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billvon

2005 Nationals thoughts

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The intermediate 4 way thing was like being a tweener and being told to eat at the little kid's table. It was annoying, but pretty much understandable. We had to jump really early the first day (bizarre to be at a dropzone in the dark with a flashlight getting my gear ready. Usually the darkness flashlight thing is when we're trying to find where somebody passed out -Byron boogalee this weekend!) and then jumped until sunset the second day to accomodate the frontrunners in Open.

One of the USPA officials encouraged us to write letters, cause it was kinda stupid, but you know? It really went well otherwise, and if it wasn't for the special attention the famous teams got, nobody would really have noticed.

This year was better than last year, and next year is somewhere else (AZ). No need to complain.

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I loved Nationals this year and was able to overlook some of the little annoying things. There where something like 80 teams! We just had a pick up team with no real objectives other than to have fun and learn. We did learn a lot and we preformed better than we expected.

-Saw Amy and ltdiver's team out there having fun
-Duece shootin vid and camped out near us near the loading area
-Seeing Betsy (with Silver by the way;)) It's always great to see her.
-Never met Phree unfortunately
-Recieved great unsolicited coaching from some world class teams eager to help out
-Finally bought a full face helmet (The Mamba rocks! Thanks for the advice JP!)
-Recepe for Jerry Juice acquiredB|B|B|
-Watching the top teams duke it out.... Wow!
-There's more just can't remember

I was on a pick-up collegiate 4 way team in '99 and one of my teamates Ben Liston on that team was on Mass Defiance this year that won gold in Advanced. What a great group of guys, they worked hard for it and deserved it.

Hoping to go back next year with the same team and bumping it up a level.

Good job Perris, two years in a row!

Nationals ~ My favorite boogieB|

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You know, Seb, you are what's best about Nationals. You motivated four other jumpers to go down and DO IT! Competing is the next level, and you showed great leadership in getting NorCal jumpers to go down there and hang it out.

And you probably met Phree, he was in the same area as us. Nice guy.

I really enjoyed hanging out with you and the Hollister crowd.

Remember that first FF jump with me outta that wicked cool turbine DC-3 at Perris a million years ago?

Nationals is like the coolest boogie/reunion there is.

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I think it shows that the motivation is directed the wrong way, put on a show first then run the meet, that is not cool. I understand you want to show case your DZ some but it should not be at the expense (money, time, quality of the meet) of the competitors. My teammates complained to the DZ about our A/C not working most of the afternoon and we were handed a note saying that we owed the DZ $335 bucks for the room, my teamies countered with "not a penny until we get power AND A/C". It got fixed thanks to Carrie but it was the end of day 1 of 4 way. (thanks to Benno for his help also)

Cool stickers do not make a meet go smoothly and neither do power problems and over flowing porta potties.

That all being said there many bright spots that need to be acknowledged first of all registration, it was absolutely painless this year, and again Carrie who was literally cracking the whip on the A/C guys to get it done, now. She also chased out the CRW guys who sort of spilled out of their big center room and took over ours for their gear storage. They grumbled but ended up giving us all of the leftover food and birthday cake, gotta love the CRW dogs.
The dubbing stations were faster than anywhere else yet, I never waited more than 2 or 3 minutes to dub.
(thanks Paul, Pat and Jan) The judging was as good as I have seen, we never got (or deserved) a break,
nice job judges. (again)
Perris has the capacity to run a really outstanding meet if they would just drop the bullshit pageantry and sweat a few more details.


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Ron wrote
__________________________________________________
Quote

Bill wrote well about the open finish. And I am sure that Parachutist, Skydiving, and Skyleague will go on about it as well...And they should, it was one of the most exciting battles I have seen.

But for me personally my battle was not overshadowed by the open gold race.

__________________________________________________

snip


hmmmmmmmm interesting account
but
wow, i've been jumping since '81, mostly doing CReW and huge chunks of the narrative used terms completely unfamiliar to me.

ie,
Round three....Well the funny thing is our Zig marqs suck. Our boogie blocks sucked and the technical blocks were pretty good. Also our 11's never really worked well. We blew the third '21' and ran out of time coming back.

or
well we only ever trained block 16 with the memory going to the rear. We planned on having 16 go either way,

or
E-17-14. with our engineering it was a double slot switcher with all Round formations.

kleggo

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15 points of video busts bumped us out of "best of the rest"..... We were gunning for your team Ron



Eric, if you guys had beaten us, I could have lived with that. How many World Champs did you have?

Anyway, if you remove your 15 points of video busts (WOW)you did have a 15.9. But, If you remove our 5 NJ's we had a 16.2. ;)

Its pretty clear you guys were World Champs from the dives I saw...Plus your performance in 8way was AMAZING.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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Quote

15 points of video busts bumped us out of "best of the rest"..... We were gunning for your team Ron



Eric, if you guys had beaten us, I could have lived with that. How many World Champs did you have?

Anyway, if you remove your 15 points of video busts (WOW)you did have a 15.9. But, If you remove our 5 NJ's we had a 16.2. ;)

Its pretty clear you guys were World Champs from the dives I saw...Plus your performance in 8way was AMAZING.



Ouch! Those video bust numbers just make my eyes hurt! B| Dang....! :|

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

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OK then, you won! Next year we get rid of Falzone!!!



Well, if you guys had gotten to train at all I am pretty sure you would have smoked us. On the random rounds and the rounds with blocks you guys have done you spanked us. But then again with the line up you had I would consider you guys one of the top teams...So instead of a top 6 we would have had a top 7 teams.

Still quite fun. One of my proudest moments to date was when Carey walked up to Steve and I and said we looked good. I mean I tried to follow in your footsteps back in 98.

One day I'd like to do 4way with you....I have jumped with Carey and Vern already.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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