It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an Iowa skydiver, up for one last fall weekend! Jumper Ed Drake explains why someone would get out of a perfectly good airplane, thousands of feet above the ground.He says you first start for the thrill, then besides the excitement you get interested in things like working in formation. While skydiving would seem to be kind of a solo pursuit, Drake says it becomes a social thing.He goes with groups, and 4 or 5 hook up and try to do things together while they’re in free-fall. Drake’s been skydiving for about five years. Nationwide, the average for people who start is staying with it for about seven years, though lots of people are content to do it just once. Drake is busy this weekend, but his diving club is doing “jumps” at their headquarters, the airport in Winterset. This weekend is NOT the last jump for the club. Ed Drake says bad weather grounds the jumpers, but winter won’t stop them; they just dress warmly for their few minutes in the air. There are at least five skydiving clubs in Iowa, in Boone, Perry, Vinton, Brooklyn, Winterset, and a quad-cities club in Geneseo, Illinois.
