SKY SCOOTIN' BOOGIE!

"Does everybody know what time it is?" pilot Mike Mullins asks the 10 or so skydivers packed into his airplane.

"It's seat belt-check time," he intones, and the King Air dips, slamming the passengers forward and then back.

Mullins performed a lot of seat belt-checks Saturday as the only pilot ferrying skydivers for the Sky-tober Fest Skydiving Boogie at Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

The skydiving boogie continues today at the airport. Admission for spectators is free, and tandem jumps with a skydiving instructor can be reserved for a fee.

Skies were cloudy Saturday, but that didn't discourage the skydivers, who made jumps throughout the day.

"I'd rather have some clouds out there to jump through than nothing," said Audrey Thiess of Ballwin. "But clear blue's good too."

Thiess has made 500 jumps in the two-plus years she has been skydiving.

"I always wanted to do it and I waited until I got out of college so I could afford it and I went out on my own and took some classes," she said.

It isn't the number of years a skydiver has spent jumping out of planes that counts for experience; it's the total number of jumps made.

Bob Hamilton of Perryville made his first jump on St. Patrick's Day this year. Since then, he's racked up 141 jumps.

"I hope to make five or six today," he said. "More is better."

Hamilton likes the rush skydiving gives. "It's the thrill, the free-falling, the weightlessness," he said.

He started skydiving with co-worker Don Carter, who has made 610 jumps. The two work at Sabreliner in Perryville.

"He was bugging me and bugging me and wouldn't stop until I took him up," Carter said.

Carter and Hamilton usually go to Charleston to jump. They came to Cape Girardeau this weekend to jump with Mullins, a nationally known skydiving pilot.

Julie Kraemer, a 19-year-old student at Southeast Missouri State University, made her second tandem jump Saturday, strapped into a chute with instructor Dwight Gates.

She called the jump "awesome."

"It was incredible," she said. "You can't describe it in words."

Kraemer said she can't explain what prompted her to try jumping the first time.

"It's just one of this crazy things I wanted to try," she said. "Once I did it once, I wanted to do it again."

Gates of Skysports in Cape Girardeau has been a tandem instructor for eight years and began skydiving 24 years ago.

He spends about half an hour going over the basics with novice jumpers before it is time to take to the air.

"More than anything, they need to know how to arch, how to prepare the body for free-fall," Gates said.

If jumpers don't position themselves correctly during free-fall, he said, "you won't be stable. You'll be upside down or flipping or something. So body position is pretty critical."

Novice skydivers aren't always cooperative once the jump starts, Gates said.

"Sometimes they go into some kind of brain lock or something," he said. "They don't arch. They don't do anything. That can cause a little bit of a problem for me."

Mullins can haul 14 skydivers at a time in his aircraft. The round-trip usually takes about 15 minutes.

About 10 minutes into the flight, the skydivers begin pulling on their helmets and gloves.

Three men bump helmets and yell in chorus as they prepare to jump.

Mullins flies through the clouds for a few minutes, then finds a clear spot.

"OK at 14,500," he tells the skydivers. "Exit, exit, exit."

And with shouts and laughter, they jump, one by one, out into the sky.

Some of the jumpers are landing as the plane taxis down the runway to pick up the next bunch.

Airport manager Bruce Loy hoped this weekend's boogie would attract 100 skydivers.

He hopes to make it an annual event and will begin working to market it more widely next year.