Postcards From Egypt
Memories of Skydiving From a Morning on the Nile
It’s a little after 6 a.m., and I’m sipping coffee on the hotel balcony overlooking the Nile. It is exponentially prettier here than in Cairo. My head is pounding with a bit of a cold, but the air smells cleaner, and there’s a tiny bit of woodsmoke (which I love) filtering up to where I sit. Birds I cannot name are chirping and flitting between west and east banks. Very few boats are moving yet, so the only movement in the river is the current, moving tons of water gently towards its destination. Across from me is the fabled West Bank—the Valley of the Kings, the realm of the dead, where the sun sets and the kings prepare for the afterlife.
Colorful balloons float above palm trees and buildings on that side of the river. The Theban Hills jut upwards in the early morning sunlight, and I can’t wait to see what wonders they hold. The balloons make me laugh gently, and I am transported back in time to another morning in another country, twenty-something years ago, in Lake Perris, California.
I took up skydiving on a bit of a whim in college. I had experienced a pretty intense health scare and had committed to saying yes to anything that came my way. This was a few years before I bought myself my own engagement ring because I was never going to get married, and right around the time that I moved out of the house. I worked almost full-time through college, opting to earn money instead of go to class and study after. I managed to graduate from UCI with almost a 4.0 and two degrees (Economics and Sociology) and a minor in Business, so I was doing something right.
It was in my late teens that I really got into cooking as a way to keep my hands and devious mind occupied, and I was a frequent customer of our local grocery store. I’ve always loved talking to people I see frequently, and the butcher knew me by name and knew something had happened recently with my health. He invited me to go skydiving with him the next day—something he and his wife had done for decades before she passed away. He said he’d pick me up, take me out there, and pay. I never had the desire to skydive, and I’m not big on small planes or heights, but I’d made a commitment to myself, so I kicked myself and reluctantly agreed.
Flash forward a couple hundred skydives later, and I found myself signing up to skydive out of a hot air balloon while at a big skydiving festival that weekend at my local dropzone. The next morning, I woke up on much too little sleep to be skydiving at all, frankly, and threw my backpack and rig into the car to head to Lake Perris from where we’d stayed in Elsinore. It was early. Hot air ballooning is an early morning activity—you need very little wind for a good time—something that’s not always easy in desert environments.
Now, I’m sure when you pay a couple hundred dollars for a luxury or romantic balloon adventure, the experience is very different—BUT—I’ve had the gift of having some exceedingly unique experiences preceding normal ones, and that forever shifts the way I see things. There was no romance, no wine, no picnic, no charm. Our group of mostly underslept, possibly hungover, under-caffeinated daredevils was going to get packed into these wicker baskets like bargain sardines on the way to market.
I realize not everyone is familiar with skydiving “rigs” or the backpacks that hold your main parachute, reserve parachute, and all the necessary components to survive careening towards the planet from unsafe heights. Suffice to say there’s a lot of very vital gear, and shuffling around in a compressed space isn’t always a fun idea, and my anxiety was kicking into high gear. I obsessively kept checking my handles (main chute, cutaway, reserve chute). I looked around at the folks running the company and felt exceedingly disconcerted. If I could sum up hot air ballooning in one sentence, it would be: Carnies Shooting Fire into a Fabric Balloon Suspending a Wicker Basket. I know, not flattering, not kind. But when it’s before dawn and you’ve paid actual money to not only get in one of these, but jump out of them, I wasn’t inclined to feel nice.
We shove our sleepy bodies in the basket, and they remove the tie-downs. Immediately, we begin to drift across the dirt and grass, picking up speed and height as our toothless friend shoots flames as long as my leg into the balloon. I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into and wonder at what point my decisions will take me too far across the line to return.
We drift upwards at a surprising rate, and it’s silent except for our nervous chatter. It’s beautiful—even in Lake Perris—as the patchwork of the properties below passes like a quilt beneath us. Across the way, we can see the other balloon, as precariously jammed full of excited people as we are. I watch in awe and horror as one person slowly climbs out of the basket. They stand perched on a little step, facing the great open, hands behind them clutching the railing. Then, without a single noise, they let go, and their body falls into the cold morning air. Like lemmings in slow motion, they begin to jump. Each body released from the basket causes the basket to rise. It is absolutely beautiful and surreal. I shuffle and squirm towards the back of the balloon, realizing that the more folks go before me, the higher I get and the safer (in theory) I am, as I have slightly more time between jumping and impact to sort pulling my parachute.
Finally, it’s just me, the empty basket, and one grumpy hot air balloon operator. He gestures towards the railing with an “Anytime, lady” hand gesture, and I nervously climb out of the basket. The time for wondering about the quality of my decision-making skills and the long story of how I got here are shelved for another time. The step slips a bit beneath me, and I laugh—I mean, I am literally here to get out. I let go of the wooden railing, and my body falls into the blue morning. I feel the speed increase rapidly. I hear the noise go from silent to a roar. I arch my back and stabilize my body, belly-down. I wave my arms and reach back with my right hand, palm firmly against the little round pull. I pull and hold my breath, waiting for salvation. My canopy opens above me with a rush of fabric and a snap. I breathe in and gauge how quickly the dirt is coming at me.
I make another coffee and come back to the hotel balcony, watching the balloons rise and sink back down. No one is jumping, which is probably for the best. I think about how much skydiving changed my life many years ago. About how saying yes to the butcher at the local grocery store that day started a chain of events that had unpredictable and wonderful outcomes. My mom and sister started skydiving as well, and skydiving made my family stronger. It healed the relationship between my sister and me after a lot of strain in our late teens. It let my mom, sister, and me redefine our little family now that Anna and I were adults. I made lifelong friends. I got engaged in an even more questionable spur-of-the-moment decision. I made some better decisions dating—with folks who I still like to this day. I think about all of these people and how life shifts and moves in fascinating patterns. Skydiving wound up being a fabric whose threads I continue to find running in so many areas of my life.
Now, when folks ask if I want to do a hot air balloon ride, I laugh. I cannot possibly explain this, particularly in another language. Sometimes, when an experience is perfect in such an unfathomably strange way, there is no need to attempt a repeat. I find myself completely at peace with that being my one, and only, hot air balloon ride.
I still firmly believe in the power of Saying Yes - you never know what a single adventure might bring into your life!
Note:
Much, much more coming on this trip including where we’ve stayed and what we’ve done.
