Today was a day unlike any other day of my life. In the 12 hours since I jumped out of a perfectly flying airplane at 18,000′ feet I’ve been thinking about how I describe the experience. After talking to my friend Curt about it we agreed: we need at least 10 more jumps before we can start to explain it.
As a result, I’m not going to even attempt to describe the jump (at least not in this post – maybe later when I feel like I can explain the awesomeness a little better). What I do want to do, however, is tell you about some of the people that I met today while at Skydive Monterey. Specifically Ryan Ellis and Steve Rafferty (who only goes by ‘Raff’ and who said that he’s willing to bet that most of the people he works with don’t know his 1st name).
Ryan greeted us when we arrived and led us thru all of the paperwork that we had to fill out. Basically if anything happened to us it was our own fault. I’m usually not OK with signing such papers, but I was going to be jumping out of a plane, so I signed. Turns out Ryan had non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, which is currently in remission. He went thru the whole treatment battle, chemo, radiation, etc… but talk about someone who’s positive about it!
Ryan then introduced me to Raff. Raff was going to be the one who was in control of my life while we jumped. While my jump today was my 1st, it was Raff’s 13,261st jump. Yup, OVER 13,000 jumps! I was in good hands! Turns out that Raff is a cancer survivor as well… a 2 time non-Hodgkins Lymphoma survivor! Apparently he also had “a side order of melanoma” that he beat as well. Raff is the personification of what the 29 Days Until 29 journey is all about: making positive connections, living life as best as you can, and sharing it with as many people as you can.
When Raff was getting chemo, he looked around at the people surrounding him at the hospital and saw every spectrum of life; it was then that he really realized the difference between state of mind and state of body. I took a full 3 pages of notes on Raff and I hope that today was the start of a lifelong friendship with an amazing man. I’ll leave you with some of the best lines I’ve heard; all courtesy of Raff.
* Live until you die. * You can have a great living and a lousy life or a great life and a lousy living. * We don’t skydive to escape life, we skydive so that life doesn’t escape us.
Thank you Raff. Thank you Ryan. Thank you Jackie. Thank you EVERYONE at Skydive Monterey for the experience of a life time. I give you my word that I’ll be back! Oh, and Raff, you need to write a book!
December 2, 2010
Drew,
I chanced upon your story minutes ago. Sorry to say I haven’t heard it before. Your endevor is truly inspiring. I know from first hand experience the incedious nature of this disease, losing my wife of 23 years to Rectal Cancer after a 4 year battle in 2001. She was a Waynesboro native and I happen to be from Rockville (just West of Richmond). There’s much more to the story but too much for now as I’m leaving shortly from Jacksonville, FL to drive home.
My main purpose however is to invite you to be my guest at Shenandoah Valley Soaring in Waynesboro for an unforgettable flight. I promise you it will be equally as memorable as skydiving (I’ve also done a tandem jump). I imagine you probably still have a “craw full” of flying at the moment so there won’t be any time limits on my invitation…. but, I promise you this is an entirely different experience. We are a club of 50+ members. You can view our web site @ http://www.svsoar.org. I hope to hear from you (whenever) by email or phone 804 347-6848c. My very best wishes, Ben Johnson.