Pores suck in crisp, cool air. Ethereal terminal velocity vacuums out noise, and the embryonic hum of wind blast mixes with the adrenalin flooding your brain.

The artificial highs of the ground world are instantly earmarked for the narrow-minded. You jumped out of an airplane.
The ground doesn't rush toward you. There's too much of it. Visual perspective changes at 13,500 feet above the Earth. There is no sensation of falling. The body floats. It flies. The nervous system mines thrusting speed until you come down on the soft glide of the parachute canopy. You wish it could last longer.

Sky diving is aero-sister to the orgasm. The inability to accurately describe the experience is cruel. It's a phenomenon unprecedented in the brain's libraries. File it under Bombs Away.

You've thought about it haven't you? What's keeping you? It's safer than scuba diving and more people die drinking bad tap water. The most dangerous part of your trip will be the drive there. Make no mistake, it is dangerous, but there is enough technology, safety and calculation behind the soon-to-be Olympic sport that getting addicted to free fall will become one of your bigger worries.

Two UF students, tired of wondering about sky diving, did a gut check and made the trip to one of the world's premiere sky diving centers in Sebastian, on Florida's east coast. When making your first jump, it's most important to go somewhere with a good reputation. Lukana Bernal, an advertising major at UF, and Raphael Levy, an architecture major, did their homework on the Internet, tapped the newsgroups, sized up the several drop zones reachable by car from Gainesville, and felt most comfortable heading to Sebastian.

Skydive Sebastian is known in the international sky-diving community for its high quality instructors, devotion to safety and accommodating facilities they've got a bar. It's one of the largest sky-diving centers in the world and graduates more students a year than any sky-diving center on the planet.

Skydive Sebastian's true claim to fame, most sky divers agree, is that Sebastian is the most scenic drop zone in the States. Jumping with a clear view of the ocean like you can in Sebastian is rare. The beaches at the end of the day don't hurt either.


ARE YOU NERVOUS?
"I've heard horror stories ... all the urban myths about parachutes not opening," Bernal brings up on the road to Sebastian. "My mother thinks I've lost my mind."

A natural reaction from a mother ... maybe you should wait to tell yours until after you jump. It's difficult to justify jumping out of an airplane to somebody when you have trouble justifying it to yourself but, being nervous is expected. If you weren't concerned and a little nervous, then you very well may have lost your mind. Bernal and Levy agree that adventure and risk are a package deal.

Both students have been thinking about sky diving for years, held back only by lack of information about the sport.

"The fact that every person I'd mention sky diving to had heard of somebody turning into human paste after something went wrong is what kept me until now," Bernal explains on the road. "A few months ago, a friend of mine was raving and drooling about her first jump," she says. "She turned me on to a bunch of skydiving resources on the Net that had a lot of statistics about sky diving ... I started reading about the technology behind it all, and more truthful accounts about the sport ... I decided there was a better chance of me dying from an allergic reaction to a bee sting. It didn't make sense to put off something I had such a craving for just because people who know nothing about it kept preaching impending doom every time I'd bring it up. "

On his own hunt, Levy was surprised to find so much information available about the technology and logistics of the sport. "My impressions of skydiving started changing and I realized that it wasn't as insane as I thought it was," he says.

Parachute technology has come a long way since the sport's early days in the '60s and '70s when jumping with military-surplus gear was the norm. The materials used now are stronger and lighter. Parachute openings are softer and more refined. Also, nobody jumps with just one chute. High-tech reserve canopies serve as rarely needed backups.

Parachute deployment by rip cord is in the jumper's hands, but law now requires Automatic Activation Devices (AAD) which deploy the parachute at a safe altitude in the event a jumper can't pull the rip cord. The extensive regard for safety as well as the exhaustive training for those entering the sport make accidents rare. Bernal and Levy decide to make their first jump tandem style, attached to an instructor/tandem master. This only requires limited training since you're jumping with a master, while jumping alone takes eight levels of detailed training.

Pulling the car up to the drop zone, Bernal and Levy quickly notice that the blue sky is filled with around 12 parachuters floating to the Earth. The extreme distance of the technicolor chutes makes the parachuting skydivers look like a swarm of butterflies. The sight is the first thing to calm the butterflies in their own stomachs.

Walking into the main training area, Bernal and Levy find a surprisingly laid-back atmosphere with at least 40 instantly friendly people. Not only does the large group of men and women look sane, they look relaxed, very comfortable and in control, which according to Mick Hall, chief instructorat Sebastian, puts first-time jumpers at ease.

"Just think of it like this: You have a place where you go 2 ½ miles up in the air and throw yourself out of an airplane that's pretty dumb if you don't understand anything about the sport," Hall says. "Most people look at sky diving on TV and think it's a bunch of yahoos trying to kill themselves ... which just isn't true.

"When people come here and see what really goes on, they say 'Oh, this isn't quite what I thought it was,'" he says. "When you walk onto the airfield and see all the parachuters landing, it changes your perception of what it is. ... We get an awful lot of people in groups, and by the time their mates have jumped, they want to go."

You find quickly at the drop zone that a lot of attention is paid to every detail, and the people involved in the sport aren't mad men and women, but serious participants in a seriously gratifying sport. Bernal and Levy are using the tandem jump to test the waters, ready to take up the sport if everything adds up.

"We get two types of people here," Hall says. "Some want to make their first jump for the thrill and adrenalin rush ... the white-knuckle ride. And some people are thinking about taking up sky diving and use the tandem jump as their first experience to see if they like it. The tandem jump is a quick and easy way to introduce somebody to sky diving. "People don't expect it to be quite as much fun as it is. What leads them away is that they're scared," Hall says.

"It's twice as safe as flying in an airliner. It's really safer than flying... and a lot safer than bungee jumping," he adds.

TRAINING TO JUMP
Bernal and Levy are given their own instructor. Before instruction and the minimal training required for a tandem jump begins, they are shown a video that goes over safety instructions.

Thirty minutes before take off, the instructors teach Bernal and Levy the proper arch position for free fall and detail the maneuvers and procedures involved in a successful jump. The student gets to pull the rip cord but shouldn't drop it because that will cost $15. Instructions on parachute control will be given in the air after parachute deployment. Bernal chooses to suit up and Levy goes in his leisure wear. Each is fitted with a tandem harness.

The loudspeaker announces boarding for one of Sebastian's two Turbine Twin Otter aircraft. It holds 23 people you get to watch pros jump out in formation before you, and is much faster than the common four-person Cessna most schools use.

Bernal and Levy's hearts beat a little faster. Levy says the nervousness comes from doing something drastically new, like waiting in line for your first roller coaster ride when you're 12. He'll later be surprised that the sensation of free fall is nothing like a roller coaster ride.

Bernal and Levy board the Otter with their instructors and take off to 13,500 feet.

"A lot of people have a misconception ... thinking that their stomachs are going to rush up in their throat and that the ground is going to scream up at them," says Dino, Bernal's South African instructor who looks 15 years younger than his 38 years (see Einstein's twin paradox theory about aging slower at high velocities above the Earth). "It's the sensation of flying. You're doing 120 mph but you don't even realize it."

Dino has been sky diving for 17 years and has jumped all over the world but still struggles to describe the experience.
"There is nothing that we as people experience that we can say, 'It was like that," he says. "What does it feel like? You can't explain it and you can only say "Go out and do it."

Attached to Dino, Bernal is perched on the edge of the plane's open belly, staring at 2 ½ miles of empty space between her and the ground. Levy has already jumped and is flying somewhere over the east coast. Bernal is given the go-ahead to initiate the jump, and like she has done it a million times, executes the proper exit maneuver, achieves the arch, and joins an exclusive community of people who have gone swimming in the sky.

At 6,000 feet, she pulls the rip cord and spends around five minutes under the canopy sucking in a remarkable fish-eye view of Florida's aqua-blue coast. Dino teaches her how to control the parachute all the way to a soft landing, which she makes standing up.

"I felt awkwardly safe in the plane on the way up," Bernal recalls. "I kept thinking that my heart should be ripping through my chest, but the casualness of the people on the ground and on the plane jumping with me, in combination with what must have been boiling levels of adrenalin, put me in a calm state of mind. When I was sitting on the edge of the plane,it felt real natural and safe to jump ... this is going to be hard to explain to anybody who hasn't done it."

Bernal and Levy plan on devoting some free time to the training it will take to jump on their own. Levy says his eyes drift up to the sky once in a while, and he knows that it's inevitable he'll be falling from it in the future.

What kind of people jump out of planes? Or race cars? Or mountain climb? Lunatics with a death wish? Psychological studies actually find competitors in high-risk sports to be success-oriented people, highly extroverted and with above-average abstract ability. When compared to the general population, tests show they have superior levels of intelligence as well as emotional balance.

Maybe some people aren't meant to move through life with both feet constantly on the ground, at earthbound speeds with an everyday view. Maybe some brains need to know a different kind of more, and itch for the high-risk adventure somewhere in between daily life. Where do you stand? You may find that jumping out of a perfectly good plane makes a lot of sense to you.