"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.