I had expressed to my friend, John that when he’s out skydiving without me, to please let me know when the day is over for him to text message me and let me know that he was back on the earth and fine.

I got a text message from him saying, “I’m ok. It wasn’t me.”

When you’re a skydiver, you don’t just have ‘friends’…you have a ‘family’.  Today we lost two of our skydiving family members.
There hasn’t been a time that I wasn’t at the drop zone that I didn’t look to the sky and see the bright orange canopies and feel a surge of pride knowing that such an elite team of jumpers shared our skies.  I was lucky enough to express my emotions to them about seeing them in their formation and how watching them brought tears to my eyes.  They always had words of encouragement and of course some teasing to go along with it.

I read on facebook tonight:

Love this sport for what it gives us, and hate it for what it takes away.

This sport has saved my life and made me a stronger person. It has also brought great sadness to my new family members and for that I am hurting for them.
For my land friends; I know what I do scares the hell out of you. Please know that I have been blessed with an instructor who would never allow me to jump from that plane if he didn’t trust me to save my own life.  I was introduced with a coach who has taught me the fundamentals of body control.  Even my friend, John, who we sometimes want to beat the crap out of each other, have learned to respect our limitations when it comes to the sky, will spend the next 50 years teaching me how to be safe in the sky and hopefully I can teach others that same thing in the years to come.

Blue skies to all my sky friends who are hurting and missing their orange canopy family.