Puddle Jumping
| pəd(ə)l jəmpiNG | verb. informal. slang used by NASA pilots to describe the act of high-diving through trans-dimensional atolls.
I join the other engineers crowding the ring of white sand circling the blue-green waters at the center of the atoll — the puddle, as Mary likes to call it.
She once described dropping through the puddle as “falling through the dark side of the moon, beginning with a low-gravity 2-step through a pitch-black vacuum and then waltzing your way along a tenuous, gossamer thread of dark matter until you cannonball through the connecting atoll on the other side.”
She’s at the edge of the platform now, some 200 feet above the water, about to jump. I blow her a kiss.
Really love this scene — a known (?) but extraordinary step — and the personal touch of a blown kiss.
This is really fantastic. I love the descriptive power and simplicity of your prose!