Skydiving with Swayze
I went skydiving with Patrick Swayze one warm afternoon on the north end of Oahu when he was filming the North Shore surfing scenes for Point Break. He was with his wife and they were driving a minivan, no dubs, no bling. I talked with him for about 15 mins before realizing who he was. I remember helping pack his parachute out in the grass at the drop zone; glad it opened.
We did a few jumps out of an old DC3 that day. Seemed appropriate cause it had two big engines that sounded like big fat Harleys, and they belched smoke and spewed oil. Swayze had wild hair, a bit of a beard, and a black cutoff shirt with some biker logo on it. He looked like he should have rolled up on a Harley instead of in the minivan.
Anyway, the silver DC3 was a big loud oily plane with a big door in the back to jump out of, with wooden decking, and it stayed really sweaty hot inside after takeoff, all of us together waiting to jump, only cooling off after we’d get enough altitude.
We were all fully alive that warm afternoon in Hawaii jumping out of an airplane again and again. And, though I didn’t know him at all, I got the sense that Swayze was the kind of guy that would look all of us in the eye right now if he could and remind us to live fully each day. Live every day.
