Skydiving in Eloy and Singing Some CCR

For the third time in my life (first time in about twenty years) I jumped out of a plane last Thursday. Kathleen and I drove down to Eloy (halfway between Phoenix and Tucson) where Skydive Arizona works out of the town's small airport.

It was, of course, a lot of fun. It was a different experience from my previous skydives because those gave me greater control --  I held the straps of the canopy and thus controlled the rate of descent, got to choose to do loops, etc. In this case, the instructor did everything, which was less fun in that I was just a passenger along for the ride. At the same time, it was more fun in that I didn’t have to remember much of anything beyond crossing my arms as I went out the door.

We jumped at 13,000 feet, did a free-fall to 5,000, and then floated down from there.

The price was $189, which is a good bit higher than I remember, but I guess twenty years can account adequately for the increase (besides which, they throw in a certificate and a t-shirt).

The airfield was on a road that ran past some cotton fields. As we were leaving, Kathleen said she had never seen cotton up close, which to someone who grew up in Arizona seems strange. We stopped and she inspected the plants as I sang:

When them cotton bolls get rotten
You can’t pick very much cotton
In them old cotton fields back home.

We’ll leave aside Kathleen’s comments about my singing, but after she was done with that, she added that she had never heard of the song before. Therefore, I’ll close with this.