One of the goals I set for 2016 was to throw myself out of a plane.  That is, to experience skydiving.

When I told my wife I wanted to do it, she was all for it. She has a friend who is really connected to the sport and has friends that run a company up in Lake Elsinore, I think.  She started to throw out ideas about getting a bunch of friends together, having a party afterwards, etc.  It was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to be alone when I did it because if I backed out at the last minute, I wanted me to be the only one who knew.

I have a pretty good track record of talking myself out of things that I perceive as being risky, even when the risk level is actually pretty low.  However, I started planning for the jump.  I researched a place nearby (the one out in Otay), cheap rates during the middle of the week, and had actually picked the day I was going to go, written down the directions, chosen a time.  I wanted to be sure it was a day that Mary was going to be working so I could just do it on my own.

And then, as it became more a reality, my heart began to skip beats. For years I’ve had something called “premature ventricular contractions” (or PVCs for short), extra, abnormal heartbeats.  It is generally a benign condition that I will have occasional bouts with, and have come to ignore them, pretty much knowing that it just means something is messing with my body’s electrical system and the heart is not getting the consistent messages it needs.  Stress, alcohol, dehydration all can contribute to starting off an episode that can last a few minutes,a few days, or even a few months.

But it’s still my heart, and while I don’t mind stressing it with a little exercise during an episode, it seemed to me that jumping out of a plane might be unwise while I was having symptoms.  So I scrubbed the first date I had chosen and decided to wait until I was symptom-free for a while.

And then it just sort of slid to the back burner of my mind.  The episodes still come and go, but I’ve had some pretty nice stretches of stability.  It’s just that when one of those stretches comes along, I don’t immediately think, “Hey, it’s a good day to jump out of an airplane!”

I really don’t think it’s the height thing.  I feel pretty secure with the idea that the guy I’m attached to values his life enough to make sure that I get to the ground safely.  I just want to feel a higher degree of confidence that my heart isn’t going to burst on the way down. It would really suck to only get to enjoy half of the experience.  I haven’t checked to see if my family would get a partial refund if I died half-way down.  I probably should ask.

So now, it’s an excellent goal for 2017, and I still have 8 months left to talk myself into or out of this particular five-minute thrill ride.