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24
April – June 2013
www.deltalivingmagazine.com
By Charleen Earley
charleenbearley@gmail.com
I
went to job-shadow Aimee
Bower in May of last year
with my mind completely made
up that I would not, and I repeat
not, jump out of a completely
functioning airplane with her on
my back as a tandem skydive jump.
I gured I didn’t need to put my
life at risk, to gure out what she
does. My plan was to stay put in
the Beechcraft King Air airplane
and take notes from there. All in
the name of journalism.
However within minutes of
meeting Aimee – the only female
tandem skydiving instructor at Bay
Area Skydiving in Byron – I felt as
though I were in good hands and
agreed to watch the required video
about what a huge risk I was about
to undertake.As if I was in the dark
at this point.
I liked the fact that she was a
mom of two young girls (ages 11
and 14 at the time) and her quali -
cations were great. Currently with
over 3,370 jumps in the last 18
years under her (super tight) belt,
she also has a Class 3 medical cer-
ti cate issued by the Federal Avia-
tion Administration (FAA), which
is basically equal to a student pilot
medical, since the FAA considers
tandem instructors as pilots-in-
command.
I gured, as a mom of two
young ones, she still wanted to live.
After watching her suit up and
instruct four tandem jumpers be-
fore me, each individual jumps, I
desperately tried to memorize the
instructions, guring repetition
couldn’t hurt. And I couldn’t help
but laugh when she adjusted the
straps between the legs of one of
her male jumpers.
“Tell me if the couch is in the
middle of the living room!” she
asked him.
With humor, knowledge and
instructions, Aimee’s “down-to-
earth” disposition puts her jumpers
at peace with a decision most peo-
ple would advise against making.
“I’ve been told that I have a dif-
ferent way of changing the experi-
ence and making my students feel
at ease,”saidAimee,who also jumps
at Skydive Sacramento in Lin-
coln and lives in San Jose with her
husband Brad. “I think too many
instructors look at it as a job, ‘get
‘em up, get ‘em down and move
on,’ but I like to take the personal
time and remember that though
this might be my 3, 370th jump, it
is my student’s rst. And I do this
part-time for the fun of it, mostly
because it keeps the love in it.”
There I was, ascending to
13,000 feet above ground with
about a dozen other jumpers. Ai-
mee and I were last to drop, but
because everything moves so fast, I
couldn’t nd time to back out.Af-
ter Aimee made countless checks
and cross-checks, we found our-
selves at the threshold of jumping
into the clear blue skies on the
count of three.
I had no idea that after that rst
“leap of faith” – as Aimee refers to
it– that windy noise and apping,
gusty wind would immediately be
replaced by calm, peace and beauty.
The view of our California Delta
was epic. But beyond the beauty,
a huge sense of freedom overtakes
the mind, and just as Aimee assured
Feel the rush from 13,000 feet
Diving the
friendly
skies
Photos by Alex Cashman