Skydiving - Panama City, Florida

The bulk of my 48 jumps have taken place at a drop zone literally walking distance from my house on the shores of Stansbury Lake. In actually, it is better described as a glorified yard waste lagoon surrounded by Nouveau upper-middle class as evidenced by paper-plated cars parked in front of un-yarded homes. Although I am often insecure about my historical lack of prosperity when Utah is filled with single-income, property owners, the odor of borrowed riches reminiscent of pre-recession 2008 when the smart sung ,”When there is blood in the streets, BUY BUY BUY.” Even with the convenience of drop zone, I am becoming increasingly disinterested in skydiving because the culture at Skydive Utah is unfriendly, arrogant, and self-centered. My perceptions could be elaborated on, but why waste energy on those weirdos.

Arriving in Panama City, Florida I grabbed a rental car and raced the muggy back roads to Skydive Panama City…. Located about an hour from Panama City. Most drop zones located near vacations destinations are situated at the nearest small airfield which is a good drive from their name-stake. SPC operations are constructed from four joined trailers with a powerful air conditioner and a half dozen couches. The landing zone is covered with thick grass which poorly drains the afternoon showers common to inland Florida. After waiting three hours for rain clouds to pass, I jumped into a 210 and milled about waiting to follow people out to the plane. A random guy walked up, smiled, asked me what kind of jump I was planning on doing, and then offered to jump together. Then we were talking with a couple of other guys and next thing I knew, we were planning a tracking dive with 4 people. This would NEVER happen at Skydive Utah, pricks.

After gaining a little confidence, I changed into my speedo and paraded about the drop zone. There were a lot of grins, laughs, shy glances, and hungry scans. Waiting around on the tarmac, I attempted normal conversation with a couple of jumpers and a tandem student. The tandem was a gentleman in his 50’s which told me all about his jumps as a combat medic some 30 years ago. He grinned from ear to ear at what a jackass I am in that tiny, rainbow speedo. A mousey, female jumper seemed a little uncomfortable with my presence and could not pull her eyes off the speedo. After a few minutes I asked her to stop staring and the old man burst into laughter. Later I learned that the old man was her father.

The temperature at 14,000 AGL was in the high 70’s, much like a nice bath. Novice jumpers wear loose fitting jump suits because the wind resistance of flapping cloth slows decent and provides a large control surface. Remove that and I became a 180lb rock, tumbling out of control, at high speed. The opening hurt not only from increased fall rate, but the coarse material of the harness bit into damp, tender skin of the inner thigh. Flying a 230 canopy provided for a soft, stand up landing into a pool of rain water. Less lucky jumper were covered with angry ants driven to the surface by the rain.

Knowing the day couldn’t get any better, I pointed the peppy rental towards St. Andrew to the floating kitchen, Just The Cook. Even though it looks clean, the sticky, sour smell of a warm warf is far from appetizing. An attractive and seemingly intelligent barmaid took my order and offered me a free beer. Yes FREE beer from an objectively, normal female (I really need to leave Utah). The sleeveless, bearded cook boiled 1/2 lb of shrimp, tossed it in Cajun spices, and plated it with cilantro slaw, corn-on-the-cob, and fresh bread. What a perfect day….

Scuba - Panama City, Florida

The considerable absence from blogging began with accepting the first world problems presented by living in Salt Lake City, Utah. There is little objectively wrong with Utah or dominate culture besides being boring. The people are nice, but boring. The weather is neither too hot nor too cold. The food is healthy and bland. The outdoors are very nice, but people have such an orgasm over the red rocks and snow that they can frankly shove them. With all those first world problems it is difficult to find expressive inspiration. 

Generally I experience vacation as surmounting a challenge like 6 days backpacking or hitchhiking to Canyonlands, but my employer has asked me to champion a program requiring training in Panama City, Florida. Given that I will likely never return here, I might as well live it to the hilt. On the peninsula across from Shell beach there is a natural preserve complete with sub-tropical flora, alligators, and white sand beaches. White sand, finely crushed and soft from an eon of rattling shells in the warm clear sea. 

Gearing up in the muggy afternoon following hours of heavy rain, my lungs felt thick with the dense air and tight with anticipation. 18 years had elapsed since last diving in the kelp beds of Catalina Island, 60 feet below, confined in 9mils of neoprene compressing all joy out of the event. The kelp was thick as bamboo and closely spaced like those poles of a Viet Cong POW prison. I was terrified of everything and blocked my vision with a rapid consumption of air.

 In entering the aptly named “splash pool” made from a jetty of rock separating the nature park from the shipping lane, the tension slipped away as I eased into the bath temperature water. After a few awkward minutes fooling with the Buoyancy Compensator, everything started to melt away. There was only the regulator rasp, sea bottom, and green water fading away to black. On the shipping lane side of the jetty, the sea floor fell away quickly and the visibility was sub-20ft due to recent storms and an outgoing current. Swimming up current was not difficult and I was careful to control breath rate as to extend the dive length. After a 10 minutes a profound headache developed due oxygen deprivation from under breathing, but this resulted in a dive length of 56 minutes which is good for a rookie. In the jetty rocks, between 25 and 45 feet, there was all the ocean life that might be expected in a Discovery Channel documentary.

I was, infact, not especially impressed by the fishy. Probably I have been spoiled by David Attenborough. It was the weightlessness, the ability to conduct within three dimensions, to move with slight effort, and change direction with the attitude of head or limb position. To be nearly independent of gravity and change depth with inhalation is a sensation of corporeal freedom which I have not found elsewhere. I’m going to next explore FVP drone flying, that might produce a similar sensation. 

In the meantime, I was getting hungry for sushi and mainly octopus. The concept of eating sushi in Utah, a thousand miles from the ocean, has never appealed to me. There are certainly those that speak of refrigeration, but fruit always tastes better the closer to the vine it gets.  On the menu there was an appetizer of raw octopus salad dressed in marinade. The chef took a mass of Cephalopoda larger than my fist and sliced it like pork cutlets into a bowl along with peeled, diced cucumbers, imitation crab, roe and brown sauce.