Falling from 20,000ft with nothing but nylon between you and the grass

Alas, as I shadow pivot my brand, I have little to offer you in the form of copywriting wisdom this morning.

So we pick up today on a far more chilling note:

20,000ft in the air.

Freefalling.

Tied to the fabric of reality by nothing more than prayer, some tenuously transparent nylon scrunched into a napsack, and a man named… Dave (kidding — I can’t for the life of me remember what his name was).

It’s a funny thing to jump out of a barrelling tube of steel.

You see the clouds for what they truly are — not cotton, but little pockets of ice, floating in the air. Not only are they bracingly cold. But they’re sharp. 60 seconds pulled towards the Earth, adding 9.8m/s to your speed every second (minus air resistance — the Mathematician in me refuses to die) will do a lot to turn even the most snowflake-like objects into a razor’s edge. (Especially if you’re the type of moron who thinks the black Topman T-shirt that’s been gathering dust in the bottom of your wardrobe for the past 2 months is suitable attire to meet your maker).

So this is me.

Plummeting.

Goggles splitting the seams of my face.

Open mouth gasping in air so fast your lungs can’t process the oxygen that’s streaming into them.

$250 for the pleasure.

A fair trade?

Perhaps.

The breakup was still wearing me thin. Drink. Bags. Tangoing with… regret, in clubs no man should see in the dark of night, let alone the light of day.

I needed something new. I needed adventure.

This was the best I could muster (the UK isn’t plush with bull-runs, volcanoes or mountains to traverse — although that’s a story for another day).

But we’re still falling.

No. Twirling.

Clouds. Ground. Plane. Clouds. Ground. Plane. In repetere. (Latin from school still serving me well even in such a moment).

The cause? Turns out ten kilos difference between you and the man strapped to your back compounds fast.

To say I’m holding my nerve is… well, complete and utter bollocks.

Him? No bother.

The difference between a professional and an amateur.

He rights the proverbial ship.

And not but 5 seconds later we’re a consistent plume of air pushing towards the ground. Now it’s green, green, green.

SWOOSH.

He pulls the cord.

My body jolts, backwards.

Lungs expand.

And now we’re gliding.

Air resistance, physics are wonderful things when they’re working in your favour.

Listen. It’s easy to get blinded by the day-to-day. The early mornings. The late nights. The messages. The phone calls. The endless todos. The should’s, the should nots. Everyone screeching at you that it’s them who knows best, and not you who’s sitting through the experience watching it play out on live TV.

But life is to be explored. Not obeyed.

You learned that today.

More tomorrow,

Harry