"That is not a Grip!"

Joanne's team won the scrambles meet yesterday. Their prize was 15 minutes
in the tunnel. If I had known what the prize was I would've gone with my
original plan, one that would've guaranteed success.

Cheat.

The scoring was on the honor system and I wouldn't have hesitated to
compromise my principles and lie through my teeth for free tunnel time. I'll
keep that in mind for next year.

The 16-way camp started this morning with stretches in the hangar at 7:30.
It seems the point of that was to isolate any of the muscles we had not yet
injured and then damage them as well. I now hurt everywhere. Thanks Doug.

I was on the 4-way base for the first jump, and after the launch I started
making faces at Vicky who was across from me. We were winking at each other,
sticking out our tongues, crossing our eyes, the usual stuff. It took me a
moment to realize we were falling fast as fu** and still accelerating. I
folded myself in two and still could barely stay down with the base as
people started to grip up.

In the debrief Doug told me to add 10 pounds of weights. Me? Put on a weight
belt? In 17 years I've never had to carry lead. I borrowed one from Lyal,
and reluctantly wrapped it around myself for the second jump. It made all
the difference in the world. Instead of trying to twist my legs behind me up
to my ears, I was able to actually relax a little and could still fly my
slot.

The landing was pretty sporty though. I had so much fun on the skydive that
I forgot about the extra weight when I came in to land. I was doing my usual
front riser carve, on a no-wind day, at a couple thousand feet higher field
elevation than I'm used to, wearing 10 extra pounds and as I planed out a
couple feet off the ground, humming along a lot faster than usual, I thought
"I'm swooping!" Turns out wearing the weights wasn't so bad after all.

I brought along some balloons and on one of our rides to altitude I blew
them up and turned them loose inside the plane. Batting them back and forth
killed the ride and gave us something to do on the ride.

We were using the Skyvan, and for one jump Doug put Beth as rear float, but
she couldn't reach the bar. Doug found a piece of rope to tie to the bar and
once the door was open Beth wound up dangling from it like a Piñata.

Once as we got ready to exit Vicky reached behind herself to double check
her hacky before exit and Joanne, who was standing behind her straightened
up and said "That's not your hacky, that's my woohoo!" "I'm sorry!" said
Vicky. "I'm not." said Joanne, as she moved in closer.

These people are no fun at all.
Crazy Larry