breath. When you're ready, let go, arch your back and begin your count.

In theory the count is absolutely unnecessary; the jumpmaster is holding your pilot chute (a small parachute that is designed to catch the wind and yank your bigger chute out of your pack). When you jump, he tosses the pilot, and your main canopy opens up in about two seconds.

The count is in case something goes wrong: "arch thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand..." If you make it to five thousand and you haven't felt the shock of your chute opening then you check to the left, twisting your body all the way around and check to the right, twisting your body all the way around. This will normally free up your pilot chute if it somehow got hung up, and from there your main canopy should open up. If it doesn't, you put your hands on the red cutaway cord, put your eyes on the reserve chute cord, pull the cutaway (jettisoning your malfunctioning chute) and pull the reserve, which opens up a smaller emergency chute.

There are a number of other details and procedures that you need to be familiar with, but I'll spare you the summary of the six-hour class.

So, I'm in the plane with my friend Holly. We're the only two jumping on this flight. Holly is jumping first because she's bigger than me (not especially heavy, just very tall, and very solidly built).

The jumpmaster opens the door and the wind fills the plane, howling and shrieking and generally setting exactly the right atmosphere for a terrifying experience. The jumpmaster gives Holly the ready command, and she gets her foot out. He tells her to climb out. She begins to walk her hands out on the wing strut. She steps out with her other foot onto the platform. She loses her grip and goes tumbling off the plane.

That's right. She falls off the fucking plane. Bye Holly! Hope you have a nice jump!

This is not the most reassuring thing I've ever seen. I'm now seriously reconsidering the sanity of this little adventure. The jumpmaster looks at me and shrugs. "She lost her grip."

"Is that a frequent occurrence?" I ask.

"No, no," he assures me. "Usually only happens with bigger girls. You'll be fine."

Oh. Good. Very good.

He opens the door again and the wind screams. "Ready!" And I put my hand outside the door and reach out with my right foot, planting it on the wheel platform. The wind catches it and tries to pull it back, but I dig in and hold on. I'm only a quarter out of the plane right now.

"Look down," says the jumpmaster. "There's the landing zone, right below us." And I look down, regretting it almost instantly. Four thousand feet is a long way up, but it isn't so far up that the ground has lost its reality. It looks big and hard, and not anywhere near as far away as I would like.

"Climb out!" Apparently my body has decided that it's down with the idea, because I find that my hands are walking themselves out across the strut, and now I've got both feet out on the wheel platform, and now I've actually stepped off, and I'm hanging by my hands from the plane.

I look over at my jumpmaster and yell "check in!" He gives me the thumbs up and says "skydive!"

It's all in my hands now. I can let go as soon as I'm ready. I throw my head back and look at the wing. I take a deep breath. One more deep breath. I let go.

...

...

...

I'm still hanging onto the wing strut.

I let go again. I'm still on the wing strut. I take up the issue with my hands. "Let go, motherfuckers! We're jumping out of this airplane!"

My hands shake their heads and say "no Sir. Since you've proven yourself incapable of making rational decisions, we're left with no choice but to assume command of this mission."

"Bullshit," I say. "We're jumping. Now let go!"

"Sorry Sir," my hands reply. "I'm afraid that's just not possible. We'll be staying right here Sir."

At length I am able to convince my hands that hanging from the wing strut of a single engine Cessna for the rest of our lives is simply not an option, and we're going to just have to LET GO GOD DAMN IT!

My hands finally complied, at which point I promptly changed my mind. The plane fell straight up and away from me, and I was in the air, 4,000 feet above the ground.

It only lasted for two or three seconds, but it was perhaps the most memorable event of my life. I felt like I died. The terror was that intense.

Then my chute opened, and I learned a valuable lesson about making certain that your leg straps are tight. If they aren't, the canvas digs into your inner thighs, cuts off all circulation and hurts. The pain is tremendously frustrating, because there is nothing at all that you can do about it.

Once I was under canopy, the experience was less interesting (though still very cool). I didn't get any chance to play; my drop point was slightly off course, and ground control spent the whole time issuing commands to guide me back to the landing zone. Even so, I was still pretty far off course, and I ended up coming down in a soybean field.

Normally as you land, you flare the chute, which halts your forward momentum. Unfortunately, this requires a bit of a head wind, and when I landed it was dead calm. I flared the chute properly, but with no wind, it didn't slow my forward momentum very much. I hit the ground still moving forward at a respectable pace and flipped over into a face plant. It wasn't bad at all, but I'm glad I was wearing the knee brace.

So. That's that. I jumped out of an airplane!