Into the blue

Hundreds of skydivers gather for Lost Prairie Boogie

They're little black dots in the sky before they're anything else.

Then the technicolor parachutes appear as the skydivers float to earth, framed by mountains, meadow and clouds.

Some jumpers come in hot, their chutes audibly flapping hundreds of feet up. Others float gracefully down, landing lightly and running to a stop.

"The thrill of being up in the sky and looking down at the planet and knowing I'm 2 miles above the earth," veteran jumper "Mad John" Dobleman said. "It's the ultimate body-control sport. You have to be in total control, but you also have to be totally relaxed."

Dobleman is a load organizer - choreographing jumps and selecting who makes each jump - for the 42nd Annual Skydive Lost Prairie Boogie, an 11-day festival of solo, tandem and demonstration skydiving that ends Monday.

Dobleman has been skydiving since 1977 and has been attending the boogie near Marion since 1991. As of Friday, he had 9,143 jumps to his credit.

"I love this place," Dobleman said. "For me it's like a big family reunion. Skydivers are the biggest dysfunctional family in the world."

Dobleman said that he sees many of the people in attendance once a year at the boogie.

This year, 300 experienced skydivers are making jumps, as well as nearly that many making their first tandem jumps, said Fred Sand, who runs Skydive Lost Prairie.

"From the outside, skydiving looks crazy, but from the inside, it's very safe," Sand said. Lost Prairie follows the rules laid out by the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Parachute Association.

"And we throw in good ol' common sense," Sand said.

IT'S A FESTIVAL atmosphere at Lost Prairie, as tents as colorful as parachutes dot the meadow and are nestled under the wings of anchored airplanes.

Young children run around, friends sit together in the shade and watch planes take off and land. Others group at the drop zone, watching the skydivers pitch themselves into the blue, ant-sized dots above watching ant-sized dots below.

Seven skydivers practiced a novel water landing into McGregor Lake.

There are jumpers representing most of the western states, as well as an Australian and a British jumper. They stand together swapping stories, crouch in the school building carefully packing the nylon parachutes and practicing for formation jumps.

Twenty skydivers stood in the middle of the grounds, circling up again and again into two 10-way speed stars, a traditional competition to see which group can create an in-air 10-person circle the fastest. Experienced jumpers average 15 seconds.

Skydiving, like many extreme sports, is as much a lifestyle as it is a thrill.

"I got married in the air," said Dobleman, recalling his wife's white gloves and flower-studded helmet and his own tuxedo T-shirt. "We had a reverend who's a skydiver and there were 33 people in the wedding party. We said everything but the 'I do's' in the airplane and 'said] the 'I do's' in the air."

Twenty years later, Dobleman and his wife, Tina, still are avid skydivers. Dobleman said it's important that they understand each other's need to skydive.

Many jumpers, such as Mike Atencio, have built their lives around the sport. Atencio is the chief instructor of Lost Prairie. He's also an airplane mechanic, tandem master and videographer. He recently spent several weeks in Ecuador and Thailand, taping jumps and working as a tandem instructor.

At 27 years old, Atencio already has 5,000 jumps to his credit.

"It's really fun," he said. "That's why we have thousands and thousands of jumps, because you want to do it over and over again."

Atencio grew up watching his aunts and uncles skydive from his grandfather's airplane and, when he turned 18, he entered the fold.

"It's not so much the adrenaline, it's the freedom."

Reporter K.J. Hascall may be reached at 758-4439 or by e-mail at kjhascall@dailyinterlake.com