Late 1980's 1.0
If you look at my profile picture, it will give you a good idea about this story. It all started one day in the late 1980s. I had talked to my friend's friend into getting us some beer. It was to be for a bonfire party down on the river. Someone must have ratted us out because as soon as he gave me the beer, a cop showed up. We were put into different squad cars, and off to the police station, I went. I never did find out where he went.
I was put in the drunk tank for being in possession of alcohol as a minor. It was weird being in there sober. There was one other guy in there that was passed out. He had puked on himself, and it stank so bad. I started thinking that at least I get one phone call. I knew that from the movies and TV shows. Well, I was wrong. I found out later that one of the officers knew my Dad. He called Dad for me. Dad told him to leave me there for the night. Thanks, Dad!
The Judge assigned me to eighty hours of restitution work. I was to clean the grown-up brush out of a fence along the back of the airport. That was one long fence. I remember thinking that there was no way I could do it all. As I was working with the hand saw and pruning tools, I noticed that I wasn't alone. Way down the fence was another guy doing the same thing. And that's how I met Ziggy.
Ziggy and I were both in junior high but went to different schools. Over the next few days, we talked about different things, but the one thing that kept coming up was skydiving. My Uncle was a skydiver but had passed away when I was thirteen. I found out that his Dad jumped years ago and still had all of his old skydiving gear. The more we talked, the more we got the itch.
We decided to talk to his Dad and maybe barrow the old gear. We were young and naive. Ziggy's Dad was cool about it and helped us go about it the right way. It turns out that you actually need training and proper gear to learn to skydive. The funny thing was that we found out that Ziggy's Dad had jumped with my Uncle back in the day.