Not Another Danger Boy: Past Prequel

By Dan Combs

Book five in a series of autobiographical short stories based on life-changing events: surviving a skydive, fronting a rock band, working the World Series. You know; the once-in-a-lifetime stuff!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Combs
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005208165

Dan Combs

Dan Combs was born in Pontiac, adopted by a loving couple, and moved to Lansing. He spent eighteen years there before following his inner wanderer across the U.S. and - so far - Europe. Musician, Composer, Screenwriter, Playwright; currently living in Manhattan and loving every opportunity the city of New York offers.

Book preview

Not Another

D A N G E R

B O Y

Past Prequel

Copyright 2022 Dan Combs

Published by Dan Combs at Kindle Direct

Table of Contents

acknowledgements

Waiting For A Thrill

Santa Rosa Days

Another Rock Star

Walking To Work

Houston, We Have A Problem

Love, Johnnie

Basketball Man

More Jobs

San Fran Deal

Flagger

Reunion

Bonus

About The Author

Connect with Dan Combs

Acknowledgements

Julie, Jennifer, Wiley and Kelly, Orange Grove Emporium, Lisa, Orange Grove High School, Heather, Sissy, Brooklyn Writers, Alexis, New York Writers Circle, Hiram, Steve and anyone else who encouraged me to do this and wouldn’t let me off the hook until I did.

WAITING FOR A THRILL

Jumping at Sky Dive Lodi always made me a little nervous. Most of the tiny airports that house a company dedicated to getting skydivers to various altitudes and then back safely on the ground are located far from civilization, away from power lines and traffic, houses and buildings. Not here. If you wanted to put yourself at risk while parachuting from fourteen thousand feet, SDL was the place. Whoever decided to open a drop zone in this district was either nuts or a genius. Genius, in that jumpers had no trouble finding or getting to this facility. Nuts, because the landing spot was only a football field or so from a major freeway. And you had to almost fly over all four lanes on your approach, prevailing winds blowing from the opposite direction.

Landing while facing the wind is preferable but not essential.

Today’s parachutes are feats of engineering, rectangular sheets of high-tech material that inflate as you drop from the sky. They are equipped with nylon handles used by the operator to steer themselves from wherever they choose to open their chute to a predetermined area, often an open field of short grass, mowed regularly so you don’t get any of the longer blades stuffed up your nose. A large, square plot of tilled soil is also a good place to land. Grass is better in the rainy season. There is no joy in skidding to a stop in the mud, then sloshing your way over to find a dry spot on which to repack your chute.

Old-style parachutes are round with no way to steer. Using them puts one at the mercy of the wind. Jumping at an airport near a major road wearing one of those puppies would be suicide.

One of my least favorite skydiving memories involves a bad day at Lodi. Although, it started out well enough. Exiting the freeway after the long drive from San Francisco, I parked in their gravel lot, hustled inside, and notified the staff of my arrival. I hadn’t been able to get a morning reservation, which I didn’t think would be a big deal. I like to be in the first instruction class of tandem jumpers, because an early arrival leads to quickly getting in the air, up to altitude, and out the door of what is often a Queen Air prop plane.

I was given the usual set of waiver forms to sign and initial. Lots of wordy legalese to read or, in my case, ignore. Zipping through the signing, I handed them in and went to sit with the other members of my class. Some places are more formal, some less, some barely do more than strap a harness on you and show you to the tarmac. This operation was about in the middle. The five of us sat on chairs and an old couch while our instructor slotted a video tape into a VCR.

I’m Kimbell. Pay attention to this thing, and I’ll be back to go through the mechanics of what you’ll be doing.

Now, tandem skydiving was, and probably still is, considered an experimental sport. Labeling it as such exempts it from certain rules set down by the FAA. When solo jumping you have to take and pass a seven step course, prove you can do what is called relative work which is diving with others and linking arms to make patterns, and, if you want to jump anywhere other than at the drop zone where you trained, pass a written test. Then you get your license and can parachute wherever you want.

I’d seen this video many times and it always cracks me up. One camera, a static shot of a man with a long gray beard - long, like down-to-his-waist long, I mean, a super hippie kind of thing - who drones on in a monotone voice, telling you about how he wanted to create a way for people to experience the thrill of skydiving without having to go through a full training course. I don’t know how many times this guy had to say his lines to get a good version but it sounds like if he has to do one more take, he’s going to keel over.

Kimbell returned, shut off the VCR, and said, If you’ll follow me, we’ll run through the basics.

This is another part of the tandem experience I’d witnessed many times. I think it was the main reason I finally took the training and got my own chute. To avoid it.

Gather around, please, Kimbell said, waving his arms in a circle. You need to think of what is happening when you fall through the air. Lots of wind resistance. The way to minimize that resistance and remain stable is to arch your back. He did just that, looking up at the ceiling of the large hanger we were in. Everybody try it.

We copied his motion as he walked around the group to check our technique. There were other parts of this course that have become so routine for me I zoned out, thinking more about how cold it was going to be up at fourteen thousand feet.

I laughed as a memory popped to the surface of my mind. Allison and I were at another drop zone, listening to this same spiel, when the instructor thought it necessary to step behind her and push on the small of her back. I guess he didn’t think she was arching enough. Then when she’d straightened up, casually draped his arm over her shoulders, and continued on with our lesson. I could see Allison fuming as his hand dangled just above her left breast, her anger growing. At the precise moment when I knew she was going to turn around and smack this idiot, he stopped talking and let go of her.

Okay, said Kimbell. We’re running a little behind, so hang tight and I’ll be back when it’s your turn.

And so we waited.

I didn’t know any of my fellow students, but I tried to at least acknowledge them with some conversational gambits. Two had come out together and moved off to wander around the space, the rest of us sat on the couch or in chairs. There were no more tandem classes scheduled so we weren’t interrupting, unlike this delay in my attempt at stress relief, doing its best to stop me from literally throwing my cares to the wind.

Trying to think of anything to pass the time, my thoughts drifted back to another day I’d spent waiting, over at Skydance in Davis, southwest of Sacramento. We were hoping the wind would die down enough to get in a few jumps.

Even parachutes you can steer are dangerous when the breeze gets above twenty miles an hour, which is the average speed square chutes travel in a forward direction on a calm day. That’s why you want to approach the landing zone while facing the wind. If it’s at the right speed, you slow down enough to hit the ground running or, sometimes, float in like a butterfly. Think of those skydivers who soar into a football stadium at the end of a halftime show, trailing red, white, and blue smoke. But if the wind is traveling faster than you are, it’s easy to get blown off course. This can lead to the multiple tragedies of getting tangled in power lines or hitting a building or landing in deep water, thus our wait because you aren’t allowed to jump in high wind.

I’d gotten to know a few of the folks at Skydance. It’s where I’d done my Accelerated Freefall course, two days of jumping out of everything from a tiny Cessna to a spacious Queen Air, being shown what to do, and, when I screwed up one part of the training, what I’d done wrong.

Alright, anybody who wants to head over to Lodi, said Barney over the loudspeaker, we’ll be taking off in ten minutes.

Lodi? I asked Philip. He and his girlfriend, Jamie, were a bit ahead of me in the process of getting a license, already having done some relative work.

Yeah, he answered. Sometimes the wind is calmer there. I think it has to do with what direction it’s blowing. But there’s no guarantee. It could be worse by the time we get there.

You going? Jamie asked.

No, I said. With my luck, a tornado will touch down right after we land.

So, I wandered around the facility.

There were some great black and white photos on the walls of the main office. Lots of smiling people, gliding through the air, without a thought to the danger they were flirting with. I spent some time looking at them, as well as these amazing color shots of world record jumps, showing a huge number of people exiting a military transport, grabbing each other’s arms, and locking legs in these intricate shapes. I’d watched the local groups practicing, my favorite being Cosmic Debris, not only for their name but because they used these small carts, like mechanics lie back on to get under a car. They would go belly down and rehearse their moves, wheeling back and forth, spinning in rhythm to get the timing just right.

The plane heading for Lodi took to the air as I stopped by the area where I’d been taught how to pack a chute, an open spot covered with a roof held up by four poles at the corners to shield the packer from the sun. Under that roof were six long, narrow platforms, say, three feet off the ground and twenty feet long. I walked over to sit under a tree, waiting patiently, not thinking of anything, letting my brain rest, an image of a stellar nebula at the edge of the Milky Way filling my mind’s eye, shadows moving slowly across the ground, from west to east.

Bored.

I got up and went over to a large building across from the office. The only time I’d been inside it, I was doing classwork for my freefall lessons. Until that first day of training, I didn’t know there were so many ways to die while jumping. I wonder if anyone discovering all those means of ending your life stops at that point and walks away, never to return.

I opened the door.

Hey, dude. A guy I’d seen but hadn’t been introduced to was rummaging through a bunch of video tapes on a shelf. You gotta see this.

Yeah, said a man who went by the name Bungee. He was a pilot, infamous for his love of flying under bridges. If we gotta wait around here, might as well be entertained.

Bungee pulled one of the many folding chairs over so he could sit in front of a large television while his buddy popped in the tape. I joined them as he sat down next to Bungee. I had no idea what I was about to see. The tape looked homemade, nothing to lead off the show, like a title or music. Definitely not professional. Static, then a handheld camera’s eye view of the room we were in.

Whoever is filming says, Rupert, get over here.

A tall guy wanders into frame. Wait. I know him. He was one of my trainers. He showed me how to go from pulling a ripcord to using this tiny drogue chute that tucks into a pouch on your flight suit. He was from South Africa, and a bit of a clown. When we were in freefall I suddenly lost sight of him. I looked all around and finally saw him lying on his back right above me. He’d found my blind spot and was hiding up there. He laughed. I checked my altimeter, tossed my drogue, and floated to the ground, the last step in my training completed.

Two women join Rupert, a short blonde, her long hair falling in waves over her shoulders, and a taller brunette with short hair in tight curls. Both of them are wearing jeans and t-shirts. The blonde produces a plain white t-shirt from behind her back and looks into the camera. I’ll call her Sky Girl. The brunette is her sidekick, Jumpy.

Since our good friend, Rupert, is leaving us, she says with an exaggerated pout, we decided to send him off in style.

Bungee said, They caught him overstaying his work visa. Deported his ass.

Sky Girl reaches up with the t-shirt and gets it over Rupert’s head. He finishes the job, stretching it down onto his slender frame. Jumpy then takes off her shirt. Yep. No hesitation, no bra. Sky Girl follows suit. There they are, topless. The camera guy holds out a jar of some red substance. Jumpy grabs it, pops off the lid, and sticks two fingers inside. She pulls them out to show they are covered in red paint, which she then smears on her breasts.

Okay, I said, sitting up in my chair.

They’re just getting started, said Bungee.

And indeed they are. Sky Girl sticks her fingers in a jar of blue paint, and, in imitation of her sidekick, adorns her bare boobs. The two of them grab Rupert and give him a big hug, his face clearly showing his approval. They step back to reveal their breast prints on his shirt, perfect copies, including their now prominent nipples. This goes on for a while, each woman taking turns stamping prints on different areas, Rupert’s grin stretching wider with each image.

I thought to myself, Now, this is a great way to pass the time.

What we were watching must have been filmed recently. I hadn’t done my training that long ago. And if what I’d just seen wasn’t enough, the camera guy follows the girls into a shower in the next room to film them washing off the water-based paint. They decide to strip down to their skin to make sure they’ve done a proper job.

The door opened and Jamie stuck her head in.

They’re back, she said, and closed the door.

Bungee jumped up, ejected the tape, set it on the shelf, and shut off the VCR.

He turned to me and said, No talk about this, okay. Barney doesn’t know, and he doesn’t need to know.

I nodded and joined hm as he and his friend hightailed it out of there. By now the sun was nearing the horizon. And, most importantly, the wind had died down. There was a mad rush to get one last jump in before it got too dark. I don’t know how many of us were crammed into that plane, but it was packed, our voices excited, hooting and hollering as we got to altitude.

Out the door.

Being so high in the air made it seem like we’d turned back time, the sun now far from setting. As I fell the clock began to move forward again, speeding up as I got closer to the ground, the sun growing redder as it sank, painting the clouds a deep orange. I did a couple flips and spins, checked my altimeter, and waited a few more seconds than I would normally, wanting to stretch the moment out as long as I could.

I threw my drogue chute, canopy popping, lines pulling tight. Silence. I love that moment when the wind howling in my ears at a hundred miles an hour falls to nothing. I hung there, gently steering my chute toward the landing zone, again letting my mind rest. It was twilight by the time I set down, the sky shading to blue-gray.

Barney had run to the convenience store and picked up a case of beer. I sat on the front porch of the office, sipping, listening to the light talk among this group of adventurers, about what they hoped would be a decent Monday at work, many of us only weekend daredevils.

A good day in my sky life.

Unlike the one in Lodi, where we were still waiting to get on a plane. I wouldn’t even have been there if the certification on my emergency chute hadn’t lapsed. You’re required to get it inspected and repacked every year. Yes, I know, it was my own fault. I guess what I call The Line Twist Incident had more of an effect on me than I was aware. Skydiving is a dangerous sport. Accidents happen all the time. Deadly ones. My days of solo skydiving were likely over. Odds, it’s all about odds.

Last tandem group, to the tarmac, Kimbell called from the wide door of the hanger.

Our tandem partners were waiting as the Queen Air taxied into position. They looked us over to see who would best fit whom, height being the main consideration.

A man about my size held out his hand and said, I’m Moses. Let’s get onboard.

We climbed up the steps, got in, and sat on a bench at the right side of the plane, me in front. Everyone else joined us, the few solo jumpers boarding last as they would be the first out. Moses clipped my harness to his while going over what was about to happen. The ride up took what felt like an hour. Most of the other folks made their way out of the plane. Then it was our turn to slide forward, stand, and work our way to the exit. I put my toes on the edge of the open doorway, looking out at the sky and down at the ground.

One! Moses yelled in my ear as we rocked forward. Two! he shouted as we rocked back.

I told him on the way up that I’d done this many times before so there was no need for him to say three, we just fell out. I’d also told him that I wanted to do some aerobatics. He did his best to grant my wish but, either because he wasn’t in the mood or lacked experience, the flight was a bit on the dull side. Open. Under canopy. He loosened my harness and gave me the steering lines. Standard procedure.

Hey, can I do a turn? I asked.

Don’t see why not, he replied.

I don’t know what got into me but I whipped us into a spinning dive, the ground