0
GLIDEANGLE

I ought to buy a brewery! (Many firsts)

Recommended Posts

Wow, what a great weekend of skydiving! I am so far behind in beer fines that I ought to just buy a brewery! :D :D :D :D

Saturday:

Beautiful weather @ Skydive Dallas, great friends, great airplane, great pilot…. A couple of fun, routine Belly RW jumps. Angelina provided entertainment by FALLING out of the airplane. Yep…. She claims that she was blown out by the prop blast, but I swear she just fell out of the plane as we were setting up to launch a bow out of the Otter. We still managed to make 5 points despite the premature exit! I had a great time introducing Angelina and Jonathan to the joys of full altitude hop & pops. What a great day!

An hour after sunset we had clear skies, light ground winds, a full moon and a plane full of idiot skydivers climbing to altitude for night jumps. For the majority of us it was our first night jump. It was pretty funny to watch us during the climb to altitude. Instead of our usual laid back “cool” behavior in the plane… we were all glued to the windows trying to identify the drop zone in the dark. The freefall was an exquisite mix of “damn this is beautiful and cool”, with “damn this is scary”. The winds during canopy flight were a surprise and only one of us made it to the lighted landing area. Determining our altitude for timing our flare was really tough. Most of us hit the ground in mid-flare (toes, knees, hands, face). No injures beyond bruises to flesh and egos.:D :D :D

If you doubted my description that the plane was full of idiot skydivers… here is the proof: A little while later most of us did it again… this time most of us were doing relative work (that damn D-license requirement). Once again, freefall in the dark was magical. Docking on my partner in the dark was really cool. Some of us are really slow learners and made new mistakes on the second landings…. Wanna guess? If I flared too low on the first jump…..Yep, flared too high on the second landing. The good news was, that I realized that I was in for a hard landing and used a PLF to escape unscathed!:D :D :D

Sunday:

I drove to Skydive Temple to get an introduction to canopy relative work from Wendy Faulkner. OH MY G-O-D!!! The docking was cool, but the linked flight was AMAZING. :D :D :D On the third jump we built a downplane… HOLY C-R-A-P BATMAN!!! Hurtling toward the ground with our canopies flying beside us instead of overhead was breathtaing. :D :D :D OK, it is time to buy lots more hook knives and find a CReW canopy! My favorite line from the whole experience was when waiting to load the aircraft Wendy said “If you pull off my shoe please hang on to it and give it back to me when we land.” She said this with a straight face, like it was perfectly normal for skydivers to pull garments off of each other when jumping.

As usual, the great weekend was the product of lots of folks giving extra effort:

• Pilots Svein and Mark for keeping us safe and on target.
• Matteo and California Dave for organizing the night jumps.
• Wendy Faulkner for introducing me to the CReW kennel.
• All of my fellow jumpers, Roland, Angelina, Jonathan, Scott, Walt, and the others who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty.

Anybody know of a brewery available for sale?:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Is that how it works, dear Ron? You go off to play in Houston, and you get to drink up Jim's fine? hmmmm...

Being one of those "idiot night jumpers," I too, owe mucho beer...come find me. I'll make you work for it. :o

It really was a gorgeous day full of great jumps! I'm still bruised and sore.

~Nikki
http://www.facebook.com/poe62

Irgity Dirgity

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Congrats on the CRW jumps!
I enjoyed reading your story, took me back to when I first started CRW a little over a year ago.
Lodi, CA often has a few CRW events every year.

FYI - I just buy cases of Gentleman Jack Daniels, nobody really bothers me to beer when I do something new.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

0