I’ve been lucky lately to get that perfect combination of time, cash, and weather for skydiving this past couple of weeks.  It’s been raining and windy while I’ve been out training horses, a pretty jumpable when I’ve been off.  I’ve only accumulated about 30 hours of watching weather from the ground at a drop zone this month.  I’m sure there’s a formula that involves accumulated free fall time, plus canopy time and distance from the target divided by weather hold time that can put an exact figure on just how much fun I’ve been having.  However it turns out, it’s been a lot.  The past two weeks has netted me as much jumping as the previous six months, so I’ll take it! What I’ve learned about jumping is that it’s a constantly evolving sport of creativity.  Every time someone comes up with a new way to fall through the sky, someone else comes along and improvises a new addition.  When I was a kid I asked what would happen if someone jumped out of a plane with a surf board or something like that.  Everyone laughed and told be that it would never happen because it would be too dangerous, besides, you could never get stable.  Ten years later there were videos of people using snow boards to surf in the sky. So toward the end of the day Sunday, my brother and I teamed up with a few other rookies to give back to the sport.  Shawn is a little over 200 jumps, along with Chris who joined us.  Duke and Vince are still in the 50 jump range, so they’re still getting their bearings in the sky.  Sure, it’s early in our jump lives to make such a grand gesture, but it’s never too soon to give back, right? After some trials and errors trying to put a linked stair step exit together on a few jumps, we backed off to a 3 way base that flew pretty nice.  So what could possibly go wrong with putting that together as 5 way? The brilliance of the plan was thinking on such a higher plane that even we were blind to our impending leap into the next dimension of skydiving. We set up in the door, 3 out and 2 in.  Being the middle float, I gave the count by swinging good leg making sure to use the leg that has no ability to push off from the plane as my launching leg.  What came next may have appeared to a casual observer as chaos.  In fact, one experience skydiver (by “experienced” I mean that he did his first static line jumps out of a coal fired Stanley Steamer) observed from the plane what he initially saw as “a tangled mess of people.” in his words.  However, being the sage old jumper that he is, he knew it must have been intentional and asked if we had a name for that exit.  My first response was some imitation of an animalistic cry mixed with a rendition of the uncontrolled laughter that we all experienced on the exit.   As I began to pack I realized that such a name was impractical because it would be a little difficult to discuss in more gentile settings than a packing tent.  Besides, it’ll never get used as an answer on Wheel of Fortune if it take $50,000 in vowels to spell.  I replayed the jump in my mind and was haunted by the vision of Duke’s face, framed between two arms, seemingly unable to remove himself from the position. (Of course he could have I’m sure.  We were all just so in the moment of creative improvisation that we really just wanted to fly that formation.) When the aforementioned old, wise, still living skydiver mentioned the raw animalistic nature of the name and the very exit itself that he observed, the name came to me. So I present to you, the Skydiving world… The Caged Animal Exit.  Coaching for this will soon be available world wide I’m sure.  http://vimeo.com/user10468869/194cagedanimal