It never rains in California......

"It never rains in California,
But girl, don't they warn ya,
It pours, man it pours......"

Brian solved the problem of the toxic booties by putting the suit into the truck for the night, which left me choking and gasping when I borrowed the truck in the morning to do a quick errand. He should have left it in the Motel office to try and get even with the motel manager who is rationing our towels and toilet paper.

I've been verbally sparring with Johnny for 10 days now, the two us constantly trading friendly barbs, taunts, and insults. I thought he had been gaining the upper hand until we were on the drive in this morning and he said he thought I was coming out on top. A truce was immediately declared and we shook hands. Then I told him I had coughed on my hand before I offered it, and he replied "That wasn't hand cream on mine!" The armistice was over, war was again declared, hostilities resumed, and the insults began afresh. Johnny opened fire with "And if I did get smart with you, how would you know?" I returned fire with a Newfoundland curse: "Yer mudder shoulda eaten you when yer bones was still soft!" There, everything's back to normal, balance has been restored in the universe. When they get finished bombing Libya back into the stone age I'll see if I can get a couple 'a guys to swing by Johnny's place and drop a couple of laser guided bombs down his chimney. That'll learn 'im!

Wilmar was briefly the most popular guy on the DZ this morning after getting the bright idea to warm up his gloves and sweater in the dryer. A bunch of us gladly threw our stuff in as well which helped, however briefly, to ward off the 3 degree temperatures.

When we went up for the first jump the pilot finally seemed to be getting the oxygen system figured out. The day before when he opened it up he had the pressure high enough to inflate the tires on my truck. The lucky people had the hoses blow out of their helmets, and the unlucky ones had their cheeks puffed out like chipmunks. The best part was the people who thought it was supposed to be like that, so they kept stuffing the hoses back into their mouths, only to have their cheeks inflate and the hoses blow out again.

The dive went well except for one person who went way, way, low. I thought it was Herb, who was going to be docking on my leg, so he scared the crap out of me when he came up behind me and took my grip. Don't know who sank out but it wasn't me. The second dive was another very successful one, but we were put on a weather hold when clouds moved in around 11, and after spending a few hours hanging out the DZ closed for the day and we commenced drinking a whole 4 hours ahead of our normal schedule. It's pouring rain again and the lakes will no doubt be even larger tomorrow, and the landing area's smaller. Everybody looks like their suits are patterned with tie-dyed dirt and grass stains already and it will just get worse.

It looks like no matter what we do we will not get in all the planned jumps so we will be getting some money back. We will have learned a lot, but no matter how much we learn, we will not be setting a record. We will come up at least 5 Canadians short. The weather has also not been very cooperative, there has already been a whole years worth of rain here, it poured again last night, and it's cold and foggy outside this morning. No early load today.

Standing by to stand by.......