Upside Down At 3,500 Ft

So there I was...watching the news yesterday as they showed Laguardia Airport in New York covered in water with just the runways showing.  Hurricane Sandy had pummeled the area that I had boated through only a month ago.  Looking at that flooded airport reminded me of a day about 28 years ago when heavy rains in Kansas City, Missouri had left a small outlying airport surrounded by water, but the runways themselves were still usable.  The reason that was important to me that blustery morning was I was about to go up and jump out of a perfectly good airplane at 3,500 ft. hoping to land on dry ground.  Kim and I had not been married long so I wrote a quick will on a scrap piece of paper and had it signed and witnessed by a friend of mine there just in case gravity won and I lost.  I had training the night before and the morning of the jump as I would be jumping by myself and not attached to an instructor.  It is called a static line jump where a tether is attached on one end to the plane and the other end to your parachute so as you jump from the plane the 15+ ft line goes taut and pulls the parachute from your pack.  After a short freefall the air fills your chute and landing on dry ground is all you have to worry about.  As I stepped out onto the strut of the planes wing to prepare my spread eagle exit into open air, I became fascinated with the power of the propellers thrust.  Looking at it as I jumped caused me to fall in a twisting motion and as my chute deployed the lines wrapped around my legs.  I found myself hanging upside down at 3,500 ft with a partially opened parachute and falling fast.  Kim can see the deformed chute from the ground and knows things are not going well for me up there.  All I could think to say was, "Oh crap" and realized I better move fast.  Doing a mid-air situp I started unraveling the lines from my legs until finally I fell upright and the chute filled fully.  After a pleasant flight I made a good landing only 5 ft from the bullseye (a bath towel on the ground), and more importantly, not in the water.  Kim was breathing again but if I remember right she hit me...hard!