by Richard Koscher, Publisher

In my former life as a citizen of Austria, I spent a number of years passionately pursuing the activity that some of my friends continue to regard as the insanity of jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. As a semi-professional skydiver, I made hundreds of jumps in the Czech Republic and in other venues throughout Europe, plus I attended skydiving competitions throughout Europe and in America.

One of my skydiving specialties was sky surfing – a sport that involves using a specially designed sky board to deflect the wind generated by my fall in order to perform maneuvers including spins and loops. When you’re falling through the air you can perform beyond the imagination of any earthbound snowboarder. For example, a great athlete can do three rotations on a snowboard before landing. I could do a dozen on my sky board, if I wanted to. Or even 20 of them.

In April I made a trip to Europe to chase my skydiving memories and, among other things, visited my old Czech Republic stomping grounds. The trip was a drive down memory lane as I renewed acquaintances with people and places that used to be at the center of my life.

Even though society, culture, and geography are much different in Europe than here in East County, I was particularly astounded on this trip by two phenomena that seemed to be identical on both sides of the Atlantic. For one thing, I realized that any American could spot an automobile sales lot in one of the suburbs of the Czech Republic as easily as on Brentwood Boulevard. Car dealerships all over the world must have a common source for flags, bunting, pennants, streamers, and balloons in order to attract buyers. Whether people sell automobiles in Italy, the Czech Republic, or Oakley they apparently run their business according to a single, intercontinental marketing scheme.

The revelation made me wonder if car dealerships also attract the same kind of salespeople in Europe as they do in America. “Now this beautiful little low-mileage Skoda was owned by an elderly lady who only drove it to party meetings on Wednesday afternoons!” I wonder if Czech car salesmen talk like that.

European weather was the other thing that powerfully reminded me of my East County home. There was a lot of rain, areas flooded by standing water, and even news reports that chronicled problems with broken levees and flooded farmlands. I had feelings of déjá vu that were described by someone in the words, “No matter where you go, there you are.” When it came to car dealerships and the weather, I seemed to be still “there” in Brentwood while wandering through Europe.

I arrived at the Klatovy drop zone in the Czech Republic for a wonderful reunion with skydiving buddies whom I hadn’t seen for six years. Klatovy, is a sweet little town just an hour away from Prague, whose claim to fame is that in 1547 a man named Antonio de Salla built a highly ornamented and ostentatious lookout tower, called the Black Tower, which is over 265 feet high.

Besides my old buddies, at the drop zone I met new friends that had become old friends by the time I left. The world of European skydiving enthusiasts is a tight community composed of people who trust, respect, and embrace one another. I spent three days sharing stories and jumping out of planes with people of diverse backgrounds ranging from public school teachers to television hosts. The sport exerts a social-leveling influence among the members of the sub-culture that it forms. Medical doctors jump next to table waiters.

The official reason for the gathering was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of people jumping out of the Pink Skyvan airplane, which is built in Klatovy. The Skyvan is a boxy looking utility aircraft that is used for passenger transport, ambulance service, aerial survey, and freight work. But its main purpose, as far as we’re concerned, is to carry 20 jumpers from ground level to the 13,000 foot drop point as many times a day as weather and daylight permit. I jumped a number of times, including five times on the day we had the best weather.

I made my first jump during the celebration with an old pal and former teammate named Christian “Wuzi” Wagner. We leaped out of that plane and went soaring together free from the bonds of earth and gravity. For 45 seconds, time fell away as I recaptured the old addictive illusion that I was a creature of the air and sky.

Maybe I was unwise to have ever started jumping since a part of me now seems always unhappy on the earth. I long to fall again with my buddies through heights above the flight of eagles. My heart is stirred by Leonardo da Vinci’s haunting words that my friend recently sent me:

Once you have tasted flight
you will always walk the earth
with your eyes turned skyward
for there you have been
and there you long to return.

I want to go back!