pr0ject42

Gary Beyer would be a good coach and can work on your big way skills. check out http://www.onthelineskydiving.com

I think Gary would be the only one to say that. I figured since it had been so quiet in the RW forum I might be able to drum up some activity in here. I guess a female 14 year old flying better than most people isn't as provocative as the thought of belly flying itself dying out, or the concept of a female class at world meets. Then again, maybe most folks saw through my thinly veiled attempt to show off my own skills under the guise of bragging about the wonder-kid. "Oooh look at ME, I can get a 21.7 when I've got three other bad-asses flying around me!" Oh wait...

Hell yeah I'm proud! But it has always been a big deal between us as her 'rents that she does it because she wants to. Its pretty easy (especially for me) to get a little too pumped with visions of a world champion and wanting her to have what I want. The reality is, what would all of that mean if she wasn't digging it while she was doing it? But I got lucky and we've got another season planned. Bedford is out due to other commitments of our teammates, but we'll be doing something. The Gauntlet for sure! The funny thing about this video of her progression is that her initial reaction to it was embarrassment. Aaah to be a teenage girl. I still dig watching it!

I know jealousy when I hear it Remmy...

Dood, I don't know. Around a 100? +- 30, I'd say that is a safe bet. I told her to keep a log book once she started doing it a lot, but good luck getting a 12 year old to do paperwork. Heck I am super lazy about logging jumps, so I don't have a leg to stand on.

Ok so this is a bit of a cross-post but since the RW forum has been a little dead lately, I thought I'd post up. To explain the subject, I've heard mumblings that some folks out there think this 14 year old (wonder-kid as Gary says) is being dragged around the tunnel, not really worth what little hype she has gotten. Well, Ellie (and the rest of us old farts) put up a 21.7 over at Bedford this year. I'm pretty stoked about it (mainly because I managed to keep up some of the time, but also because she is a bad-ass). I think the scores speak for themselves, but visual proof is nice too, so I thought I'd post up the video from the meets we attended last season. First, the Gauntlet in Eloy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1PdSRMBty0 (Thanks to Jason Peters for getting the video to me) and finally the Bodyflight Challenge in Bedford: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoVyXrhn6ag I worked with the video they sent me from the meet, which did fully omit our round 6 and only have half of round 8 and was really choppy on round 3. I did manage to pirate a ground level view of round 6 from Kurt on skyleague. Enjoy!

...that I bragged about my kid. I've watched Ellie go from being a timid 11 year old terrified step foot on the net in Eloy to a confident 14 year old turning a 37 point round at the World Challenge. She has never ceased to amaze me with her style, grace and calmness. Her maturity in the tunnel is parallel to her maturity outside of the tunnel and through that she has taught me a lot about myself. So in return I decided to put together a clip that documents her evolution in the tunnel. It is not THE best stuff that she has done, but more clips that show where she was at a certain point in time. You can view that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9-y082ppUA This (while it isn't much) is also a thank you to all of the people who have coached her through the years. You'll most likely see yourselves in the video. The owners, staff and management at Skyventure Colorado, Jason Russel, Bar-Brad, Derek V., Gary and Emma (!!), Steve Curtis and Jason Peters, Mick and Ray (her first instructor) are all of the ones that come immediately to mind (I know I've forgotten a lot, but I have been kicked in the head a few times). Thank you for being good coaches at that. Finally, since this is already sappy enough, this is a video of our meet in Bedford this year. That place is awesome! Thank you to John for flying for Emma while her back healed! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoVyXrhn6ag

http://airgord.smugmug.com But since his site doesn't have any copyright protection, I don't think any challenge photos will be showing up. There are a bunch from OTL though!

I'm glad the kids survived!

[hijack] When I was coaching the kids at skyventure colorado, they never got the names, only the letters and numbers. To this day, even turning a 21 point average, the wonder-teen still wouldn't know what a meeker is if I asked her, but she can tell you what an E is. Now that is good fun. [/hijack]

That Aussie intermediate dive pool is weird.

If you would stop wrecking yourself on your snowboard, more training with the teenager you would have I was going to actually wear a long sleeved t-shirt over my suit. As your hubby says, dress for success!

I used to have to strap on 16 lbs of lead on one team that I trained with, now after becoming fat, I get to be the fast faller on the team and here is my take on it. Yeah, lugging weight around sucked. What sucks worse is when you have to carry that weight around all day and all night because it is sub-dermal. Yes, I understand bruising of the hips, the extra wingloading (which I actually liked) and just having to haul lead around is a pain in the butt, but if you want to have successful jumps everybody has to work together. The bigger people can have baggier suits, big ass booties and fly a little spread out, but if they are dropping out just trying to move, everyone on that jump with them is throwing their money away. There is no "us against them" when it comes to fall rate, if "we" want to jump together, we make the changes required to have a successful jump and last time I checked, besides the suit alterations, big people can't cut off weight before a jump, however those graced with a slim figure can slap on some lead to keep everyone together.

We just got back last night. That tunnel is SICK! Big, quiet, creeping area, these are my a few of my favorite things. Samer, Kirk and Andy were extremely helpful in getting our time lined up and letting us fly the time we've paid for. The rest of the staff (mostly familiar faces) were all awesome. Thanks guys!

What is your continuity? Mirrors or DSS? Most teams send the back half over on the hops and for the exit, always launch the b-slot so when the block is complete you roll straight into your A slot stuff, in theory to get your faster page in first. I say try both continuity plans out. Mirrors are fun and pretty easy, but DSS is less memory work for the front half. The key is to train the hell out of the B slot stuff if you are doing DSS.

Chunky skate shoes work best in my experience

Hey Betsy, could you provide some rules for the meet? Are you guys going to open up the second door for exits or will there be some other exit policy (for 4-way)? Also, will the judging be done with the overhead camera currently in the tunnel or will there be real-time judging or will there be a different camera put in? I heard the lighting made judging an intuitive experience at Bedford this year. What will the entry fees be? Anything else of interest that potential competitors should know?

You got an invite?

I think at the time of the prodigy video, those girls had about 80 hours each or so? That was back in December. Keep in mind that is including backflying, kneeflying, whatever. I think Ellie is up to around 90 or 100 hours now, but don't let the extra time fool you, she was flying 4-way as well back in October as she is now, its just the finer points of technique that she is being tortured with, or really just getting the stink-eye from Gary.

Hey Kirk, when are you going to put up a tunnel meet at ParacleteXP so the kid can get some competition experience?

A lot of people learned how to skydive before there were tunnels. Have confidence, practice and stay aware and responsive to what is going on. Now if you are fully tweaking about the fact that you can't get some tunnel in before you continue, then do it because it is going to serve as larger mental hurdle for you to overcome than just doing the skydive. Skydiving is a mental exercise and if that aspect for you is hosed because you're obsessing that you didn't get that little extra practice in, you've already lost.

Would you guys consider doing a tunnel challenge at your place similar to the bodyflight challenge? I mean why let them have all of the fun across the pond?

I don't know about the four of you down there, but your camera flyer has got her sh-t wired tight!

Everyone bitches about how much the tunnel costs. Does anyone remember what your out of pocket cost is for a coached skydive? For a mere 60 seconds of freefall (if you're not freeflying), you have to pay your slot and at the very least the coach's slot, but most likely you'll have a coaching fee, be it by the day or the jump. Some quick math on that one brings you to $48 in slots alone, plus maybe a $10 coach fee for a run of the mill local DZ coach? For 60 seconds. 60 seconds at a tunnel on average is $14 and you can put as many people in the chamber as you want, but you are still back at some sort of coaching fee, unless the person is your friend and wants to help you. Granted at the tunnel you don't get the fun canopy ride, exiting from the plane, and the oh-so-great entire day wasted at the DZ for a handful of jumps. So kicking down $10 or $20 after getting 5-10 minutes of tunnel time from a highly trained flyer doesn't seem tremendously out of line. Sticking with those numbers you get: 5 skydives, coached at a DZ: $290 at $24 a slot, $10 per jump coaching fee 5 minutes of tunnel time: $90 at $14/minute and kicking down $20 for a tip to the generous tunnel monkey who got in and helped you with your backflying. But then again being at the DZ all day, being social and whatnot is a big part of the experience for most people. This is not really what the tunnel is all about, at least for me. I see the tunnel as an intense training tool, even when I'm there just to have fun, working on freeflying or anything outside of my training goals for that season. Think of it like school. The tunnel monkey in there who gets stuck with your rotation is like a public school teacher. Doing the minimum to keep The Man happy. Sure, you can certainly get them to work with you and go above and beyond, but the reality is anything more than keeping you from killing yourself is above and beyond. Now, lets say you get a coach. This is like going to private school. It is up to you to research which coach might work best for you, but you get more personalized time both before and after the tunnel and you get intensive dialog in the ante-chamber to give you tips/drills/words of shame between sessions to keep your motivation up and your learning peaked. You are indeed paying more for the time, but you are getting more out of it. My take on it is that you're better off paying twice as much for time if you add in coaching than if you just paid for twice as much time and didn't get any coaching. Even then if you doubled your tunnel time rate for coaching you're looking at $140 in my hypothetical numbers stated above, which is still less than half of the equivalent cost of doing the same work at a DZ. So, in review, at the tunnel: Instructor: there to prevent hospital trips. Coaching is not part of that, therefore a show of courtesy is culturally expected if you ask for coaching from them. Coach: there to prevent you from wasting valuable airtime looking like a douche-bag. You pay a coaching fee, so tipping on top of that is based upon a strong internal urge to display your extreme satisfaction with the experience. Remember, even though you are only in the tunnel for an hour or so, you're getting in way more freefall time and getting a much richer learning experience than being at the DZ for a whole weekend. Your per minute of freefall time to dollars and time spent are going a lot further for you than at the DZ. Don't start bitching about money, because if you are this is not the sport for you. I know this is a total tangent from the actual topic at hand, but maybe it will bring the reality of how trivial even a minor tip is, over all.

I say nay on the sunglasses. How else are you going to see the look of fear when you key a block before your opposite is ready? I can hardly stand to be without my sunglasses on a daily basis but when doing RW, I suck it up and deal. Usually my visor is dirty enough to tone down the sun anyway.