This is why you do 8-10 hours of jump school before you do your first non-tandem jump, and your first bunch of jumps with main and reserve side coaches. Shit can go really bad, really fast. One thing they drilled into us repeatedly was always always cut away your main canopy if it didn’t deploy correctly, and you couldn’t clear the malfunction fast. Your AAD will deploy your reserve if you’re moving too fast when you get to your minimum altitude, and you don’t want your reserve tangling up in your main canopy. (Which makes a horseshoe especially dangerous, since you can have your cut away canopy still streaming from your foot, and that can get tangled in your reserve; it’s Bad Shit all around.)

I only did a few solo jumps before deciding that it was too expensive for me to get my license. It just wasn’t my thing; I could do it, but I didn’t love it. My ex-wife though… She spent nearly $10k in a year–on a credit card she took out in my name–because she couldn’t get enough.