In 1999, I made my first parachute jump at Skydive Oceanside. I was immediately hooked. My dotcom job essentially functioned as a source of funding for skydiving training, equipment, jump tickets, and not much else. Skydiving quickly usurped every other sport I was practicing. Snowboarding held out the longest, until it, too, was lost to jumping. Skydive Elsinore became my home drop zone once I was a licensed jumper. I continued to jump for years out of Skydive Oregon after moving to Portland. I developed their web site at one point.

I picked up BASE jumping too soon after I started jumping, beginning with some relatively safe bridge jumps. I stepped back for a moment when I started feeling in over my head, then found some rock-solid mentors in Oregon.

Skydiving and BASE gave me not only some of my life's most unique and memorable experiences, but also some of my best friends. Many of them I have lost at this point for obvious reasons. Those reasons were why I eventually hung it up.