He mentions that it was his "first ever parachute landing", but I can't imagine a SR-71 test pilot wouldn't have been trained in parachute landings. Any idea why?
But even for test pilots, ejection is a rare and traumatic event : finding oneself landing with no injury at all after a high speed ejection is very lucky - the design of the B-58, XB-70, F-111, Space Shuttle and some of the B-1A prototypes with an escape crew capsule is a consequence of that, though it seems that the weight and space tradeoff has fallen out of favor. Apart from speed, the mere impact of the charge that propels the seat is enough to cause spinal injury, even if the pilot managed to get his spine in perfectly upright position before ejecting.