Above All Else, page 10
21
Discovering Arizona
AFTER MIKEY MOVED to Arizona, I wasn’t comfortable leaving my Cessna in Florida anymore. It wasn’t working enough anyway, so I went back to Tallahassee and flew it across the United States to Arizona. I was hoping Larry Hill would buy it, but he already owned one Cessna and had no reason to have a second one.
The only way I was going to be able to come up with the funds I needed for training was to sell the Cessna. All the money I had was in the plane. I wanted to sell the plane as quickly as I could but decided to take it for a flight all around Arizona while I still had the chance. I filled it with gas, loaded up my cooler, and took off before sunrise. I had just flown across the entire Southern United States, but no state I had flown over even came close to the awesome majesty of this place.
Flying over Southern Arizona looked like I was on the moon. It was flat and empty, with only a few scattered hills that broke the barren landscape. Passing Phoenix, it quickly became apparent that northern Arizona had a much different look to it.
Coming over the foothills of the central Arizona mountains, I had to climb higher and higher to maintain at least three thousand feet above the ground.
Farther ahead the mountains changed shape and turned a deep red color. I was approaching Sedona. I had heard about this ancient Indian holy ground but had never been there before. What an unearthly sight. The towering red rock mountains of Sedona reached up from the ground as if trying to touch the sky. I couldn’t help myself. I had to bring the plane to a lower altitude so that I could fly around and alongside of them.
The entire area seemed to be bursting with life and energy from everything: the hills, trees, mountains, valleys, canyons, and sky. The Force must be strong here. I promised myself that I would come back in my van and spend some more time there.
There was more of the awesome beauty of Arizona to enjoy as I left Sedona and flew up through Oak Creek Canyon towards Flagstaff. Continuing north, I could see the Grand Canyon out in front of me. If you ever wake up one day and feel a bit cocky and full of yourself, go fly a single-engine Cessna over the Grand Canyon alone. I have never felt as small and insignificant as I did in this tiny airplane surrounded by this enormous, beautiful canyon. As I reached the far east side of the canyon, I descended into the Painted Desert and flew at about ten feet off the ground and 130 mph for the next one hundred miles.
I pulled up as I was approaching the Superstition Mountains. Flying high above, I looked down into the canyons between the mountains and saw a series of lakes I never knew about. From west to east were Canyon Lake, Apache Lake, and Roosevelt Lake. I saw an old abandoned runway that ran north to south, perpendicular to and ending almost right into Roosevelt Lake.
The runway had big Xs painted on the ends, which are meant to signal that it’s closed. But it didn’t look too bad, so I did a slow flyby just a few feet above and alongside of it to check it out. It was fine to land a Cessna on, so I put it down there and then walked to the lake for a little picnic and swim. Another beautiful place I promised myself I’d have to come back to.
I took off and climbed fast to get over the mountains. Once I cleared them, I was nearly able to coast all the way back to Coolidge and arrived right as the sun was setting.
It was an incredible day. I saw things and places I had never seen before and discovered lands I couldn’t wait to visit again. I had never seen anywhere as beautiful as the places I saw that day. I was so glad I had taken the flight, knowing this could be my last chance for a while because I really needed to find a buyer for the plane as quickly as possible.
At nearly the same time, Larry was landing in the Twin Beech after returning home from a skydiving event in Rocky Point, Mexico. We both parked our planes and walked across the ramp, talking about our day. We stopped dead in our tracks, staring dumbfounded as we were hit with a very unusual sight.
Larry’s Cessna had crashed into the back of the wing of another Twin Beech that was parked on the ramp. Both planes were still sitting there as if they had just hit. The nose and propeller of the Cessna stuck halfway into the back of the wing of the Beech, and both planes were badly damaged.
One of the jumpers came running up to tell Larry what had happened. It turns out that the pilot of the Cessna and a World War II aviator had loaded up the plane with four jumpers and tried to start it. He couldn’t get the propeller to turn, so as is commonly done, he got out of the plane to “pull it through” a few times.
One important thing to do before pulling the prop through is to be sure that the key is “off” and the throttle is pulled back. He forgot that part. When he pulled the prop through, the engine started. Fortunately, he was able to dive out of the way before the propeller ripped his head off.
Unfortunately, the plane went to full power and started rolling for takeoff. The jumpers pulled back on the control yoke, thinking that might slow it down, but it doesn’t work that way. The plane was quickly accelerating but fortunately ran into the Twin Beech before it got up enough speed to take off.
As luck would have it, no one was hurt, and all involved would forever have one hell of a story which they were already at the campfire embellishing as we spoke. We could hear their celebration, and I couldn’t help but see the humor in it. I did my best to mask my feelings, considering that the aircraft owner would probably not think it was as funny as I did.
Larry stayed amazingly cool, basically unruffled. While still looking at his crashed plane and without missing a beat, he said to me, “So, how much did you want for your Cessna?” I handed him the keys and told him I’d trade it for my jumps. The deal was done.
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WITH ONLY A few months left before the nationals, the Fource had broken through the plateau and launched from there with the same accelerated pace of improvement we experienced early on. In May, we finally surpassed the highest level Fusion had ever achieved and were doing jumps faster and smoother than what I had done with the Gumbies. It felt great to be able to measure the results of our hard work with a time clock and a scoreboard.
22
1989 National
Skydiving Championships
IN THE MIDDLE of May, the Fource had left Coolidge, escaping the 115 degree heat, and headed to Skydance Skydiving Center in Davis, California, where we could enjoy a cool, comfortable 99 during our final training push. At a competition there, a few weeks before the nationals, we averaged 13. Our young team had come of age. We were finally putting up the scores it was going to take to be competitive with the top teams. We were ready.
Seven hundred seventy-nine jumps, 882 peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, 222 nights in the van, and three trips to Apache Lake later, the Fource was driving out to Muskogee, Oklahoma, for the 1989 National Skydiving Championships.
The 1,782-mile road trip from Davis to Muskogee gave me the chance to look back at the decisions I’d made and the amazing year those choices led to. I had sold everything I owned, my soul included, and spent every cent toward this effort. We had made the necessary sacrifices and worked our butts off. The Fource would be a force to be reckoned with at our first nationals.
I had followed my dreams and trusted that the answers and opportunities I needed would present themselves, and they did. I felt like I had recognized every good opportunity and made the most out of it. Considering the way everything had fallen perfectly into place, I had no doubt we would win. We had earned it and it was meant to be.
Right out the gate, it was a three-team race between the Fource, the army’s Golden Knights, and Deland Heat and Air captained by world champion Irv Callahan with Jack Jefferies. Everyone at the meet expected Deland and the Knights to be the forerunners. But no one had any idea that our rookie team from the desert would be able to go head-to-head with the big boys.
It felt like we were trading punches in a boxing match. We won a round, the Knights won two, Deland took the next one.
Some of the jumps were as good as any we’d ever done. Even the ones that came up short of our best weren’t too far off from it. Jump after jump, we were holding it together. It looked like it was going to go right down to the finish line.
Seven rounds into the ten-round meet, we were ahead of Deland and closing in on the army. As we were getting closer to the finish, the tension was mounting, but we were staying on it, slugging it out. In the eighth round, the jump was great, right on pace. Suddenly there was a hesitation: one member of our team “brain locked” and forgot what point it was and took the wrong grips on the formation. Another team member didn’t see we had the wrong point, and he moved on to the next formation while the rest were still trying to correctly build the first one. Everything went to hell, and the confusion that followed cost us a lot of time and points. Deland went ahead. The two remaining rounds weren’t enough to get the points back and change the standings.
The Fource finished in third place for the bronze medal with a 12.9 average, only a few points behind Deland. The army team was too strong for either of our teams. The Golden Knights took the gold.
The Golden Knights also won the 8-way event and were selected to represent the United States in both the 4-way and 8-way events at the world meet. Having tried and almost losing in both events at the 1987 world meet, they didn’t want to spread themselves too thin and risk losing everything. They chose only to do the 8-way and handed over the U.S. 4-way team slot to Deland.
The Deland team represented the United States at the 1989 world meet, but they couldn’t keep up with the dominant French team, who blew everyone away by scoring a 15.2 point average.
23
What’s It All About?
THE LOSS WAS crushing for the Fource. In training, we had given it all we had. Everything had come together so perfectly, like magic. I really believed it was meant to be: it was my fate—our fate. I was so sure we would win. To lose it all by just a few points in the last two rounds. I couldn’t believe it. It was over. We were out of money and out of time.
Skydivers had taken over the Muskogee airport that week. There were tents and trailers everywhere, and the closing festivities were coming to life all over the place. I was so looking forward to these post-meet parties, certain they would be the Fource’s victory celebration.
After the final round, people congratulated me and said things like, “You guys were the best team here,” and “I can’t believe how far you came in only one year.” “Amazing what you did with this team, Dan.” But as I saw it, we just had our butts kicked, and I was a sore loser.
The more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got. What the hell was I thinking anyway? I should have opened up a new skydiving school or quit skydiving altogether, and gone back to school. My dream had come to a dead end.
I threw my gear in the van, jumped in the driver’s seat, and turned the ignition key.
“Roll with It” by Steve Winwood instantly came on the radio.
It was perfect. I smiled and shook my head and laughed a bit at myself. When I had left Ohio, I had thought I was 150 percent focused on winning. Had I gone to Deland, I might have gotten on their team and would have been planning for the world meet right now. Looked like I had been right; that was by far the most likely route to winning the national championships and going to the world meet this year.
Instead I decided to go to Arizona and start a rookie team, which was a long shot at best. What was it I was after aside from that victory?
Maybe the real purpose was to truly prove to myself that if I confidently went after my dreams, everything would work out and come together as it should. Perhaps the real purpose was to give the world a chance to demonstrate to me that it deserved my confidence, faith, and trust in it.
I didn’t know what was going to come next, but decided to calm down, roll with it, and be confident that the answers would come to me. When they did, the choice would be mine. It didn’t take long. I quickly made a few decisions.
I decided that I liked having faith in the magic of the world, and I wanted to win the damn world meet too.
I decided I liked believing in the power of the force, and I wanted to fly faster than any team ever had.
I decided that I was capable of being the best, and I wanted to prove it in competition.
In my eyes there was nothing contradictory about these goals at all. They seemed to fit perfectly together to me.
24
The Fource 1990–1991
WHAT WAS IT going to take this time?
The next world meet wouldn’t be until 1991. To be selected as the U.S. team we’d have to win the 1991 U.S. nationals. So taking another shot at winning the World Championships was going to require a two-year commitment this time. Since we didn’t have enough money to pay for one year of training, paying for two years wasn’t any worse.
As much as I was on a mission to win the world meet, Larry was on a mission to build the best skydiving training center in the world. He knew that even with the best weather, airplanes, and facilities, he still needed a winning team, and the Fource was his best bet.
Skydive Arizona was starting to become more well known in the industry. Teams from around the world recognized what we had done with the Fource, coming from nowhere and in less than a year becoming competitive with the top teams. Since most new teams were also starting from nowhere, many of them wanted to know how the Fource accomplished what we did. More and more often, I was getting requests from teams to coach them.
Despite the progress of both the drop zone and the team, neither could afford to pay for the costs of team training. But I had a feeling that somehow, between Larry and me, we could find a way to make it happen. That’s what you do when you’re on a mission.
I was right. Larry had big plans for building up his facilities, and he needed manpower to do it. He offered to let the Fource jump for free if when we weren’t jumping, we would work as extra hands toward any job he needed doing, including construction, aircraft cleanup, and maintenance and basic janitorial services.
That first year, we had each found a way to come up with enough money to support ourselves, so when we finished training at the end of the day, we could retire to our vans, trailers, campfires, and relax. Days off had been ours to do with as we pleased. Now at the end of our training days and on our days off, we would be elbow-deep in drop zone projects that could range anywhere from yard work to airplane motors to cleaning toilets.
Did we want it badly enough to do what it was going to take?
Yup, the Fource was in, but with a few changes. We had to replace Jeff. When we were training in Skydance prior to the nationals, there was a local team training there called the Blade Runners. One of the team members was George Jicha. George was also from Ohio, seven years older than me, and in active duty in the military. We didn’t get to spend that much time together during the weeks we were in Skydance, but I can usually tell a lot about people by how they act with their team, when they’re training, and in competition. And from what I could tell about George, I wanted him on the Fource.
After the nationals, George had mentioned to me that if the Fource continued and I had an open slot on the team, he would be interested in filling it. I didn’t see how a career army man, already at the rank of major, was going to be able to drop everything and join our little band of gypsies.
But a dose of army discipline would definitely do the Fource some good, so I called his bluff. By phone, I told him about the plan and what was going to be involved in making it happen. George entered inactive army reserves and moved to Coolidge. Wow, now that guy wants to win. Or he was just nuts.
Our cameraman, Mark Price, was also ready to move on. I had met Richard Stuart, an Australian skydiver who had also shown interest in being the cameraman on a full-time team. Team training could become pretty intense at times, and I was sure that Richard’s easygoing attitude, quick wit, and wacky sense of humor would be a good addition as well. If nothing else, it would certainly add balance to what the “major” brought to the team. And since Richard already lived in his van he affectionately called “Henry,” I knew he’d fit right in. One call and he was ready to go to.
It took us a few months before we had everything arranged and were back to training.
That year, Piras was back on the Deland team with Jack Jefferies. They were also aiming for the 1991 world meet, and they had collected the best flyers from the rosters of their past few years of teammates. The Golden Knights returned as strong as ever with mostly the same lineup. The final scoreboard at the end of the 1990 nationals was a repeat of 1989: Golden Knights number 1, Deland number 2, the Fource number 3. We still got the bronze medal, averaging 14.2 to the Golden Knights’ 15.4.
We now had two years under our belts and had built a strong team. The year 1991 was going to be our winning year. We had also decided that, win or lose, it was also going to be our last year.
The world meet was scheduled for July in Czechoslovakia. This was earlier in the summer than was usually the case, so the United States Parachute Association planned to hold an early “selection meet” to pick the U.S. team in May.
We were ready. For a month leading up the meet, we were skydiving smoother, better, and faster than we ever had before. We arrived at the nationals with more confidence than any year past.
We came out swinging from the first round and outscored everyone. After five rounds we were 5 points ahead of Deland and 7 ahead of the Golden Knights. Jump by jump, we were knocking them out. We just had to stay steady and strong. This was it. Finally, at my eighth national championships, the gold medal was clearly within reach.
The way the rules were in 1991, if on a jump someone misses a grip or takes the wrong grip, the team would receive a three-point penalty (now it is only a one-point penalty).
Round six was off to a great start. We came out the door and kicked it right into gear, perfectly in synch. The points were going by fast. On each formation we picked up grips simultaneously and broke them together almost instantly. But, building one particular formation in the sequence, one of us picked up a grip on the right leg that was supposed to be on the left leg, three times. We lost nine points in one round and moved into third place.
