Don't let me near John Smith's Scotch

That's what Paul told me before we left Ottawa. Last night be bumped
throught the door with a silly grin on his face and a plastic cup full of
Glenfiddich. Appearently he doesn't take his own advice.

Canopy Piloting started early Wednesday morning. By the time we got there
they were doing Speed Carving. That involves hook-turning a canopy to put it
into a dive accelerating towards the ground, leveling it off just before the
pilot impacts, passing through an electronic gate 5 feet off the surface of
the pond, and then carving the canopy, changing the direction to stay
between the gates as they curve away from the original direction of flight,
and passing out through the end of the course without touching the pond, the
ground, or passing outside of a gate. This all happens a few feet off the
ground at speeds exceeding 80 MPH. I was crouched down next to the course
with Dr. Mike trying to get some photo's as the competitors flashed past
when Jay Moledski, Canadian and World Champion of Canopy Piloting entered
the course. He was swung out as he carved, with the canopy perpendicular to
the ground as he went by, and he clipped a gate with his foot. At a few feet
off the ground, going like a bat out of hell, at an angle that was scary
just to watch go by, he turned his head to look over his shoulder, checking
to be sure he didn't bust the gate and get a zero score as he continued
through the course and landed at the end as effortlessly as if he was one of
us mere mortals doing a straight in landing. There's a reason he's World
Champ.

Every time somebody started a run the St. John's Ambulance guys would pick
up their stretcher and bags and tense up, only to put them back down again
when the run was complete.

8-Way ran on Wednesday. Normally you put at team together, and then enter.
This year, Monique from Tropical fish suggested running it like a scrambles
competition. So Josee chased down everybody who was interested, harassed a
couple more into joining in to get an even number, and then drew names out
of a hat to determine the teams. This is not exactly standard practice at a
National level competition, but it sure turned out to be a lot of fun.

The team I was picked for was named by Team Captain Rhonda Joyce: Scrambled
Eights and Bacon. Perfect.

We funneled the 8-way competition exit that I had so carefully briefed and
insisted would work like a charm (proving once again that I only think I
know it all) and never built the first point, earning a zero score on the
first round. When we landed Rhonda pulled me aside and said she thought we
needed a different strategy. She suggested taking four solid flyers to be
the base with the rest diving or floating and then building it from there.
We also decided to not bother briefing the whole skydive because the odds of
our getting through he whole thing were pretty damn low. The team was a mix
of low to extremely high experience with different fall rates who had never
flown together, so we really had to work to the lowest common denominator.
Rhonda, Scott Simpson, Mike Pitt and I formed the base giving all the rest a
well defined target to head for. The second dive went much better with us
launching a Meeker, quickly flipping it to a donut, and the rest of docked
pretty quickly for our first point. That set the pace for the rest of that
round and the next.

On round 3 we launched a Stairstep Diamond as the base, and Diane Beer Girl
was taking a compressed grip on my left side. It built fast with one person
low, so Scott and I folded ourselves in two to pick up the pace to get down
to them, but I inadvertently pushed down on Diane's leg causing her to fold
up and start to flip over on top of us so I tossed her away. She promptly
came back for revenge. As soon as the first point was built, I keyed it to
the next one, and Diane turned me into Her Bitch and took me for a ride. We
were supposed to do a 360 degree turn as a piece and then redock with the
center. I stuck out my right leg to start the turn and suddenly I could feel
her hauling on my grip as she accelerated into the spin. I went neutral at
the halfway point and we were still accelerating as I started to think
"NOOOOOOOO!" There wasn't the slightest shred of doubt in my mind that we
were going to go blasting right past our slot spinning like a Frisbee and
that it would take at least another full revolution to stop. I have no idea
how she did it but she dragged me to a screeching halt perfectly on level
and in our slot, with my hand inches from the grip I was supposed to take on
a wide-eyed Mike Pitt. Holy Crap! She bought her suit used from Eliana
Rodriguez of Arizona Airspeed and has often joked that she hoped it would
just be able to fly itself and make her look good. I don't think she need
any help from any suit, she seems to have it all figured out on her own.

It was also Rhonda's birthday and the whole load sang her Happy Birthday as
we went to altitude.

Heather told me on one of rides up that in the Intermediate 4-way
competition - in which they took silver - they had been doing the standard
warm-and-fuzzy handshake before getting ready to launch. Things hadn't been
going so well so they changed it to "F*** the Lord, He's not with us!" And
went out and scored 7 points. They changed their strategy making profanity
and blasphemy the order of the day.

In the end we were able to make up the ground we lost in round 1.

Final results: Scrambled Eights and Bacon - Silver
Thursday: Ten-Way Speed