"There's something you don't see everyday"

When Kelly tried to give us directions on how to get to Phil's firehouse I
told her to just give me the address and I'd punch it into my GPS. She said
that following the GPS directions wouldn't be a good idea, and that she
would give us a "safe route". Safe route? She also told us to pull around to
the pack of the place so we could put the car into the locked compound. I
started to get just a little bit concerned. Nathalie and I had taken a wrong
turn in Miami in March and wound up heading into the wrong neighborhood. The
friendliest faces we saw were on the cops raiding a house we drove past. We
turned around and got out fast. Deliberately heading into a neighborhood
like that didn't seem like a good idea but Kelly assured us that as long as
we followed her directions, didn't pull over, kept the doors locked, and
left before dark, we'd be fine. I'm serious, those were her instructions.

The clincher was when she said she went there all the time. If she can do
it, then we should be able to handle it.

We called ahead to let Phil know when to expect us so he could have the gate
open. When we left the Interstate the first thing that struck me was that we
were the only white people to be seen. There weren't even any white people
in cars just driving through the area and looking scared, like us. I felt a
little bit conspicuous. It took us 20 minutes of driving through a
neighborhood where it seemed that half the stores were boarded up and the
other half were fortresses with steel bars over every window and door. I've
seen this stuff on TV but I didn't think it was real. We were very relieved
to finally get to the station, but when we pulled up out back the gate was
closed and locked. I got out of the car, and telling Nathalie to lock the
doors, set off around the building to get the gate opened. If I felt
conspicuous before, now I felt like I had a bulls-eye on my back as I walked
back down the street and around the corner.

It was with a profound sense of relief that I opened the front door and
stepped into safety. Only to find the place deserted. There were no trucks,
no ambulance, and when I walked through there wasn't a soul in the place.
There was a pot of water boiling on the stove, the coffee was on, a TV set
was playing, but everybody was gone. It was creepy. I leapt to the obvious
conclusion that they'd all been murdered, and the killers were using the
Fire Trucks to dispose of the bodies.

I won't say I panicked, but I will admit that I was moving pretty fast when
I left. By the time I got to the first corner on my way back around the
building I had broken into a trot, by the time I reached the second corner I
was at a dead run. I didn't notice the Fire Truck go by on the opposite side
of the road.

I'm told the conversation in the cab of the truck went like this:
Fireman #1 "There's something you don't see everyday"
Fireman #2 "What's that?"
Fireman #1 "A white guy running in our neighborhood"
Fireman #2 "Who's chasing him?"
Fireman #3 "I know that white guy!"

Which is when I heard one of the most welcome sounds I have ever heard in my
life; Phil calling my name. Turned out they weren't dead after all, just out
on a call. We quickly got Nathalie's car in the lockup and even with it
being behind a chain link fence with 3 rows of barbed wire on top they told
us to lock it. I quickly saw why these guys weren't worried about working in
this neighborhood as Phil introduced us to 11 of the biggest men I've ever
met. They made the big guy from our 8-way look like a 98 pound weakling.

Then we got the tour every kid dreams of. As well as showing us every nook
and cranny of the station from the tomato plants in the yard, to the hose
drying tower, the weight room in the basement, the bunk room, the "Fat Cave"
(their Lazy-boy equipped TV room), we got to crawl all over the fire trucks.
And I mean all over, if there was a compartment on either one of those 2
vehicles I didn't get to poke my head into, a lever I didn't get to pull or
control that wasn't explained, then it wasn't important. He even offered to
pull the ladder truck onto the street and raise the great big huge 10 story
tall hydraulic ladder for me to play on but I felt I'd imposed enough. But
it sure was tempting.

Then we had lunch. When I saw the spread they laid out for a simple lunch I
could see why these guys were so enormous. There was enough food there to
end a famine in a good sized African country. Scalloped potatoes, pasta
alfredo, salad, chicken wings, barbecued chicken breasts, and more. This was
lunch! For lunch I usually have an apple. I think the way it works is they
keep eating all they can hold, then go down and pump all those weights in
the basement until they eventually become so large they don't actually need
to use the jaws off life to pry someone out of a wreck, they just grab the
car door and rip it loose with their bare hands.

We hung around for a while after lunch, but it was a quiet day and we didn't
get to go on a run before it was time to head downtown. Phil gave us
directions on a "Safe Route" out of the neighborhood and we headed for Navy
Pier, the prime tourist trap jutting out from downtown into Lake Michigan.

As soon as we turned onto Lake Shore Boulevard we were blown away by the
most spectacular skyline either of us had ever seen. Every downtown I've
ever seen looks pretty much the same as another, your basic big glass and
steel buildings in various colors and assorted heights. Not this one. It was
like a version of Keeping Up With The Jones's writ large. One guy built a
gorgeous building, and the next guy had to try and outdo it either in scale,
imagination or whimsy, and the next guy had to try and outdo him, and on and
on and on. I don't think I've ever taken a picture of a building before,
here I've taken a couple of hundred. We even took an architectural river
cruise through downtown. The tour guide was suffering from a severe case of
verbal diarrhea and made a continuous series of bad corny jokes but he was
quite knowledgeable and informative, and even shared such tidbits as the
fact that the best view in the whole of downtown Chicago was from the Ladies
Room in the bar of the lounge located at the top of the Hancock tower. So as
soon as we got off the tour boat we headed for the Hancock Tower.

There's an observation deck at the top of the tower, but Josee had told us
before we parted ways the day before that there was a $15 charge to get onto
it. She also said if we went to the lounge there was no charge, so we went
to the lounge and spent the money on drinks. And it was well worth a couple
of over priced drinks. We were given a panoramic view of the heart of
downtown with Navy Pier and Lake Michigan in the background. When she
returned from the ladies room Nathalie said the tour guide was right, the
best view was from the ladies room. As we left the building we debated going
to the left as we left the door, or to the right. We could have gone either
way, we chose right, took 10 steps to the crosswalk, and out of the millions
of people in this city, there standing on the opposite corner, were none
other than Philippe and Josee. I managed to get off a couple of quick
pictures of them as they crossed the street and it was the flash going off
that drew their attention to us.

And the peasants rejoiced.

To celebrate the joyous reunion we all went back up to the lounge for more
over priced drinks, then out to dinner. Phil the fireman was working a 24
hour shift and since every hotel room in the city was booked for a
convention he had offered to let Nathalie and I stay at his house. When we
got there I went around the house to the far side to let myself in. It was
pitch black inside so I started feeling my way across the house to where I
thought the door was on the driveway side so I could let Nathalie in.
Instead, I found the stairway to the basement. Fortunately it made a 180
degree turn halfway down so I only fell down 6 steps before crashing to a
stop against the wall on the landing, proving once again that when you're on
a skydiving vacation, the most dangerous place to be is on the ground.

The next day we visited Kenwood Liquors. Normally a trip to a liquor store
while on vacation is a daily thing and not worthy of mention, but this place
was extra special. When we went in there was a greeter, 6 cahiers going flat
out, oversized grocery carts, beer piled to the ceiling, and it was all
flying out the door. All the liquor and wine was priced by the bottle and
the case, and some of the premium wines were half what they cost back home.
It's hard to believe that this country once had Prohibition. If we hadn't
been planning on leaving the country soon I'd have grabbed one of those
carts and loaded it to the hilt with French wine and Grey Goose vodka.

This was going to be our last day in Chicago, so we rented a couple of bikes
and pedaled along the paths on the shore of the lake. We went about 10 miles
to the north, then back south past downtown to where all the museums were,
and as we circled The Field Museum of Natural History, ahead of us we
spotted none other than Philippe and Josee.

And the peasants rejoiced. Really, what are the odds of running into anybody
we've ever met before in our lives while visiting a strange city, let alone
crossing paths with our team mates twice?

Since we didn't have a place to stay that night we decided to start the trip
home. As I type this I'm seated on my own couch, in my own living room,
glass of wine in hand. Nathalie is asleep upstairs trying to catch up after
all the late nights and early boarding calls. As a team we all enjoyed our
trip to see the bright lights of the big city and attending US Nationals,
but right now I'm just glad to be home.
Crazy Larry

Take me to your litre

What kind of litre? Any kind, as long as as it has a label on it saying what
proof it is.

Now the REAL party has begun. We returned from dinner on Sunday night to
attend the briefing for the 8-way competition and found that everyone on the
drop zone was bombed. Trashed. Toasted. Even the judges. Especially the
chief judge. When she staggered out on stage she had so much trouble
standing up that she finally wound up delivering her briefing sitting down.

She slurred her way through before handing the microphone over to Rook
Nelson. He shared some statistics. The judges scored 452 competition jumps
on Sunday (they earned their beer, no wonder there were some complaints, and
thank you to them for their efforts), there were 112 competition loads flown
by 5 twin otters, 20 fun loads, and 120 Tandems. There was never a time from
7 AM until sunset when there weren't canopies in the air.

Although there were a lot of serious teams entered in 8-way they were
outnumbered by the fun teams and names like "FIG JAM" (F*** I'm Good, Just
Ask Me), and "Rook you Have A Call On Line 1", were common. I went over to
Erin after the team had registered our team name and told her there had been
a mistake, that instead of "Ninjas 8" it should have been "Ninja's Eh?" in
honor of the 2 Canadians on the team. She gave me a suspicious look and said
"Here, you type it in." I guess she didn't want to be blamed for making a
typo. By the time rest of them found out it was official and too late to
change it.

For the Canadian Nationals we had to scrape up everybody on the drop zone to
put together 3 teams, here they had 21.

Once they handed out the dive pool we headed out to the hangar to meet the
rest of the team and start puzzling out and planning the dives. This is
where everything went to shit. It took forever to figure out the flow on the
first dive and to start creeping it. It was one of the most frustrating
experiences I've ever had skydiving. Everybody had their own idea of how it
should be done and they were all trying to talk at once and there wasn't
anybody who was clearly in charge. It was the deaf dumb and blind trying to
lead the lame stupid and halt. Nathalie and I didn't know these people so we
were reluctant to try and take charge. I had started to consider faking an
injury or some desperate emergency forcing me to return home when an 8-way
team from the Ranch descended on us and proceeded to Gang Coach us. They
each grabbed the person who was flying in their slot and started pushing and
tugging us around, stepping into the formation to demonstrate when somebody
was having trouble understanding, giving us a constant stream of
simultaneous instructions. It was overwhelming at first but In minutes we
had everything figured out including the exit. Nonetheless it took an hour
just to plan the first jump. Everybody else had left the hangar long before
we were done, and they had puzzled out most of their jumps. We're so
screwed. We've already paid for all 10 jumps plus the video slot. It's far
too late to back out now. Nathalie lay in the back seat and cried all the
way back to the hotel room.

Nathalie and I plotted our strategy that night. I told her that after the
first jump went to hell if she stepped forward and took charge I would be
the muscle and back her up. The next day when I told Kelly what the plan was
had she said why wait? She'd been watching the Gong Show the night before
and thought we should stage a coup now and seize control before somebody
gets hurt.

The first jump didn't go anywhere near as badly as anybody expected, and we
actually scored 3 points. I had worn all the weight I could find, and found
myself fighting to not go low on the big guy. He was 250 pounds, but it was
spread over a big frame, wore a slow suit, and knew how to fly. But since we
were going to be on quick calls all day long it was obvious somebody was
going to have to force the pace so Nathalie started to issue orders, and to
my great surprise for the most part people shut up and listened. On a good
day organizing skydivers is like herding cats, but I think everybody
realized how much trouble we were in and wanted someone to show them the
way. We roped Kirk Verner into showing us the best way to engineer the dives
for the rest of the day but every time he left us on our own Nathalie took
charge again and made it happen. We did 9 jumps that day, which is a hell of
a pace for a 4-way team that has trained together. For 8 people who have
never jumped together it was spectacular. We scored 3 points on every round
except for the last one where we scored 2. We finished the competition with
our last jump on Tuesday morning. We accomplished the 2 goals Nathalie and I
had set for 8-way: Don't finish in last place, and finish ahead of a team
with matching suits.

Us Nationals has been fun, We're glad we came, but we've had enough. We're
going to go spend a couple of days in Chicago. Phil works for the City of
Chicago and has invited us to come visit him at work on Tuesday and stay for
lunch. He said we could ride along if they get any calls. What sort of
calls? There's no telling. Could be damn near anything. Phil rides around in
a big red truck with sirens covered with lots of lights, ladders, and hoses.
This could be the high point of the trip.

"If you can't convince them, confuse them" Harry S. Truman

Jump number 5 was awesome! We burned right through it. They're starting to
back up on posting the scores, there's so many teams they just can't keep
up.

Just as the plane was lifting off on number six I looked out the window to
see 3 wild eyed deer tearing along beside the runway as fast as they could,
looking absolutely terrified as they were being overtaken by something
nothing in their lives could ever have prepared them to deal with. It would
have been pretty funny if not for the fact that if one of them had panicked
and turned left onto the runway instead of right into the corn it could have
easily taken out an engine at a critical moment. When a skydiver screws up
he gets hurt, if he screws up seriously he dies, but when something goes
wrong with a plane, they can lose everybody on board. The day would really
suck for the deer as well.

We had a couple more busts throughout the day including some where we
thought the points were clearly presented. I wound up talking about it with
Craig Gerard in the loading area and he said the judging was very uneven for
all the teams. There were a number of completed formations busted that there
were no problems with. But it didn't always work against us.

A number of years ago I was on a skills camp where Andy Honigbaum of
Airspeed gave us a 10 minute presentation on "Acting Skills, and Showing It
to the Judges". One of the points he made was that no matter what happened,
act as if everything is going exactly according to plan. He said that in a
fast paced competition, if what the judges see on video looks smooth and
controlled with no hesitation or hint of confusion, they won't always pick
up on mistakes. "It's too late to save it, just move on to the next one
without drawing attention to it." We got down from one jump and Josee was
upset because she took a wrong grip on a formation she's done so many times
she can do it without thinking. It was only one point, in the grand scheme
of things it wouldn't make the slightest difference one way or the other but
she was upset she made such a simple mistake. But when they posted the
scores for that round they didn't bust us. We watched the tape again,
several times, the mistake was definitely there, we definitely should not
have scored a point, but she looked so confident and 100% certain about what
she was doing that if she hadn't told us she made the mistake we probably
could have watched the tape a dozen times and not noticed. "If you can't
convince them, confuse them."

Nathalie and I were approached about joining a team to compete in the 8-way
event that would start right after 4-way was done. The guy was a friend of
Nathalie's and because it was the only invitation we'd been able to get
into that event we took it. A few hours later when we were in the loading
area Nathalie pointed across to one of the mockups used for practicing exits
and said "Those guys will be on our team" . When I looked over one of the
guys was one of the biggest skydivers I have ever seen. This guy was more
than six and a half feet tall and looked like he could snap a telephone pole
in half. I'm not kidding, no exaggeration, not a word of a lie. He was huge.
Enormous. He looked like he could be a 4 person base all on his own. My jaw
dropped, all the color drained from my face, my heart stopped, and I damn
near crapped my pants. All I could picture was this guy clutching me in a
death grip as we fell at the speed of sound with me flapping like a flag
above him while we plummeted to our deaths. Everybody around me thought it
was pretty funny, but I was not amused. I also needed fresh underwear. I saw
him from a lot closer in the hanger later that day and he looked even bigger
up close than he did from a distance. I didn't bring enough weight belts to
be able to make myself fall fast enough to stay with this guy. We're
screwed.

The event was over by 4 in the afternoon, we had an average score of 8.3.
Not what we had hoped, but given our problems it was pretty good. We
competed in The Big Leagues.

Now that the seriuos crap is out of the way we can go and have some fun. 8
Way starts tomorrow morning.

But everytime I think about jumping with the big guy I feel like I'm one of
those deer being chased down the runway by something I can never hope to
outrun.

"Hold still, I can't get it in."

"Hold still, I can't get it in." Overheard in the plane as one of the
members of Carolina Ice was helping a teamate do up their seatbelt. What did
you think it meant?

At a quarter to 1 it was still solid overcast with rain clouds approaching
so I made a quick trip to the bathroom and when I came back out the clouds
had opened up with blue sky coming through and no rain to be seen. All I
could think was "How long was I in there?" Suddenly all the people who had
been lying around had come into motion, pulling out gear, checking
equipment, and getting their suits on. It took another hour before the skies
cleared enough for manifest to start putting teams on a call, so in the
meantime they sent up a load of tandems as a wind drift load. The same
weather front that took the clouds away left strong winds behind that seemed
to be getting stronger by the minute. The tandems were able to move forward
in the wind but not by much. We went out to watch them land and an ambulance
and fire department truck with paramedics on it showed up. I was looking
around thinking "how the hell could anybody be hurt?They're still a thousand
feet in the air!" But instead of running into the landing area they ran into
the spectator area and scooped up some poor old guy who had collapsed,
proving once again that the most dangerous place to be on a drop zone is on
the ground.

And then we were off. Manifest started calling out the loads, putting 4
teams on a plane and spacing the planes 5 minutes apart. Almost before I
knew it we were on our way to a plane. I found myself wishing I had smuggled
Richard - our secret weapon - along. He was our coach last year and by the
time we got to Burnaby I was dead certain everybody knew exactly what they
needed to do. As I walked over to the loading area today I could barely
remember my name let alone what the hell I was supposed to do once I got
there.

I was feeling just a little stressed to begin with, an entire spring and
summers preparation and effort coming down to NOW!? Then we got to the
loading area and found out were going up with Arizona Airspeed and the
Golden Knights, 2 of the top teams in the world. Why couldn't we have been
put on with a couple of thrown together teams made up of morons and misfits
who would be doing well if they remembered to deploy their parachutes let
alone remembered their skydive? I don't mind making a fool out of myself,
and I do so on a frequent basis and regular basis, but does it have to be
in front of my idols? 59 Teams entered here and we wind up on a plane with
the senior class. Back home we're the Bronze medal team from the 2009
Nationals, Gold at provincials. In some circles we're considered "Hot Shit".

Around here we're not even Fart The Messenger.

It turned out that one of the 3 exits I was most concerned about came off
that plane rock solid and unfolded like a hinged sheet of plywood. And it
just got better. We were solid, smooth, clean, and turned the blocks just
like we actually knew what we were doing. Yeehaaaaa! 8 points! Not bad for a
team that barely qualifies as weekend warriors. Perhaps not all is lost.

They put the Intermediate category on a wind hold just after we got down,
and after our second jump they put everybody on a wind hold after a couple
of guys from the Air Force demo team wound up hanging in trees over by the
trailer park. Serves them right, jumping huge accuracy canopies in these
winds.

The day ended with us having completed 3 jumps, with a total score of 22.
Not as good as we'd hoped, but we had busts on every load that cost us
points.

Sunday, Day 2
Stephane showed his team spirit today by shaving 4D into his hair. His hair
was only stubble to begin so it doesn't stand out as well as it might so I'm
thinkin' when the competition is over I'll get a couple of the bigger guys
from the Golden Knights to hold him down so I can improve upon it with a
magic marker.

My packer has been doing an awesome job with my new Stiletto. Every time I
pack the damn thing it either opens with a bang, giving me whiplash, or
makes so many changes in direction while opening and immediately afterward
that on break off the wiser people didn't track away from the center, they
all tracked away from ME! The first one this girl packed for me came out so
soft smooth and on heading that I thought I was finally having my first
malfunction and I had my hands on my cutaway handle before I realized I was
slowing down, and looking straight ahead in the same direction I was when I
threw the pilot chute. This girls a keeper! On the first jump this morning I
was suddenly turned around 180 degrees, and thought the friggin thing was
back to it's old tricks, but before I could finish the thought it turned
back, nice and politely.

"Don't just stand there; make something happen."Lee Iacocca

It's Friday morning, and there is definitely something happening here. When
we walked in the hangar was full of people dirt-diving and creeping their
dives. Their was a feeling of excitement, everybody seemed to be
simultaneously relaxed, and primed to explode into action. You could feel
the energy coming off these people, the knowledge that something big would
happen soon. Nobody was moving quickly, they weren't expending energy
needlessly, but everybody was moving with a purpose.

Philippe and Josee had arrived the night before and showed up around 10 in
the morning only to discover that the lineup for registration went out the
door from the auditorium and ran down the hall all the way to the packing
area. It took them almost 2 hours to get through the whole process of
registering, waivering, and joining USPA. They had their own problems at
customs. When they said they were going to the states to skydive the agent
asked "Will you be taking any pictures or shooting any video?" When they
said they were just going to have fun, and weren't going to shoot any video,
he asked them some more questions about how much cash they were bringing
with them, and eventually let them in. Why did he care if they shot video?
Because last fall a certain videographer of minor note, best known for his
good taste in scotch and ability to convince otherwise sensible women to
disrobe for him so he can take risqué but tasteful photographs of them, got
turned back at the border. They said he was "Receiving Compensation" when
he shot video. At night people would occasionally buy him a shot of scotch,
so they considered it "working" in the states. He's still not allowed into
the states. Using that logic, our videographer is working illegally here
because he doesn't have a green card and he is being compensated by us
because we pay for his slot. Good thing they didn't ask us those questions
because I was so rattled that I probably would have given them the wrong
answers and we'd have had to leave Stephane with the border guards. I'm sure
they'd have fed and watered him until we picked him up on the way back out.

At one point in the morning I was looking for a safe place to put the
laptops, and working on a vaguely remembered offer that had been made to me
a couple of years before I started flipping over padlocks on the lockers
where we had set up camp until I found the one I was looking for. 2 Years
ago at Summerfest Phil Lamm got dragged across the top of the door on exit,
causing his reserve to fire and resulting in him being without a rig to jump
for several days. I grabbed a spare one from my truck, and he told me how to
get into his locker "in case you want to use it and I'm not around, or if
you want to lock something up." He never rescinded that offer, and now I
wanted to lock something up. But Stephane, who was watching to see what the
silly Anglo was up to now didn't know that. I proceeded to open it up and started stuffing things into it in front of our wide eyed cameraman. As far as I'm concerned, if Phil didn't want me using his locker, he shouldn't leave the damn combination on the back of the lock.

At the Canadian Nationals in 2009 most of the team came down with colds and
was coughing and hacking like coal miners every time we headed to the plane.
Stephane has now come down with a head cold and Phil is being attacked by
his allergies and it's starting to sound like a replay of Burnaby. I hope
not. It really sucked that we were all sick when it came time to be at our
peak.

Saturday September 11, first morning of competition.
They skipped the opening ceremonies last night, setting the pace for what
they hoped would be a fast paced competition by basically saying "Welcome to
US Nationals 2010, the first load will be off the ground at 7 tomorrow
morning, here's your draw, (the skydives for the competition) now go away."
It's the toughest draw I've ever had. 4 Of the jumps had 3 blocks each in
them, a block having a starting formation, an interim move and a final
formation. Put 3 of them together and it makes for a lot to remember while
there's a planet coming at you. To top it off they are mostly slot switchers
which means that every time we go through the jump a couple of people wind
up in different slots, so for them it's 12 points they have to remember not
6.

We left the hotel this morning in rain, at 7 they put us on a weather hold
until 9, at 9 they put us on a hold until 11, at 11 they put us on a weather
hold until 1, at which time I expect we will be put on a weather hold
until.......?

We've split our time equally between shopping in the gear store, napping,
and periodically walking through the dives so we don't forget them. If we
had weather like this at our home drop zone we'd have all started drinking a
few hours ago.

"We'll be there in 3 cartoons" Jennifer Tomaro

"We'll be there in 3 cartoons" Jennifer Tomaro

That's what I overheard my book-keeper saying to her brood as she was
herding them out the door one day. At around 4 o'clock this morning I
started to wonder how many cartoons it would take to get from Ottawa Ontario
to Ottawa Illinois.

Nathalie and Stephane picked me up around midnight from the parking lot at
Skydive Gananoque. Since it was a weeknight the place was deserted, with
only a couple vehicles in the parking lot. As I waited for them to arrive I
tried to figure out which trailer over in Margaritaville belonged to Arno. I
was going to stick a note on his door telling him that if anybody asked why
my truck was there, he should reply "He load filled with the last Tandem
load yesterday, and after he left the plane, we never saw him again".

They'd probably skip looking for the body and go straight to arguing over
who got to claim my truck. "If You Die, We Split Your Gear." Bastards. As we
pulled away I asked Stephane in my atrocious French if he had ever been to
Gan before. He said no. When I asked him what he thought of the place, he
replied "It seems very peaceful". First time I've ever heard that said about
the place.

We hit the border at Sarnia at around 6 in the morning. I was driving and
woke the others up when we were pulling up at the toll bridge to the US.
Stephane had left his passport in his suitcase so I pulled over as the
bridge widened up just before customs. We were the only car in front of
about 4 agents. As soon as we stopped we started attracting attention. We
were about 50 yards away from the booths and when Stephane stepped out I saw
one customs agent looking at us through binoculars while another moved over
to get a better angle to see what Stephane was doing. There were also
several video cameras pointed in our direction. When we pulled up the guy
gave us a critical look and the first thing he said was 'What did you toss
over the side?" "Huh?' was my witty reply. Hey, it was 6 in the morning, I'd
only had a couple hours of sleep, and most of that was while I was driving,
weaving back and forth between the rumble strips on the shoulders of the
highway. I was suddenly acutely conscious of the fact that this guy had the
power to order our vehicle emptied and disassembled, our gear taken apart,
and could force us to be stripped and undergo a body cavity search. It
didn't seem like a good time to follow Diane's suggestion and offer to tip
the guy $5 to perform a prostate exam while he was in there.

I explained that my friend was getting his passport, and I could see the guy
relax a couple of notches. He asked us a few more questions before
explaining that the spot we stopped is where people stop to throw drugs over
the side to their buddies. Real subtle. He seemed satisfied with our
explanation, but kept us there for several minutes talking about tourist
attractions. When he got a call on his radio and handed our passports
back it occurred to me that one of the other agents had been checking around
under the bridge where we had stopped.

All things considered, we got off lightly - just a couple of tense moments.

We just got out of the car at Skydive Chicago when some guy none of us had
ever seen before came out of registration and called across to us offering
his services as a video flyer. His team's captain got arrested for DUI the
night before so the team won't be attending. The event hasn't even started
yet and we're taking casualties.

As soon as we got to registration we started running into a Who's Who of the
the sport. Craig Gerard (Airspeed) sold us T-shirts, Chris Irwin (Perris
Valley Tunnel Time) was gearing up for a load, Andy Honigbaum (Formerly of
Airspeed, now with Paraclete) was waiting for his lunch order, Kirk Verner
(formerly of Airspeed, now with Paraclete) already had his lunch but put it
down and stood up to greet us when we walked past, Mark Kirkby, Eliana
Rodriguez, the list goes on and on. The names won't mean anything to most of
you, but these people are the GODS of our sport. And they all remembered our
names, even the ones we hadn't seen for a few years. I've done more camps
and jumps than I can remember with these people over many years, so have
thousands of others. They're my idols, the people I want to be when I grow
up. (It could happen. The growing up part I mean) Their pictures are on my
walls. And they remembered our names. It's already worth the drive.

Checking into the Hotel was fun. Nathalie had to inspect 4 rooms before she
found one that didn't smell. She'd open the door, the smell of stale
cigarette smoke with a heavy dose of pine trees would roll out, and she'd
reject the room, rolling right over the managers protests of "I just sprayed
air freshener in there!" I guess nobody told him the one about the lady who
farted in an elevator and quickly sprayed some air freshener, only to have a
drunk get on at the next floor and blurt out "It smells like somebody shit
on a Christmas tree in here!" He couldn't seem to understand that no matter
how much crap he sprayed into the room the best it could do would be to make
it smell like the designated smoking area for Smokey The Bear.

As the day went on everywhere we went in this town we ran into more
Skydivers. Parking lots, Wal-Mart, the restaurant where we had dinner. I can
feel the energy building. This is gonna be fun.

Off and Crawlin' like a Herd of Turtles.....

By the time most of you read this we'll already be across the border, headed southwest at a dangerous and unsafe rate of speed, headed for Skydive Chicago and the US National Skydive Championships. (I'm serious about the dangerous and unsafe part, 2 out of the 3 people in the vehicle are from Quebec, one of them is Nathalie, and her idea of a reasonable cruising speed is going fast enough to catch the Starship Enterprise. I can't for the life of me figure out why I'm the one who gets all the speeding tickets. I'm planning on spending most of the drive with my eyes closed, even when it's my turn to do the driving) The Major Leagues. Probably the largest skydiving competition in the world. The participants aren't limited to just US citizens, teams from all over the world will be coming to measure themselves against the best skydivers in the biggest league in the world.

And then there's us. I already feel like the hick who fell off the turnip truck and found himself in the Big City. Although we are more than welcome to attend, if this were any other sport in the world we'd never be allowed to waltz right in and enter ourselves into some other countries national championships. Skydiving is very democratic that way. The more the merrier!

Actually, the truth is, they just want our money. But we don't care. We came to play. We'll be scored by the judges just like all the American teams, but as a Guest Team we don't qualify for medals. Not that Arizona Airspeed or Deland Majic are looking over their shoulder to see how close we are. We're loaded with the usual assortment of gear and luggage, and since neither Nathalie nor Stephane have mentioned anything about bringing booze I have decided that I will claim their duty-free allowance and bring 3 assorted cases of Canadian beer. I'm certain my American friends will welcome us with open arms.

Our team name is 4D, it consists of Nathalie Gaudreault, Josee Leblanc, Philippe Morin, and myself. It's the same group who competed successfully at last summers Canadian Nationals. Well, mostly the same. There was one change. It seems that every single time we go and compete somewhere, we have to break in a new cameraman. I don't mean take an experienced camera flyer and let him get used to flying with us, I mean take somebody who has never flown 4-way video and teach him everything from how Not to take us out on exit to not circling the formation so much it makes us dizzy watching the debriefs. In 2005 we trained Ross, - actually it would probably be more accurate to say he trained himself, using us as targets - literally. I still have a chip on the back of my helmet where he broke his camera on my head - who went on to so many bigger and better things that he eventually got bored of skydiving and moved to Whistler to sell condos. In 2007 we trained Garth, which taught me that just because somebody has jumped with a camera bolted to his head for many years I shouldn't assume he can actually knows how to fly the video slot. Or how to not take us out on exit. In 2009 I thought we scored a real coup when Paul accepted our invite to fly for us, he had lots
of jumps, lots of experience in competition at the national and international level, had been flying Tandem video for a while, showed up with lots of shiny looking camera crap in nice, well organized bags, and
promptly took us out on our first 2 exits. In the end they all got the job done, and I'm still grateful to each and every one of them for being willing to put up with us for a summer. Which brings us to our present cameraman.

Stephane Lemay.

When the guy who had originally agreed to do video for us had to cancel because of commitments in the real world, and Paul had to cancel because somebody offered him buckets of money travelling to exotic places to do whatever computer thing it is that he does, we decided to hold auditions.

The first guy showed up late, which we had been warned he might do when we were checking him out. The next day we jumped with Stephane. A split second after we left the plane he followed the example set by his predecessors and dropped onto the formation. Now, this is a big guy. Real big. He is more than capable of completely trashing a formation, especially if he's attacking it from above. But he didn't do that. When he realized he was caught in our burble and couldn't possibly avoid landing on us, he aimed for a hole in the middle of the formation, did a front somersault through it, flipped back over onto his belly, reinflated his wings, flew out from underneath us to where he was supposed to be, and only missed a couple of seconds of our jump. We hired him. I just wanted to see what he would do for an encore. Stephane said he was quite pleased to be the latest student enrolled at Cameraman University.

The plan is to drive through the night, arriving sometime on Thursday, get registered and waivered, then crash early at our hotel. We'll do a few practice jumps on Friday to let the team members who haven't been there
before get used to the place, and crash early again Friday to be ready for the start of competition early Saturday. If past years are any indication we may be doing all 10 rounds of 4-way in a single day. That's a lot of jumps for one day, and once you add on the stress of of competition it will be interesting to see how we all hold up. It's been an extremely busy summer for all of us and I think it's safe to say we're all wound up pretty tight as we head into this. We've all thought about attending this event before and this should be a lot of fun.

As long as nobody does anything stupid. In which case I will gleefully tell the world via email. I heard it said somewhere that a little nonsense is relished by the wisest men.

Wish us luck.
Crazy Larry