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Scott Plautz, voice channel manager at Brooktrout Technologies, does a tricky maneuver.
Photograph by Kurt Issel
Jump Start
Local Brooktrout employees get a head start on the workweek by diving out of airplanes
By Sandy Sims
Brook trout is the name of a speckled fish that swims the fresh waters of the eastern United States. It's also the name of a Massachusetts high-tech company in which getting away from work means relaxing along the shores of a peaceful river and whipping a fishing line over the top of the water in an effort to catch one of those brook trout.
Last year, Brooktrout Inc. bought the Computer Telephony Products division of Lucent Technologies at 151 Albright Way, Los Gatos, and found out that getting away from it all could mean something quite different than tossing a fishing line into the river.
On any given Saturday or Sunday, Bob Eikel, Linda Falsitto, Scott Plautz and Bob Green, employees of the Los Gatos division of Brooktrout, steal away from faxes, cell phones and anything else to do with telephones. They zip into jumpsuits, strap on parachutes and climb into a plane. There they join maybe 15 others packed in knees-to-chest on the plane's floor while it grinds up, up, up to 15,000 or 18,000 feet. One or two at a time--some grinning like little kids, some with terror in their eyes--they all scoot quickly toward the rolled-up door and leap into the big blue sky.
Saratogan John Ison, newly appointed vice president and general manager of the Los Gatos division of Brooktrout, remembers what it's like to make that leap into the sky. Three years ago a friend called and said, "I'm turning 40; will you go sky diving with me?"
"Sure," Ison said.
He recalls it vividly: "It's fantastic; you have no frame of reference, so it doesn't feel like you are falling more than 100 mph. You just spin, and the wind is incredible. When the parachute opens, you feel a gentle tug. Then there's this amazing quiet for three or four minutes until you come closer to the ground and you begin to hear cars and people."
He explains that sky divers can steer parachutes well enough to land on a designated spot no bigger than 1 square foot. Ison remembers being on a high for two days after his jump.
"Out there I can forget everything," says Brooktrout voice channel manager Scott Plautz. "I feel like a 12-year-old. It's so much fun." Plautz has done more than 500 dives, sometimes 10 in a day.
Unlike fishing, which usually has a calming effect, sky diving serves to pump the person up. "After a day the adrenaline rush is incredible," Plautz says. "If I miss a weekend," he says, "my week is not the same."
Sky diving seems to be finding its way more and more into mainstream weekend getaway activities. Jess Rodriguez, co-owner of Skydive Monterey Bay, has 125 new people coming out to jump every week and about 75 regulars. He says there were 3.1 million jumps last year in the United States, and there are more drop zones popping up all the time. According to the United States Parachute Association, a little more than 300,000 people in the United States did at least one sky dive last year. The number worldwide is 540,000, which means the United States has by far the biggest sky diving bunch in the world. Membership in the USPA, a hardcore sky diving group, is 34,000.
Scott Plautz, voice channel manager at Brooktrout Technologies
Photograph by Kurt Issel
Sky diving has added a new twist to the proverbial company picnic. Rodriguez says Silicon Valley companies bring their picnic and their people out to sky dive.
Most first-timers sky dive in tandem, which means they jump attached to a master who wears the parachute and guides the entire experience. "All my tandem master told me was to squat down, lean forward, and if you want a thrill, look back and watch the plane fly away," Ison recalls.
While fishing can bring serenity and food for the table, sky diving can bring excitement and a little food for thought.
Brooktrout Technologies' salesman, Bob Green, took his first tandem leap after a long-time customer finally wore him down. "I was scared to death," Green recalls. However, after his first jump, he decided that if he could learn to do this, he could do anything. He went on to become a tandem master, and now he teaches sky diving. "I do feel more confident. It's a little like earning your black belt in karate," he explains. His confidence must be pretty high, because Green, who weighs 150 pounds, carried a man tandem who was 6 feet 3 inches tall and 235 pounds.
Green also videotapes sky divers, which involves expert maneuvering through the air with a camera bolted to his helmet. "It's great," Green says. "I get to do this thing I love and go home with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket."
For most people, sky diving isn't a way to escape the work world; it's a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.
Rodriguez recalls a woman who jumped tandem for her 90th birthday, and Plautz recalls tandem masters feeling quite hesitant when a 93-year-old man showed up to jump. When the man said it was something he'd always wanted to do, they took him up. Plautz remembers the man's elderly wife giving her husband a big hug after the jump.
Green talked his 67-year-old mother into a dive. "She loved it," he recalls.
Emad Tawfilis, the assistant controller at Brooktrout, took one of those one-time dives. He went out on a free fall with two divers hooked up to him on either side. "It was incredible," he recalls. However, Tawfilis already has a time-consuming hobby with his boat and water skiing and wake-board surfing, among other things.
But for some that first jump kicks off a passion. Bob Eikel, a Brooktrout software engineer and an avid rock climber, took his first dive because Plautz talked him into it. "I was terrified, and I really thought this was a one-time thing," Eikel recalls. Now he's in Monterey jumping out of a plane almost every weekend. "It gets into your psyche," he explains. "You dream about it, develop a passion for it. I guess it's really like an addiction," he admits.
Those who develop the passion become evangelists, begging friends and family to come out and try it.
Photograph courtesy of Bob Green
Brooktrout salesman Bob Green (top) does a tandem dive. When he did his first dive, he was terrified, but now he has become an instructor
Eikel talked Brooktrout's Linda Falsitto into it last March. She's jumped 145 times since. "I get a natural high from jumping," says the electrical engineer. Now Falsitto has all the equipment, which costs a whole lot more than a fishing pole and bait.
A brand-new setup--jumpsuit, parachute and all the trappings--costs about $5,000. Then there's $1,000 worth of accessories. "I buy something almost every weekend," Plautz admits. Of course, once a sky diver has all the equipment, the jump is just $18, much less than the $200 for a tandem jump. But to dive alone, a "newby" must take the accelerated free-fall lessons for $1,200. The training is rigorous and regulated by the Federal Aviation Association and the USPA. First comes a six-hour ground lesson, then seven or more dives (sometimes up to 30) with the assistance of two coaches--one on either side grasping arms and leg straps--until the newby can stabilize. Then there are the 20 jumps after that to become certified. After certification, one can work to different levels of expertise.
"It's not natural to throw your body out of a plane, and your body knows it," Plautz explains. "Your mind has to say yes."
"It's a form of engineering," Falsitto ex-plains. "We use the air's drag to get around."
"The most natural way to fly," Plautz explains, "is flat on your stomach because the heaviest part of you goes to the bottom." He goes on to explain that a diver has to use his arms and legs to counter that natural position, and the most difficult dive to manage is a vertical free-fall position.
Eventually, divers want to accomplish the difficult task of "docking." Docking is connecting up to hands or feet or gear with other sky divers during a free fall. Eikel says he has docked with as many as six divers. The official world record was set at 246 during a "boogie" (the term for a sky diving event) in Chicago. Boogies are held worldwide and include many planes and other flying machines such as hot air balloons and helicopters. Plautz, who attended a boogie in Hawaii with 300 people, plans his vacations around drop zones and boogies.
Photograph by Mikey Clements.
Emad Tawfilis (center, in bottom right photograph), controller at Brooktrout Technologies in Los Gatos, takes an accelerated free-fall lesson.
For the most part, fishing is not a dangerous sport, unless perhaps the angler trips and falls into the river and drowns. But then sky divers claim their sport is safe too, pointing out how reliable the equipment has become. Eikel says the ones who get injured or die are usually the experienced divers who take chances or make stupid mistakes. Just last week, a 28-year-old San Jose man fell to his death trying to perform aerial acrobatics. His friends say his equipment worked just fine. Then there was world champion sky diver Patrick de Gayardon who, while sewing webbing to his jumpsuit, accidentally sewed through his chute. He fell to his death.
"It's actually more dangerous to drive to the drop zone than to sky dive," Plautz insists.
Liza Santos, corporate relations specialist at Brooktrout Technology, who is considering sky diving, says Brooktrout Technologies also plans activities that are a little less of an adrenaline rush--robust games like bowling and miniature golf.
Plautz, however, says he works hard during the week and needs to feel like he's really done something on the weekends.
Maybe today's intense high-tech work calls for intense relaxation; maybe the need for that adrenaline rush has something to do with needing to keep pumped up to dive back into the intense world of technology and perform at top pace. Maybe it's just that sky diving is more accessible to the mainstream. Still, to most of us, sky diving would be somewhere up there with climbing Mt. Everest. We never will do it. Well, maybe not yet. We're more likely to sit along the banks of a river trying to snag a brook trout.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
