"Who did you have to sleep with to get a slot on Z-team?"

That was the question asked of me by Ginelle from New York State.
Getting a slot at some invitational events like this can be very difficult,
and there are often questions asked about why a particular person did or did
not get the invite. I started to protest that I didn't sleep my way onto it,
and that as a matter of fact my girlfriend had pulled some strings and got
me onto it, which is when Ginelle pounced, shouting across the crowded
packing mat "So you did sleep your way on!" The comment has actually
enhanced my stature with this group.

If you ever get the guy around the fire some night, ask Jeff Gemmell about
the time he broke his leg and got dragged home on a toboggan with his buddy
running along behind carrying his foot. Or his perception of this
newsletter. He calls it Spam, but he didn't say it as politely as that. I
had always thought him somewhat dry, but it turns out he is one of the
funniest people I know. If you want some real entertainment ask him to go
get the soap. Then keep your back against the wall. Or about his time as a
member of "Team Shred". A legend in Canadian Skydiving. And I thought he was
just Jeff. He has turned out to be so much more.

Rhonda Joyce showed up yesterday. Finally somebody I could pawn the rest of
the Moonshine off on who'd say thank-you. She announced her presence by
having a cutaway - number 6. That works out to 1 every 323 or so Skydives.
As Dave G said: "If you're on your back, spinning like hell, and the planet
is getting real close real fast, RELEASE THE OTHER BRAKE!

The 20-way speed competition started today, 3 rounds consisting of one
practice dive and one scored dive in each round. I might be at the limit of
my abilities as far as the big-way stuff is concerned but when it comes time
for break-off I seem to be outrunning most of the people on the load.
Probably because I'm friggin' terrified and just want to get the hell out of
there. The winds have been bad all day, high to begin with, and getting
stronger through the day with plenty of gusts. I narrowly missed getting
piledrived into the ground landing from jump 5, and my whole right side
feels bruised and partly numb. I didn't think it was a big problem until I
went to pull on jump 6. It took 3 tries to pull the hacky, and my Pro Track
had started screaming it`s last warning, the one that sounds like a siren,
before I could finally yank it out and deploy my pilot chute. I set in well
under 1500 feet. I landed so far out I had to cross 2 barbed wire fences, a
couple of huge ditches that in a wetter spring were probably swamps filled with alligators and walk for 20 minutes to get back.

The skydives have been going well though. I`m not making many mistakes, and
the ones I am making are the same ones I`m making in the dirt dive on the
ground so at least I`m ``planning the dive, and diving the plan``.

The weather forecast for the weekend is crap so the plan has all been pushed
ahead. We are starting 30-ways in about an hour, and 60-ways tomorrow, a
whole day ahead of schedule. This should prove interesting. Where I jump a
formation load is when we use both Cessna's and put as many as 9 people up
at once.