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The Newbie Chronicles - My first year in BASE - Part One: "The" Harvey

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The Newbie Chronicles – My first year in BASE

My name is Chris Harvey. I have no need for anonymity. As a former cop, I know that that the objects I have jumped that could be considered in the ether of the legal gray area are in places where the cops have better shit to do than track me down. I also don’t do repeats within at least several months of each other. It’s called keeping objects cold. You paying attention Dave? I don’t jump NPS land – which is another story completely. Although before I leave this Earth, and if we haven’t managed legal access by then, I do intend to jump El Capitan – buck naked down to my boots – with a very loud hidey-ho and a bakalaka before I jump. I’ll take my licks.

I’m a 38 year-old Cavalry Officer in the US Army, and a former US Marine, who is fortunate enough to have married his best friend after several attempts at marriage that failed for any number of reasons. I have a young daughter and six, yes six, fantastic step-kids whom I love as my very own - three girls and three boys.

I am their rock star.

I am a BASE jumper.


Part One – “The” Harvey

BASE is more of an enigma than just about any other thing in this world. It really is. It is, on its surface, unquestionably the most selfish human endeavor outside of suicide. Until you have actually studied the science behind BASE jumping, and developed an understanding of the calculated and comprehensive risk management involved, you will never shed that empirical view of the sport. It’s hard-wired in our nature and how most people will always view it. To expect anyone outside the sport to understand it as more is unreasonable. It is that dearth of cerebral connection that causes us to coalesce into the rag-tag band of misfits that we are. Only BASE jumpers understand BASE jumpers.

Before I can begin a monologue about my entry into the sport that has come to capture and qualify a great many aspects of my deeper self, I must impart a developmental history, a baseline if you will, upon which BASE 1232 came to be. BASE jumpers might see it and completely understand the journey. Aspiring BASE jumpers might see it as a vague parallel to their own journey of self-exploration. Non-BASE jumpers or, to borrow a term from our whiney sister sport of skydiving, whuffos, might view it as vanity or a misguided channel for more deep-seated psychological issues. Not to be exclusive, but as for the opinion of that last group, I have complete apathy. Your willingness to cross the hurdles to arrive at, and execute, that first fixed-object parachute jump is your ticket to me ever giving a minute of my consideration to your opinion of what we do. It is the prerogative of any strong-willed and confident person not to give a shit. I don’t. This story, which for posterity reasons is written as if you were the audience, is not for you.

I grew up in the southern California town of Santa Clarita, an affluent Los Angeles suburb. I say affluent, because for the most part it is, but I grew up in the white trash and Hispanic 'hood. I have very modest roots. I have a very loving family and had a wonderful upbringing. My mother petitioned the school boards to have my two older brothers and me transferred out of the substandard local schools to the rich kid schools a mere half hour away. Her actions in that regard were really our deliverance from the 'hood. I wore preppy collared LaCoste knock-offs to school and changed into scrapping clothes when I got home. Because there was always scrapping. We ended up all being very highly educated. One brother works for NASA, and one is a high school principal. Not bad for poor-assed white kids in the 'hood.

Dad was a former US Marine pilot, but very unlike the Great Santini; he’s just a good guy. Dad’s firm – three boys after all - but loving. Not stereotypical by any measure. From a very early age I recognized one source of pride for Dad that never wavered. It was his time in the Marine Corps. Any outfit that made my dad that happy to reminisce about must be the place to be. So at about six years-old, I decided I would be a Marine.

The one luxury we had as a family and wouldn’t part with no matter how bad things got was Miss J. A 1963-ish Piper Cherokee 140, tail number N7364J. (That was completely from memory – I haven’t been around Miss J for about 25 years). Dad bought her when he was part of the Apollo program at NASA – his professional glory years to which he never managed to return. Dad dragged us to air shows all the time. I quickly fell in love with flight. At the Point Mugu Naval Air Station Air Show, circa 1978, I saw a group of skydivers jump out of a helicopter trailing smoke. Holy shit, I thought in equivalent seven year-old words (or perhaps verbatim – I was a tool), they’re just falling – flying even; I will do that some day.

The desire to be a Marine never changed, so in the spring of 1988, having reached the omniscient age of 17 years, 6 months, I convinced my mother to sign a release allowing me to enlist in the Marine Corps. My ship date was three weeks prior to high school graduation, so I had to petition my teachers to allow me to take finals early. I was exceptional academically, and a pain in the ass behaviorally; they immediately agreed and I was off to learn how to properly kill people and break things. I would be a Lance Corporal and in a Marine Reconnaissance unit before my 18th birthday.

I will spare the time to explain what Marine Reconnaissance actually is – there’s a Wikipedia entry about it that’s really quite good – but I will explain the moniker I’ve come to use on the internet forums frequented by BASE jumpers. Recon Marines require specialized training in clandestine combat insertion techniques. These include parachute and SCUBA. Once Recon Marines complete Airborne and SCUBA training, they are called ParaFrog Devil Dogs, (military occupational specialty 8654). A reference to Airborne training, SCUBA training (frogmen), and a rough translation of the name given to US Marines by the German Army at the battle of Belleau Wood in 1918 – Teufelshunde, or Dog’s from Hell. It immediately became a badge of honor to US Marines, and remains so. I am but one of thousands of ParaFrogs, even several who BASE jump…I earned the name as they did, so I use it.

I was a noisy and brash young Marine, just as I had been as a teenager. I had something to prove to the world in general. I wanted to be a badass, and simply becoming a Marine had not been enough. I ran off at the mouth about wanting to be the first kid on my block with a confirmed kill.

This brings me to Karma.

Karma can be a bitch - a nasty, evil, ugly, worthless creature. Especially when provoked.

In 1990, the delicate Karmic balance in the universe was violently upset by a 20 year-old kid who just wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

We left Cherry Point Naval Air Station on Christmas Eve, 1990, on a chartered PanAm 747. On the flight across the Pacific, the Pilot came on and read a poem from his wife – written to all of the baby-faced Marines in the back. She spoke of the impending battle, of our families at home, of her gratitude. She brought words to our suppressed, but very real fears. We looked tough, but we were scared shitless. The airplane was silent. The flight attendants wept. What the hell have I gotten myself into? We landed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia just after midnight on the 26th. With the rapid travel across time zones, Christmas that year had simply not existed. It was surreal.

My experience in Desert Storm was the defining moment of my life. It was wonderful, it was terrible, I laughed, I sobbed, I killed, I lost…it was above all things - destiny. I was compelled to write a book about it; a novel for the sake of avoiding intelligence missteps, but very true in its use of events. The book is an homage to the men I fought with. They were the finest men I have ever known. Some never came home. For that reason – I recommend reading it. It's called The Kirya Solution, and at this point in its print life - the royalties are negligible to me. In a very tangible way, as I will attempt to explain in Part Two of this series, they brought me to BASE jumping. Bear with me when we get there – it is an attempt.

After the war is when I actually began jumping. My first parachute jump was in October of 1991 at the US Army Airborne School, Fort Benning Georgia. The following summer, I found a drop zone and started skydiving. Yup, I’ve been skydiving since 1992. A guy I jumped with back then mentioned BASE jumping to me. He wanted to try it, and wanted me to come along. I simply never got around to it, but after a balloon jump from Burner’s rig at Eloy in 1993, I knew I had to. I saw a segment on TV with Mo Viletto, Tom Sanders, Jan Davis, and a mustachioed guy I probably should recognize but don’t jumping from an antenna in Maine. I also saw the endless parade of videos from the first “look at me” guy – John Vincent. Yeah – I need to do THAT. The pilot light had been lit. Once again, however, Karma had other plans. I finished my tour in the Corps, got out for a while to be a cop, got married a few times to people who didn’t get the whole skydiving thing, and was miserable there for a while. I was being repaid for the sins of my youth.

Then some asshats decided to fly a couple of planes into some buildings because they didn’t like what I had sworn to protect. In the institutional vernacular of a Colorado BASE jumper I know to be an evil genius – Epic Fail. I became angry. I heard a line in a movie recently, which summed it up nicely – “I have a particular set of skills.” Yeah. It was time to go on a killing. I wanted to be an officer this time around, I felt as if I had sacrificed a great deal to become educated. I didn’t want my talent for bloodletting squandered under some 22-year-old Lieutenant who didn’t know shit. I called the Marine Corps. What the hell do you mean I’m TOO old? Yeah, they would be glad to take a guy they’d spent a couple of million dollars to train into an 8654, but they would take me as a friggin Corporal. I had gotten out a Sergeant – that’s a rank above, and still a non-commissioned officer. Semper Fi Mack – now blow me.

I sashayed into the Army National Guard recruiting office in Boise Idaho. Oh yeah, I moved from Austin, Texas, where I was a cop, to Boise, Idaho. A story for another time, Karma was turning in the right direction for me; part of her change in my fortune was putting me an hour and a half from the Perrine Bridge.

I plopped down my Service Record Book from the Marine Corps on the desk of SSG Joe Lammers. “I’d like to be an officer.”

SSG Lammers flipped through some pages. “What are these schools that are blacked out?”

I told him. Nothing classified about them anymore. I was out.

His eyes grew big. He threw in a chew. “When can you start?”

About nine months later, I graduated Officer Candidate School. On the flight back from SeaTac Airport, A gorgeous blonde with whom I’d struck up a conversation prior to boarding told the newly anointed officer next to me to get the hell out of his seat. She was taking it. He complied immediately, moving to hers a few rows up. It was Friday the 13th, and the woman of my dreams had just taken an exceptionally bold first step to ensure that I never left her life.

She came to be known as The Blondie, and as Mrs. Harvey. She lived in Twin Falls. When I first went to visit her, the Karmic circle, and my entry into BASE was that much closer.

Continued in Part Two: February

As anyone with a rudimentary understanding of copyright law knows, as soon as I put this to paper – which I did prior to this posting – it became copyrighted. I don’t need to attach disclaimers at the bottom.

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Updated March 13th, 2009 at 11:53 AM by Para_Frog

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Comments

  1. Blitzkrieg's Avatar
    fucking awesome. i'm digging your writing style. bring it on.
  2. Mac's Avatar
    Cracking dude....
  3. MMK's Avatar
    Looking already forward to the next installments and the final published version!
  4. Johnny Utah's Avatar
    good job with the conversation prior to boarding
  5. avenfoto's Avatar
    not too shabby for a jarheaded muscle neck.

    really good actually. keep it up.
  6. huckleberry's Avatar
    Nice one Harvey!
  7. huckleberry's Avatar
    Is it fucking Febuary yet???
    Dammit Tizzy... let's go!

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