![]() ![]() I'm still trying to get my legs back and shake the nausea from my gut when I crouch down with a PJ to examine our mock battlefield patient, who is currently bloodied and screaming. Still feeling disorientated from my 10,000-foot plunge, I'm shuttled to a different part of Hurlburt Field-AFSOC's airfield adjacent to Eglin Air Force Base-to meet these air medics. This is a training tool for the pararescuemen (PJs). Sensors inside the robot patient monitor its "vitals," which can be read on a tablet. It cries out for help and reacts to treatment like a real person might. As a member of Special Tactics, one of a small group of foot soldiers in the Air Force, he's accustomed to jumping into active combat zones under the cover of night alongside Navy SEALs or Army Rangers to establish a landing strip and then defend it.īringing me to the ground was like a walk on the nearby Emerald Coast. This skydive was one of the most intense experiences of my life, but it hardly counted as real practice for the AFSOC airman. The jumpmaster laughs and I stagger to my feet, pretending to retain more than a pinhole of vision. ![]() By the time we land, my peripheral vision has been completely blotted out by black splotches. It doesn't take long for my grip to weaken and my vision to blur as the blood in my head is forced down into my feet. I yank, and so does the jumpmaster (doing probably 80 percent of the work), and we bank sharply to the left, spinning around and around. "Yank down on this," he yells, as he puts a handle attached to the left steering line in my hand. "You ready to pull some g's?" the AFSOC airman asks. The part that makes me almost lose consciousness comes after opening the canopy, as we are gently floating back down to earth. Once at terminal velocity, you feel like you're floating rather than falling. No amount of familiarity with harness straps and parachute canopies can calm your lizard brain during the first hundred feet of your very first jump. Skydiving goes against every neural connection screaming at you to stay on solid ground. ![]()
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