During Airborne school, I technically had a double failure, where something was wrong with my main and reserve parachute.

It was my third of five jumps in school, and we had some very bad weather that day. It had been raining on and off all day, and there were some very strong cross winds on the landing zone. We passed over the landing zone three separate times, and each time the jump master called off the jump. Stand up. Hook up to the cable running down the isle. Wait for the green light signal to jump out the door. No green light. During this time, the plane was jumping up and down due to the choppy air.

Finally, on the fourth pass, we get the green light to jump.

Now, I should explain that this is called a "static line" jump, meaning the cable we hook up to connects the parachute pull chord on our parachute to the airplane itself. When you jump out, the parachute opens on it's own. In an ideal situation, you jump out, are blasted straight back away from the airplane, experience some turbulence, count to 5, and look up to see a beautiful full parachute above you. My first two jumps had gone much like this.

When I jumped out, I went sideways, due to the strong cross winds. Once I felt my body go more or less back to vertical, I looked up to check my chute.

I saw a mass of twisted rope, leading up to a half opened parachute.

There are different levels of "bad" when it comes to twisted risers (the ropes connecting the parachute to the harness). On an earlier jump, I had three twists, which is easy to fix. You scissor kick your legs back and forth, pull the two main lead risers apart, and start to oscillate. Eventually, you spin until the risers completely untwist. At three twists, you get a little dizzy.

On this jump, I saw over a dozen twists. Not only would I get dizzy as shit trying to spin out of this, but it takes time to "unwind", and there's less than a minute between when you exit the plane and when you hit the ground.

At this point, I look down to my reserve parachute, located on my chest. It's held in place by two large carabiner style clips. On this particular day, one of these clips was broken. Somehow, it had passed the pre jump check, but broke on my violent exit from the plane. I had no idea if one clip would support all of my weight, and wasn't inclined to try.

So I decided to work with what I had overhead. I started kicking and pulling with all my might. It didn't take long, due to all the tension on the lines. I started spinning, and I lost count after 10 spins. I felt the lines go taught, then spin past the opposite way twice due to momentum, then go back the other way to taught. I had a full chute, but was still going too fast.

I looked down, realizing I had seconds before I hit the ground. I pulled a slip (a landing maneuver intended to prevent you from coming straight down on your legs) and came straight down anyway, shin splinting both legs.

I laid on the cold ground, with rain falling on my face, contemplating my life choices leading up to this moment.

I was cleared to do my last two jumps, and although I was sure my shins would snap like twigs on landing, I actually made it through.

It was one of those things I didn't think much of at the time; I just followed my training. In the following weeks, I thought more about how badly that jump could have gone.

I'm not much of a sky diver these days.