"Definitely more dangerous!" Gerry Cluett

"Sell the house, my trailer, and everything I own, and send me a check, I'm not coming home!"


That was the text Gerry sent to Trevor a couple of hours after we arrived at Summerfest. We drove for 15 hours arriving well after dark, and when we pulled into the parking lot Larry and Joanne's "World Famous Drive Thru Beer Window" was open for business and doing a roaring trade. We were welcomed like the return of the Prodigal Sons. The party had already been going on for a couple of hours and we were greeted with an endless stream of ice cold beer from the seemingly bottomless coolers in the back of Larry and Joanne's truck. I mentioned that a friend from Winnipeg was supposed to be here by now and several people said "You mean Beer Girl?" Seems she's already made an impression. Kelly quickly arranged a couple of bunks for us in The Swamp so we wouldn't have to set up our tents in the dark, and could sleep in air conditioned comfort. When the band started up at the Tiki Hut we wandered over and I began searching the crowd for Diane. I was about to give up looking when she snuck up on me from behind, spun me around to grab my head and pull it down to bury it between her breasts and vigorously wriggle her chest back and forth across my face. When she pulled my head back up, I turned to introduce her to a wide-eyed, slack jawed Gerry, and she proceeded to grab his head and do the same thing to him that she had done to me. Yep, that girl always makes an impression all right. The party went on into the wee small hours of the morning, and we finally gave in to fatigue and alcohol shortly before the bar closed down.

We awoke to an overcast sky, the planes wouldn't be flying for a couple hours because of the low ceiling, but Phil had the coffee on in the Swamp, we were in Chicago, Summerfest was running, and all was good in my world.

When we finally did start jumping we quickly settled into the routine we'd settled into more than 10 years earlier at the Convention, a mix of good skydiving, bad skydiving, scary skydiving, and moments of pure farce. On one 20 way dive we built 5, 4-way diamonds, that we flew around and docked far more successfully than I ever thought we could for a group that was a walk up load. Then that was immediately followed by one guy dive bombing the formation and taking out one whole side as he went past. On one jump where were going to have video the pilot released the brakes just as the cameraman was climbing aboard, knocking him off the ladder to the ground. He knew enough to stay there while the tail swept over him, and while he was shaken up, he was more pissed off than injured.

Each day they have a Mystery Load. One of the sponsors picks up the price of the jump tickets for a random load of aircraft. We were sitting in the loading area when we heard over the P.A. that Load 112 had won that day's mystery dive. "Load 112? Isn't that our load? Asked Kelly. A minute later one of the girls came over from manifest to give us back our tickets. Sweet! Free Altitude! "Sponsored by Airtec, makers of the Cypres 2 AAD, over 1,500 Lives Saved!" Thanks guys!

By the end of the day I had only managed 5 jumps in between the 60-ways that had priority on the planes and caused us to be put on 40 and 50 minute calls. Nobody died, nobody lost an eye, a good start to a vacation. Gerry did a bunch of solo jumps, wearing shorts and sandals, just giving himself an air bath. But he is planning on joining us tomorrow for some smaller stuff.