Twenty years ago my phone rang. I picked it up and a male voice said: “Guys, you have to arrange an international skydiving event.”

“You must be mistaken, sir,” I said. “Skydive Estonia has barely finished its second month of operations. We have no experience, no money, and no connections. It can’t be done.”

“Don’t worry,” the man on the phone continued. “You have access to a wonderful big airfield and a perfectly good airplane. All you have to do is make sure that we get to use them for a week, and maybe find us a place to sleep. I know people, and they will come. In numbers.”

I thought the man was out of his mind but promised to take the idea up with the co-founders of the club. They agreed with me. The man was most certainly out of his mind. So I called him back and politely said we can’t do it.

The man persisted. He re-explained everything to me and added: “There are a few of really experienced CReW dogs among us, and we’ll take special canopies along, so the Estonian skydivers will get a chance to try something new.” Being at least as weak as the man was mad, I went back to my co-founders. Finally, they approved the plan, but with two conditions. First, there had to be no financial risk to the club, and second, I had to commit to personally taking care of all Estonian-side organizing.

We had five wonderful days in that August. Well, one of them was a bit rainy, but we still managed to do a total of 30 or 40 loads. And when the camp was over, I sat on a stone in Ämari Air Force Base, tired but happy, and said, “We’re going to do it again.”

But the name of the event – Canopy Formation Skydiving Camp Estonia ‘99 – kind of sucked. And since most popular festivals in Estonia were then called “summers” – Rock Summer, Beer Summer, etc – I decided that the next year’s boogie would be called Parasummer 2000.

And so, the legend was born.

Of course, organizing the boogies was not really as easy as the man on the phone had said. The organizing teams have grown bigger and the main organizers have changed over time. But the spirit has lived on.

But nothing of this would have happened, if one man – Pasi Pirttikoski – had not been such a pain in my ass in the summer of ‘99.

So let me thank you, Pasi, on behalf of myself, Skydive Estonia, and everyone who has ever jumped out of a perfectly good airplane in a Parasummer, for being a royal pain in the ass!