I love tactile things -- the creamy, the gritty, and everything in between.

That's why out of all of skydiving's many traditions, I love pieing the most. It appeals to every base instinct in me. It's fun and messy and gross and messy and nasty and ... um, messy. And to make it even better: There's food involved.

Pieing is taking someone who has made a great skydiving accomplishment -- and slathering them with the nastiest concoction of crap possible.

This weekend we had J.R., who recently made his 100th jump.

My boyfriend, Jason, was given the first pie to throw. He wheeled up in his wheelchair so far up in J.R.'s grill, the two boys almost needed Altoids. Jason hoisted the cream pie up in the air, waited for the crowd's screams and yells to die down a bit, then smothered J.R.'s face in marshmallow goo.

Next came the dog food. Then the molasses. I think someone doused him with a bag of flour. There was a shower of oats. And then it was just a food beatdown -- that poor guy was pelted with everything from sour milk to sauerkraut.

Jim finished it off by pouring a bottle of beer over J.R.'s head, which turned everything into thick, first-grade paste.

When we finally untied J.R. from the wood where he had been crucified, there were pie plates piled all over the ground. The stench was almost visbile. And there were lumps of goo, piles of unknown substances, mountains of mysterious new strains of botulism.

It was messy and nasty and gross ... and fabulous.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25, 2005 at 11:20 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.