 Mid Life
Crisis
Larry LaBorde
Dec 19, 2006
As my 50th birthday looms closer
and closer I am struck by the fact that in all probability my
life is half over (or more). I find myself picking up books titled,
"The 500 Places To Visit Before You Die". I examine
my life, and think of things done as well as things yet to do.
I list my life goals, work on a life plan for my remaining years
and sit down and plan 6 trips to take in the coming year. Yep,
this sounds like a mid life crisis to me! So I sit and ponder
my life and decide I have to make a few changes. I decide I need
to break the mold - to do something completely out of character.
Look death in the face and laugh. And then it hit me. I learned
how to fly at 16 years old and every now and then I would run
across sky divers at the airport. My standard line was "you
have to be crazy to jump out of a perfectly good airplane".
I now knew what I had to do to stretch my life and break out
of my rut.
I went home that evening to
my own personal little goddess and announced to Puddy that I
would be "jumping out of a perfectly good airplane"
this coming Sunday afternoon. As usual she looked at me once
again with a skeptical eye, thought for a moment and said, "absolutely
not... without me".
For those of you who truly
know my little unassuming, mild-mannered wife of almost 30 years
this should not surprise you. She has learned to fly, traveled
the world with me, bareboat chartered and sailed around the Caribbean
(she was the captain with the bareboat certificate), rides her
motorcycle, has gone white water rafting, zip lined through the
jungle in Costa Rica, been my spinnaker trimmer while racing
sailboats all over the US, enjoys shooting automatic assault
rifles, has driven big trucks, operated heavy equipment, bore
our 2 children and raised them, put up with me (and my poor dancing)
for most of my life and in general has been a pretty good partner
who is always up for just about anything. [Editor's note: I notice that scuba
diving isn't in the PudList, Larry, so why don't you guys treat
yourselves to a visit to my and Bob's new 'abode;' Compass
Point "roll out of bed onto a dive boat"
-- the Ocean
Frontiers' dive resort in Grand Cayman -- and dive into 2007.]
So when we showed up in Gilliam,
LA to meet with Bill Geaslin of Skydive Louisiana (318-464-5867)
he was pleasantly surprised to hear that both of us would be
jumping that afternoon. I lost the coin toss so I went first.
I elected to have a photographer jump with us so he could get
a video of the jump so we could laugh about it later. (If you
jump, get the video!)
Bill explained that if we wanted
to free fall that we would have to jump tandem the first 3 or
so times. I didn't want a static line jump because I wanted to
experience the free fall so I elected the tandem jump. Bill,
who also sells life insurance when he isn't jumping out of airplanes
for fun, helped me into a "flying squirrel" suit with
a padded helmet. He then fitted me with a harness arrangement
that would connect us together just before we jumped. I walked
to the small Cessna airplane with Bill, the pilot and our photographer
and off we went.
The climb to 10,000 feet or
almost 2 miles high took about 15 minutes. As we climbed higher
my little heart started beating faster. I watched the altimeter
slowly wind up to 10,000 feet with butterflies in my stomach
knowing full well that my appointment with Mr. Gravity was getting
closer and closer. Bill moved over and strapped himself to me
and we gave each other a thumbs up sign. The pilot cut the power
and slowed the plane, the door was thrust up and the photographer
climbed out into the slipstream and held onto the wing strut
just fluttering and waiting for us to jump.
I sat at the door, put my feet
on the step over the wheel faring and felt the wind almost drag
me out of the plane. Bill leaned over and yelled into my ear,
"READY". I said yes. He yelled, "READY" again.
I said, "yes let's go". He yelled back, "YOU HAVE
TO LET GO OF THE DOOR FRAME".
I sheepishly realized that
my survival instincts were in full operational mode and that
I was hanging on for dear life. I let go and then out the door
we tumbled. We turned a full flip and a half before I got oriented
and realized that we were plummeting towards earth at a pretty
good clip. Later Bill checked and said we were falling at about
128 miles per hour. We fell from 10,000 feet down to 5,000 feet
before we opened the parachute.
The photographer was just a
few feet from us shooting video the entire time until the parachute
opened. The wind buffeted my face and distorted it so that I
looked like a cartoon character on the video. I've got to remember
to put "face lift" on that list of things to do after
looking at the video. After falling about a mile in a little
less than half a minute Bill opens the chute and with a sudden
jerk we are now still falling towards earth but at a much slower
speed. I immediately looked around for the photographer and he
was a little speck below us still racing to earth. As I watched
him fall towards the ground getting smaller and smaller the thought
of Willie Coyote falling off a cliff flashed before my eyes.
Oh well, he seemed like such a nice guy. Then right before it
seemed like he was going to make a big splat he opened his parachute
at 2,000 feet, landed and took more video of us as we slowly
spiraled down, set up our approach and landed on the edge of
the runway. It's been a couple of weeks since the jump and I
still have a big goofy grin stuck on my face.
Bill ran back to the hangar
and grabbed a spare parachute, put Puddy in her "flying
squirrel" suit, jumped in the Cessna and before I knew it
was taking off again for his second jump of the afternoon. When
Puddy landed she too had a funny grin stuck on her face.
Ever since I jumped over into
the second part of my life I have vowed to make each day count.
We just don't know how much time God has allotted to each of
our lives and we shouldn't waste a single one. While I like to
think I have always lived a full life I know now that I have
been running around in 2nd gear.
Look out world, I am shifting
into overdrive for the second half!
Larry LaBorde
 Silver Trading Company
318-470-7291
website: www.silvertrading.net
email: llabord@aol.com
Larry lives in Shreveport, LA with his wife Puddy, and sells
precious metals at the Silver Trading Company.
Larry can be contacted at llabord@aol.com. You can view his web
site at www.silvertrading.net.
Send questions, comments or corrections to llabord@silvertrading.net.
"Please note that I am by no means a financial advisor and
all investments should only be made after performing your own
due diligence." -Larry
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