August 12, 2010 was the day of my 21st and 22nd skydives (20th and 21st solo). I had just learned to pack my own parachute two months earlier and it had been a week since I'd jumped so I was a little anxious to get on the plane. It wasn't hot for August, in fact, it was only about 88-92 degrees outside. I had just downsized my parachute from 188 square feet to 168 which may or may not have been a bad call on my part. It doesn't take a physics expert to put together that a smaller parachute means moving faster when you're under it. Well, it takes a little science knowledge (or someone just telling you how skydiving physics work) to know that when it's hotter outside, you tend to descend under canopy faster. So recap: Smaller parachute = faster, hotter weather = faster, average summer weather = 80 to 84 degrees.

I hadn't jumped in a week and change so I was anxious to get my parachute packed and get myself on the plane. It wasn't until after the plane had left the ground that I realized I hadn't checked the direction or speed of the ground wind which is important when you consider your landing pattern depends (as far as length of pattern legs) on the wind and you have to land facing it.

"Silly me," I thought as I realized that there were two tandem jumps and one cameraman that were going to get out before me. "I'll just watch their pattern before I land and go off of that. Rookie mistake, no big deal." Jump run usually isn't until 13,000 feet and when the plane started to flatten out at 9,000, I got a little concerned.

The cameraman looked at me and said, "Looks like you're riding to 13,000 alone."

My first thought was, "fuck." The tandems and cameraman did their thing at 9,000 and I closed the door riding to 13,000 alone. Two minutes later it was go time for me. I had an amazing freefall and when I deployed my parachute at 4,000ft I looked below me in hopes that the tandems hadn't landed yet... they had, so I thought, "I'll just read the flags and the wind socks." And of course the wind would be extremely chaotic in terms of direction that day. Even as I started my landing pattern at 1,000ft, I still couldn't tell which direction the flags were blowing which meant as far as my downwind leg and final approach went, I was winging it.

Sure enough, as I turned in for my final approach, I was headed downwind instead of upwind. Smaller parachute, hotter day, flying with the wind, not good. The tandem instructor that saw my landing estimated my forward speed at anywhere between 25 and 30mph. Luckily they train you to handle situations of stupidity like that and I flared my canopy (normal for landing) as hard as I could and it did nothing to slow me down, so I further followed procedure and did a PLF, which is a roll to protect you from hurting yourself on a downwind or just plain shitty landing. Still going the same speed, my feet touched the ground and I rolled a few times. There was dirt all over the brand new equipment I was renting and before they would take it back without charging me a cleaning fee, they made me brush it all off. Luckily I jumped again and the freefall got the rest of the dust off AND I landed in the right direction and had a near perfect, on-target, landing.

Come to find out later after I finally took my jumpsuit off that I had scratched myself pretty bad through the jumpsuit and was bleeding a little from my left forearm, left leg, and had a good sized scratch by my mouth from when I chewed a dirt clod. After a week or two of some intense scabbing my wounds and scratches all healed and nothing scarred except my arm. I'm puzzled as to how it scarred because I didn't pick at it, but I'm glad it did and I'm glad the roll scratched my helmet so I can always remember to check the winds before I get on the plane.

Lesson learned.