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| Ivan in five-man stack |
Extraordinary characters abound at both swim clubs in Aquatic Park. Of course, the setting is a magnet for marathon cold-water swimmers. But some of the outsized personalities have chalked up notable achievements out of the water. Ivan Balarin is a charter member of this group. He has compiled more than 5,000 parachute jumps from planes and promontories. Had he access to today's modern technology, that number could be well north of 10,000. However, in the days of round, relatively un-guidable chutes, Ivan spent many days in Livermore sitting and waiting out weather that wouldn't deter a well-equipped jumper today.
In 1987, he took the soloist position in the docking of eight parachute canopies in flight. This
YouTube video of the SkyHawks in action shows how the stack is formed. The difference is that Ivan's group built their eight man stack in the dead of night. Here's how Ivan tells the story:
"When we used to do stacks, it was a big thing. It's a delicate maneuver because it's easy to 'birdcage' yourself. You usually build the stacks from the top down. The one on the top is the pilot. He steadies his hands next to his chest so there's not too much movement of the lower members of the stack. You approach the stack from the back. Never get in the front because you destroy the air flow and the stack will collapse and that's a very difficult situation. The hardest position to get in was the last on the bottom. Because as the stack forms, it travels very fast, like a biplane. So, you have to be in position to close into the butt or the back of the lowest man. And then you start applying brakes and you float up and then he grabs your canopy and locks his legs in the line number one and line number two which is right in the middle of the front of your chute. If you come last into the stack on the bottom, the United States Parachute Association recognizes you as a 'soloist' and assigns a number representing the number of people that have accomplished this before. We had done a couple of practice jumps earlier in the day and slapped one behind the other; boom-boom-boom-boom-boom; perfect!"
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| Beechcraft D-18 |
When night fell, the Beechcraft D-18 taxied down the runway for the final flight, gathered speed, and lifted off under the light of a rising full moon. Ivan's wife, Kathleen sat in the copilot seat. Her job was "illuminator." When the pilot nudged her foot with his, she would briefly shine her flashlight on the instrument panel and then switch it off. In these days before sophisticated dashboard lighting, this was the accepted protocol for preserving night vision.
As they ascended to jump altitude, one of the parachutists made a point of telling everyone that it was important that they all open their chutes at the same time, immediately after exiting the plane. Ivan was not comfortable with this idea. As the soloist, he was to join the stack last and approach from the bottom. In the daylight practice jumps, he had delayed the pull of his ripcord for about 3 seconds in order to give the stack time to form and approach it from the bottom.
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| Ivan Balarin |
For anyone who knows Ivan at all, the notion that he would subjugate his own judgement in favor of that of someone else seems ludicrous. He was fourteen the first time he ran away from home in Peru. His previous sport obsessions had been competitive fencing and weight lifting--both relatively solitary and self-directed. Ivan is not one to capitulate easily. But he was also an astute observer and quickly discovered that parachuting is a group activity with the mind of a small village. Planes were scarce, shared resources and the obstinate or reckless were quickly and permanently ostracized. His love of jumping forced him to control his independent streak. With this in mind, he decided to practice going with the flow.
When the time came, the jumpers worked their way through the black tunnel of the fuselage two abreast and flung themselves into the dark sky. As Ivan relates, "They built up the stack so fast, they caught me with my pants down! And here, I'm following the stack almost right in the middle in the back of the third man down. No way I can close like that. I have to be under the bottom man and then work my way up like an elevator." Although he was incredibly strong from his weight training, it would have taken a superman to pull the front risers down enough to descend at the required speed. In order to avoid crashing into the middle of the stack, he veered to the left. "When I went to the side, they all looked at me terrorized because they thought I was going to go in the front. You don't want to do that because your airflow will disturb everything. I told them 'I'm aware' and peeled off the left, cursing myself for not following my intuition and giving myself the three second delay."
Yanking on the left riser alone, he corkscrewed himself down into the blackness until he was dizzy and disoriented. He had lost contact with the seven other parachutists in the dark. "And here I am, in the middle of nowhere, feeling sorry for myself because I knew that I could do the job. I'm sitting in the darkness, listening to the farm dogs bark and thinking about where I am over the Livermore vineyards. If you land in those cut vines, it will tear you to pieces." About this time, Ivan saw a black shadow floating past the full moon. At first he thought it was a cloud. But it was a cloudless night and clouds don't move that fast. As he looked closer, it appeared to be a flying clipper ship getting larger and larger as it approached. "I saw the stack coming in right in front of me. As soon as it went by, I turned and flew parallel and started climbing. I could hear the voices from above, 'Ivan come in! Come in! Ivan, you can do it! Come in!' I put on the brakes and started floating right up. About 4,500 feet off the ground, I made contact--right on the bottom man's legs and the stack was complete. What a satisfaction."
They flew the required minute together until they reached the airport runway. Then, starting from the bottom, each member yelled "Flare!" in turn to signal the person on top to release the lines. This way, they landed one after another on the deserted tarmac. They were the 103rd team in the world at that time to accomplish this feat.
This is only one of Ivan's many striking exploits and he is only one of the remarkable people who belong to the two clubs. Together, their stories add a significant and spicy ingredient to the composition of the
endorphin cocktail.
