I had made the drive to Perris two days before only to get weathered out by clouds and low ceilings. Today the skies were clear and instead of finishing up my Christmas shopping, I decided to go skydiving.

It takes almost exactly one hour to travel from my home in Santa Ana to the drop zone in Perris. Even though it's an hour away and only 33.2 nautical miles in a straight line, the weather can be wildly different. At home the winds were about 10 knots out of the north, but by the time I reached Perris the winds had subsided to less than 3 knots -- light and variable. Not so much as a ripple in the windsocks.

Since it had rained the day and night before I decided it would be a good idea to check out the landing area and see how wet and muddy it was. Not bad. I'd landed in worse. The mud would cake up on the bottom of shoes, but other than that it wasn't as if you'd sink in and get stuck. The grass landing area looked fine but wet.

Still, I wasn't going to be the first to check it out. I'd let at least one load go up ahead of me and watch how they landed. I'm not as good as Maubeuge, the French professional team that was practicing that day, so I figured that if I saw them sliding around on the grass, I'd run it out on the harder packed mud nearby. Besides, I usually like to take a long time to put together and pack the gear I'm renting from Square One.

As I finished up packing I heard the familiar ripping of air of canopies opening, turned my eyes skyward and checked for malfunctions. 60 seconds later the members of Maubeuge swooped to perfect landings in the grass and I decided it was my turn.

Because it was a Monday on the first day of winter, the drop zone was lightly attended, but since Maubeuge was practicing it meant that at least 5 slots were already booked for every flight and I wouldn't have to wait too long before going up. As it turned out, of the 17 jumpers manifested on Shark Air #2, only 3 were actually from the United States. Makes me wish I'd taken French in High School.

At take off time the surface winds were still light and variable, temperature 55 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know exactly how cold it was at altitude, but 40 degrees colder would have been a good standard guess. Upper winds were 15 out of the north. Our jump run would be from south to north to maximize our time over the drop zone.

Red light, green light, "Door!" As the door opened up a blast of air recently imported from Alaska rushed through the Twin Otter. This is the time when I get really excited. The experience of simply riding in the airplane is a hint that I'm going jumping, but I never really wake up to the fact until the door opens and I feel the cold thin air.

First out is a three way of vacationers from France, then the four way plus video, Maubeuge, a couple more freeflyers from France, a Skydive University jump (Thanks for the pin check Grub!) and then me and two more soloists.

I check the spot and I'm right over the north end of the runway. Ready, set, go! I exit and watch the plane as I fall away. Turning toward the east I pick up a spot on the horizon, check my altimeter -- 11,000 -- and begin a series maneuver. Left 360, right 360, backflip, right 360, left 360, backflip. Altimeter check -- 8,000. My arms come to my side and I point my toes as I track east for a ten count and check the altimeter again -- coming down to 6,000. Assume another track to the east and this time really extend. I'm flying my body like a wing over the drop zone and I can see the ground moving under me.

It's time to stop flying and start stopping.

Altimeter check -- 4,000. Just at that time the audible altimeter in my helmet signals it's first preset. Right on. I spread my arms and legs in an attempt to aerodynamically slow down as much as possible before deploying my main parachute. I wave off and pull by 3,000. The Spectre 210 opens in it's trademark soft way, but winds up in a single line twist. I kick the line twist out and check my airspace. Clear, I head toward the landing area.

Suddenly it hits me that my ground speed is really up there. I'm moving REALLY fast and I need to crab more than 45 degrees to stay on course. Wait a minute, check that, crab almost 90 degrees -- hold on -- oh crap.

I'm flying directly into the wind and I'm continuing to back up. Sometime between the time I got on the plane and jumped out of it the winds popped up -- alot.

This Spectre has a forward flying speed of about 22 mph and I'm backing up over the ground. Crap, the winds are more than 22 mph. This ought to be interesting, I've never landed a parachute backwards before. I've trained for it, but never done it. A couple of feet off the ground I begin my flair -- kind of a mistake. Now I'm flying backwards faster than before. Touchdown isn't bad and I immediately drop a toggle so that the parachute will rotate itself into the ground.

At least, that was the plan.

Instead of simply rotating into the ground, the parachute begins to wind itself up into line twists and pulls me backward into the mud. I'm plowing the field for maybe 40 feet before I realize there is no way I can pull any lines to collapse this thing -- and it's now dragging me toward the runway -- and Shark Air is just about to land! I think of cartoons where the character runs into a fan and is chopped into pieces like baloney.

I pull the cutaway handle and the main comes off clean at about the same time Shark Air goes around.

I lay in the mud for a couple of seconds and watch the main float off like a giant blue octopus as the Twin Otter flies by with it's engines firewalled.

Any landing you can walk away from -- wait -- can I walk? Fingers? Toes? Yes! Just a little damage to my jumpsuit and pride.

Well, I wasn't the only person that ate some mud on that one and at least one person on the load had a landing worse than mine about a mile away. I learned a couple of lessons about judging and landing in high winds and I met the sequence maneuvers requirement for my B-license, so, it wasn't a total loss.

In fact, it was a pretty good skydive!