"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.