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Home: news: Events: NorCal Freefly Festival with Team Jank
NorCal Freefly Festival with Team JankPosted Thu Aug 19 2004By Bob Ash Shortly after forming in November of 2001, Team Jank (Ryan Brownlow, Steve "Sharky" Harkov, Bob Ash) decided to throw an event as a tribute to the Northern California freeflyers that helped create such a thriving freefly scene in the San Francisco Bay Area. Northern California has had a rich freefly history; from Olaf Zipser experimenting with flying different body positions at Skydance in the early 90s to the success of early freefly teams such as Chronic (Charles Bryan, Mike Vail, Rob Weltz) and Mad Style (Evan Mortimore, Tim Mattson, Brad Chatellier). Although there are quite a few dropzones in the area, the hotbed for freefly activity in the late 90s into the early 2000s was Bay Area Skydiving in Byron. "Byron Love", as the locals called it, had formed a tight-knit group of jumpers and it was truly a magical thing to be a part of. Even as a new jumper, there was always someone to jump with, and the more experienced jumpers, such as the members of Mad Style and Kurt "Vert" Issel, were always willing to answer questions, give advice and go for a jump. The effort put in by the experienced freeflyers to mentor the up and coming skydivers paid great dividends, as both local freefly teams Guano and Team Jank went on to win gold medals at the US Nationals. It was in this spirit that the NorCal Freefly Festival was born. Now in its third year, the NorCal Freefly Festival has become one of the largest freefly events in the country. Last year's event attracted nearly 200 skydivers and featured, among other things, a state-of-the-art video projection system that showed freefly movies prepared especially for the event on a huge 10' x 15' rear-projection screen. We had never seen skydiving presented with such clarity and all of the movies were of the highest quality and very well received. In addition to the movies prepared for the boogie was a 15-minute compilation of jumps that took place at the boogie, edited and mixed by Team Jank. It's quite an effort to put together a boogie video at the boogie, but the hard work paid off, as it was one of the highlights of the boogie. Saturday night also featured the debut of the "Wheel of Carnage". Boogie participants paid $3 to spin the wheel to try to win big prizes from PD and Bomber Freefly Suits, but the main focus of the wheel is alcohol. Team Jank had gathered various forms of alcoholic beverages from around the globe and participants could land on anything from Zwack (made in Hungry) to Absinthe (the notorious French drink containing wormwood) to Flaming Drambuies. It made for quite a fun party and all of the proceeds from the wheel went to the Rob Harris Foundation. And, of course, there was the freeflying. Guano and Jank organized big ways, tracks, flocks, hybrids and other fun jumps. Because there were so many highly skilled freeflyers at the boogie, there were numerous multi-level big ways and a couple of great formation-load hybrids. This year's NorCal Freefly Festival will be held at Skydance Skydiving in Davis, CA on September 10-12. What will Team Jank have in store for the boogie this year? Well, you'll just have to come and find out! A special video presentation is being planned for Friday night and Saturday night will feature new Freefly movies from Jank, Guano, Kurt Issel, "Dingo" Dave Royer will be showing an all-new BASE video and this year's boogie compilation video will be featured as well, all shown on a huge screen with a kickin' audio system. Saturday night will also mark the return of the Wheel of Carnage! There will be prizes, some new drinks and some old favorites (yes, Absinthe will definitely be in the house) on the wheel this year. Saturday night's party will be off the hook with numerous surprises. Air support this year will feature a Super Otter, Caravan and the all-new PAC-750! Additional planes will be available if necessary. The boogie fee is $25 and will include a boogie shirt. Check the Team Jank website (www.teamjank.net) for details on how you can pre-register for the boogie and receive an upgraded long-sleeve boogie shirt in any size you choose. Performance Designs will be there if you'd like to demo the new Katana or any of their other fine canopies. Justin Thornton from Mirage will also be there showing off their containers and we will be attempting a big "all mirage" way at some point during the boogie. Come feel the love! The NorCal Freefly Festival III, presented by Team Jank. More articles in this category:
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