"I've been throught the desert on a horse with no name..."

Monday, March ..........? I'm not sure actually

Jeff Gemmell arrived Saturday night, in a taxi, having arrived at the car
rental counter in Tampa with a drivers license that expired months ago. It
would seem that before they will rent you a car they want to make sure you
actually have a drivers license. This has lead to many comments about his
advanced age, poor eyesight, too many speeding tickets, and anything else
people can dream up as a possible reason for him losing driving privileges.

Over the last 3 days we've managed 7 jumps. The winds start picking up,
gusting, and generally getting squirrelly in the early afternoon, which is
when we stand down with the rest of the experienced people and watch as the
rookies and Tandems keep jumping and biff in. By 4 o'clock somebody will
make make a motion that drinking should commence, it's quickly seconded,
voted on, and the motion is carried, generally with no dissenters. Nathalie
even claims to have seen a message from God consisting of crosses in the sky
(jet contrails) and a giant M in the clouds signaling "It's Miller Time!".

We didn't jump at all on Monday, clouds moved in just after manifest opened
in the morning.

The jumps we have done have been pretty darn good though. Out of the 7 of us,
4 have jumped together quite a bit as a team, and 5 of the members have a
bucketful of National medals along with being past and present holders of
National and International records. Patrick and I are just trying to keep
up, but we're holding our own.

Plan the Dive, and Dive the Plan is the way it's supposed to work, but at
boogies and a lot of local drop zone pick-up loads it doesn't seem to work
out that way very often. But with these guys, we get down from a 17 point
skydive and it's just an average skydive, nothing special. I wish I'd hooked
up with this group a long time ago. It hasn't been without mistakes and
brain locks, but most of them have been by the junior members, which
includes me.

When we couldn't jump on Monday we went on a field trip to Tampa. After a
couple false starts and a rainstorm we stopped for lunch, and having decided
I'd had enough riding a bike in the rain, I decided to return to the airport
while the rest of them continued on to Tampa. Within 5 minutes of parting
ways the clouds thinned, the sun came out, it turned into a nice day, and
since I hadn't remembered to get the key to the trailer from Nathalie, I
just kept on going.

When I stopped for gas, the real fun began. In future, the next time I'm
bored back home, I'm just going to go hang out at a gas station for a while.

There were a couple kids at the the next pump over gassing up an R1 and a
CBR (very fast bikes), and I asked them where I could find a good motorcycle
road. Most of the roads in Florida are too straight to be a lot of fun.
"Follow us!" they said, and took me to their playground. Florida is full of
real estate developments that stopped dead in their tracks when the market
crashed, and there are entire road networks in the middle of nowhere with no
houses on them. The pavement was in perfect condition, nice and wide, long
sweeping corners, no curbs, and if you went down you'd be sliding off the
road into sand. There are actual racetracks that aren't as safe as this
place was. After one circuit to make sure the road is clean, without any
sand or dust on it, especially in the corners, and then it's game on! We
spent the next 45 minutes screaming around our own private racetrack. The
kids had the faster bikes, but I was the one who went to Fast Riding School,
so it evened out. They'd keep catching me on the straights, but then get off
the gas earlier going into the corners so I could use trail braking to catch
up, get inside 'em, pick my line, slide off the seat as I weight shifted
into the corner and then blast out the far side 30 or 40 feet ahead of them,
only to have them pass me again on the next straight. They were suitably
impressed by a lot of the techniques I was using, and when I left they were
going to go find a Fast course of their own. I don't think it'll be so easy
to catch them the next time our paths cross.

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself as I left. It lasted
for about 2 traffic lights. That's where some putz driving a Tracker pulled
up beside me, leaned out his window and asked "What kind of bike is that?"
"A Yamaha FZ6S" Was my proud reply.
"Man, that looks real sharp" He said. "I think that might be exactly what
I've been looking for. It would look great with my sidecar on it."
Sidecar? SIDECAR! SIDECAR!!! My FZ6S, my lean mean high performance machine,
my Streetfighter, with a Sidecar? The saddle bags were one thing, a
necessary evil, but a Sidecar? Old men who can't balance a bike any more or
forget to put their feet down when they stop use sidecars. He thinks MY bike
would look good with a SIDECAR? A new low. It's going to take days to shake
that mental image from my brain. Prick, Psssssssssst, Kaboom. The sound of
my ego crashing to the ground yet again.

Wednesday Morning.
We got 2 real hot skydives in yesterday morning organized by Dave from the
Sunshine Factory before high winds shut us down. So we went to the beach. I
hear it was minus 19 in Ottawa yesterday morning. We got to cross the bridge
that Nathalie and I went over when I picked her up and got lost, and the
view was even better when we knew we weren't going the exact opposite
direction to where we wanted to go. How long is that bridge? Long enough
that there's a warning sign saying "Long Bridge, Check Gas" at the
beginning. After spending a couple hours getting irradiated we returned to
the airport in time to get in 3 more jumps. On this vacation we have finally
achieved the proper balance of jumping, riding, beaching, and general
partying that I've been searching for all these years. This is so working
for us.

"I've been through the desert on a horse with no name..."
Point of fact: That song was not done by Neil Young, but by the band
America. I would just like to make sure that everybody knows that Nathalie
was right, everybody else was wrong, and and that she was so gracious in her
vindication that everybody on the Drop Zone stopped what they were doing to
wonder what all the shouting was about. In case anybody missed that: She was
Right, We were Wrong. Wrong Wrong Wrong. Wrong.

There's practice dives today for the bigway stuff that starts tomorrow with
a 20-way Speed Competition. Now that could get pretty sporty. A whole bunch
of rusty skydivers diving like hell to build a 20-way and then make as many
points after that as they can because every succesful fornmation after the
first one gets time taken off your score (That's a good thing). This could
take the sport of Full Body Contact, Combat RW to a whole new level.
The adventure continues................