Writer hits the fan -- and no splat

A FEW MILES SOUTH OF RIVERSIDE, UNDER A SKY FULL of drifting parachutes, a strange new landmark rises from the dusty valley floor. It’s got the roofline of an air-traffic-control tower, the flared base of a rocket, the roar of Paul Bunyan’s DustBuster. I climb the stairs and step inside.

The idea is to try something weirdly like flying. And I’m going to learn from someone who’s weirdly like me.

My instructor is Kristopher Reynolds. No relation. Never heard of him until I called to book the reservation. Grew up in San Diego, like me. Tallish with reddish hair, like me. But taller, leaner, younger, redder. All those things that happen to your mind and body from 25 to 42 -- those haven’t happened to his yet. Also, this young, lean me has a degree in aerospace engineering, five years of sky-diving experience and two on the job at Perris, which means he understands how a vertical wind tunnel works.

“No front loops,” cautions Young Lean Me, briefing students in an anteroom. “No back loops. And no barrel rolls.”

The part of this $3-million machine that concerns us, he explains, is the middle, a cylinder about 30 feet high and 12 feet in diameter, with see-through walls and a pair of openings for entrance and exit. Once inside, you swim or flail, cheeks rippling and heart pounding, in an updraft of about 120 mph. The air is drawn upward by five fans, 200 horsepower each, which spin above you. Your own hurricane. Your personal duplication of how a sky diver feels in those amazing moments before the chute opens.

This place, which neighbors one of the country’s busiest sky-diving operations, is called the Perris SkyVenture. The idea goes back more than 20 years and there are half a dozen similar facilities around the U.S., including Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla. Though the Perris tunnel’s operators are still waiting on their final occupancy permit from city officials, says general manager Jill Scheidel, the tunnel has been running since December.

It’s not cheap. On a per-minute basis, you might be able to get Johnnie Cochran and Mark Geragos to mud wrestle for less. Adult beginners pay $50 for a briefing, equipment rental and two one-minute flights. Return flyers pay roughly $11 to $15 per minute.

Whoosh. An experienced flier hangs before me in the tunnel in a black-and-blue suit, black helmet and bulging blue goggles. He looks like The Fly, possibly trapped in the trailer for a “Matrix” sequel, dipping, flipping, spinning, subtly steering with his hands, like a conductor leading a string section. Then his time is up. My turn.

But I’m somewhere else. It’s 1981. Kristopher Reynolds is in diapers. I am 20, and I stand at the open hatch of a Cessna 182, somewhere above Dos Palos, Calif. Three thousand feet below, San Joaquin Valley farmland stretches like a green-brown checkerboard. My instructor (whose name bears no relation to mine) gives the sign. I grab the struts underneath the right wing and slide out, so that I’m hanging under the wing as we zoom along at 60 mph or so. My instructor gives another sign. I let go. The world goes silent. I’m in the wind. I make an X with my body, to slow my fall.

For maybe five seconds, until my static line yanks and the chute blooms overhead, I am in free fall. The view, the wind, the sense that I’m gliding up here in the sky, while the Earth slowly lurches toward me: Wow. (These days, most beginners jump from a greater height in a shared harness with an instructor. No wing-hanging, and a longer free fall.)

I haven’t jumped since. But when I hear of hard-core skydivers buying their jumps in batches of 60 (at Perris, that would run $1,000, or $16.67 per jump), I do have a clue why.

Now the tunnel. Suited, goggled, padded and earplugged, I fall into the hurricane. Young Lean Me, standing by at the airstream’s edge, nudges and guides me. I throw out my arms, curl my legs and make a sort of sagging X, the standard belly position. The guy in the booth cranks up the air speed and I rise a foot, two feet, five feet. Every time I move -- any part of me, even an inch -- my relationship with the wind changes, and I spin or dip or soar, then grope for equilibrium again. If I screw up horribly, I’ll fall onto a floor of soft netting or bounce hard off a wall.

I bounce gently. With hand signals, Young Lean Me urges me to bend my legs more and my arms less. Mixed results. I am, after all, his inferior self.

Now here’s a problem: no scenery, no silence, no moment suddenly alone in the sky. It ain’t the real thing. But it is a remarkable thing. Like an indoor climbing gym, the tunnel is a tool to isolate a sport’s subtleties.

“You come here to gain body flight awareness,” says the Young Lean Me. “What does what? If you move your hand like that, what happens? When you fly, you can’t tell so easily.”

Dawn Suiter, co-owner and vice president of the central Florida-based industry training and safety group Bodyflight Network, says tunnel work is standard training for competitive sky-diving teams now. She says she’s aware of no tunnel deaths in the last 20 years and “few” major injuries. She notes that as many as four new tunnels are in development across the U.S.

Whoosh. I’m done. Instructor Kimm Wakefield hops into the wind and poses with astonishing steadiness, moves with a remarkable, methodical grace. For her, this is yoga without a mat.

For me -- the old, inferior me -- those minutes aloft, with all that arching and flexing, are a thrill that makes for tender muscles the morning after. I’d blame the Young Lean Me, but he’s got enough trouble ahead.

To e-mail Christopher Reynolds, read his previous Wild West columns or watch a video of Reynolds in the sky-dive simulator, go to latimes.com/chrisreynolds.