Nailed to the Clouds

The summers in Joliet were heavy. The humidity sat on you like a wet wool blanket, and the only escape was the Joliet Beach Club.

It wasn't a pristine tiled pool. It was an old quarry, flooded and turned into a swimming beach. The water was deep, dark, and cool — a bottomless relief from the Illinois heat.

I was fifteen, maybe sixteen. My schoolmate Tom and I practically lived on the 3-metre board. We weren't just messing around; we were technicians of gravity.

We were obsessed with one specific dive: The Half Gainer.

It wasn't about spinning fast or twisting. It was about suspension.

I remember the ritual. The rough grit of the board under my wet feet. Tom nodding at me from the water below, waiting to see the line.

I'd take the approach — three steps, the hurdle, the punch off the end of the board.

You launch nearly straight up. Not back. Up. You climb a ladder of air until you run out of momentum.

At the very peak, you snap at the waist. A perfect pike. A jackknife folded tight against the sky.

And right there — at the apex — physics seems to take a breath.

You aren't going up anymore. You aren't coming down yet.

You are just… there.

It felt as if my feet were nailed to the clouds.

Then, the release. You don't throw your head back; you lay back. A slow, controlled unfolding from the hips. Your body straightens out like a spear, head down, eyes open, watching the quarry water rushing up to meet you.

No splash. Just the sound of the water tearing open to let you in, and the dark silence of the quarry closing over your head.

We must have done that dive a thousand times.

I didn't know it then, but I was training for the rest of my life. I was learning that to get that perfect moment of weightlessness, you have to launch straight up, fold tight, and trust the lay-back.

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