We got to the private airstrip in the wide, dry nothing somewhere outside the city. I was so dehydrated and wrung out, I couldn’t even comprehend all this information the guy was giving me. Something about “blah blah tandem instructor—blah blah jumping at thirteen thousand feet—blah blah freefalling for the first mile on the way down.” And I’m sitting there like What the fuck have I gotten myself into? And then they strapped the whole apparatus on me, and shit got real. I was 100 percent sober, and I was scared.
