Skydiving

NOTHING WRONG WITH A LITTLE ADRENALINE RUSH By David Shriver

A group of my friends are all meeting this morning ,and heading over to Clewiston so that they can jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I can’t find any fault with that ,because I have been kind of an adrenaline junkie all my life.
I got my first Harley when I was fifteen years old, and put eighteen hundred miles on it before I turned sixteen and could get my drivers license. All those miles weren’t just aimlessly driving around either. I scouted out the best parking spots in the county --but that’s another story.
I was one of the very fortunate to have grown up in the muscle car era.
I baled hay for an alfalfa mill to make money for my cars and I had a lot of them.
Numerous 55 chevys,One two door post with a 327 out of a corvette with a crane cam, and Chrome fender well headers--I ran It on the dragstrip.I had a 61 Chevy convertible with a 348 cu. inch engine, A 66 Buick Grand Sport with a 400 big block 4speed and Positraction,a 61 Corvette, and the car I was famous for --A maroon 65 GTO That was fast --Really fast. Well with all these fast cars I had it only made since that they would take me to the Race track and of course they did.
I started out racing stock cars, then went to late models, Then one Sunday at Eldora Speedway(owned now by Tony Stewart)The fastest one half mile dirt track in the country, I was in the infield, and a Sprintcar,while doing time trials, caught a rut, got into the back wall, and started flipping end over end down the entire backstretch. You could see the drivers arms straight out over his head as the inertia pulled them to outstretched position. It was the most terrible ,most violent crash I had ever seen. I knew right then I had to drive one.
I drove Sprint cars for six years, got upside down on numerous occasions, into the wall more times than I want to think about, But other than some bruised knees after a spectacular straight into the wall flip at Eastbay one night, I never got hurt.
So one day I’m with my son-in-law and grandson Brady, out on lake Panosofkee in his Ranger bass boat with the 200 hp Mercury and we are all planed up and Son in Law says we were hitting sixty five miles per hour. Well right then Son in law yells over to me and says Hey Grandpa why don’t you just jump out?
Well really at the time it seemed like a perfectly good idea so I did.
When I came to, The boat had already turned around and were beside me. I must not have been knocked clear out because I wasn’t wearing a life jacket and I didn’t drown. So I crawl back in the boat and my son in law is just laughing his A__ off Saying he can’t believe I did that and all that stuff, and says you want to do it again? So I say no, not right now, not saying I would never do it again just needed a while to let the concussion heal a little .
So my friends that are jumping out of perfectly good airplanes with a parachute today, I don’t see anything wrong with that. I saw a guy in a movie jump out with out a parachute and freefall to catch another guy that had two. He caught up with him put the parachute on ,pulled the rip chord then floated down to the ground.
Hmmmm. Naw I better stay home.