Sudden impact

Not inclined to make this a hobby

I’ve been skydiving twice, which is probably enough for me. I understand that the bug bites some folks hard; there was a real subculture at work at Archway Skydiving Center, men and women who spend their weekends at the DZ suiting up and leaping out of perfectly good aircraft as cheerfully as others spend their leisure time on the links. I’m not one of them. One look at the expression on my face during my first jump, a basic static line experience, will show you a man unlikely to pursue this as a hobby.

This comes back to mind because of the remarkable story of Shayna Richardson, who ran into troubles galore during her first solo jump in October. Main chute failed. Reserve chute failed. Impact face-first at 50 miles an hour.

And - unbeknownst to her - she was pregnant.

That is one tough girl.

“Just this last week we went and saw the doctor and we’ve got arms, we’ve got legs. We’ve got a full face. The baby is moving around just fine. The heart rate looks good. So not only did God save me but he spared this baby,” she said.

Richardson’s own face is looking pretty good, all things considered:

“I went into the first surgery where they cut me from ear to ear and they cut my face down and they took out all the fractured egg-shelled bones and put in steel plates,” Richardson said.

Alrighty then! The mother-to-be is well, the child is due in late June, and the intrepid Richardson plans to make her next jump in August. You’re a better man than me, sister.

Note: It’s difficult to tell if the Shayna Richardson featured in the above story is identical to the similarly-intrepid (if less fully-garbed) Shayna Richardson featured here (and referenced here). You know, what with the goggles and all. And it’s hard to know when the picture was taken. But how many skydiving Shayna Richardsons can there be?

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