tbarnes10

Yeah that's what I was looking for. I've been trying to have a realistic understanding of what happened from an experienced persons point of view, but since I have no past experience with this I really have no frame of reference for any of this. I only have 1 jump, and so I know almost nothing about skydiving in general. I want to thank everyone for their responses because it helped me put this experience in perspective. It being my first jump the whole thing would have been exciting and terrifying, regardless of what happened. Seeing how experienced jumpers feel about the situation is interesting and something I can't relate to, but it helps me see the situation for what it really was. I'm just getting started with this and so I don't really know much. Getting the perspective of someone who has done this more than once has been really informative. From what I've understood it's an unfortunate first experience that would terrify almost any first time jumper, but it probably isn't as serious as I'm making it out to be in my head, and that my instructor knew what he was doing and handled the situation very well, and while I may not have known what was going on, he had the situation under control. It might be a while before I go again, but I guarantee it won't be my last and I hope to one day be able to do a solo jump. Everyone here has helped me move on from my somewhat eventful first experience and for that again I want to say thank you. (on a side note: my first ever jump was just outside Santiago, Chile, and it was an amazing view. I could see the Pacific Ocean in the west and on the east I could see Argentina. It was amazing and I hope to do it again sometime soon. I may not be able to see across an entire country on my next jump, but I'm still looking forward to it just as much.)

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I never even considered a lawsuit. Especially since it was in a country I no longer live in. I'm only really curious about the safety aspect of what happened. During the experience I was terrified, but that's what the backup chute is for. I know there's a backup in case of emergencies, but considering that the first time I've ever jumped I had to use the backup has made me feel really nervous about going again. I just want to see the opinions of some experienced jumpers and what they would take away from my experience.

Hopefully this is the right place to post this: Ok I've only been skydiving once, but I had an incident and ever since I've been curious as to just how serious the problem was. I'll try and describe it as best I can, but I apologize for my very limited knowledge. So me and some friends decided to go skydiving, and this was my first time ever doing it. I was pretty nervous, but was also really excited because I had always wanted to try. So this is what happened. Since I had never jumped before I was doing a tandem jump with someone who was employed by the company. We jumped out and everything seemed fine. He pulled the first part of the parachute (the small one, I think it's used for balance or stability, but I don't really know) and the line wrapped around my leg. So we are falling and I have part of the parachute wrapped around my leg, I try to get it off, but it's too tight and so eventually he pulls the backup parachute. This loosens the slack enough so that I can untangle myself. The tandem guy seemed worried that I had broken my leg, but other than some bruising I was fine. Basically I'm just curious as to how serious this problem was. I've told people what happened (who are not skydivers) and they almost seem surprised that I'm still alive. I stayed calm during all of this because I knew I couldn't do anything and I trusted the trained professional to know what to do. I'm just wondering if all of this is just a really good story to impress friends or if this could have really been something serious. On a side note because of this incident the company offered to let me go again for free and this was an almost $300 experience. Also the tandem guy (who had done this hundreds of times before) had said this was the first time something like this had ever happened to him. I also paid for some photos and video of the jump that they refused to give to me. All of this leads me to feel like this was more than just a small accident. Thanks for any advice or help. Despite what happened I really want to try this again. It was one of the most exciting things I've ever done and it gave me a story I'll probably be telling for the rest of my life.