Tequila makes me...

"Tequila makes me break out in handcuffs." Aaron, one of the groundcrew

People I'd never met before this week, and whose names I still don't know, keep coming up and asking to see my tattoo. Kate Cooper saw it on Diane's Facebook page and posted it on the P3 Event Facebook page. It's faded away now and is barely discernible, but that's a good thing. I'm going to need room on that arm for the one I'm going to put on for Mission 100 in Montreal. At Diane's suggestion I went online and found a place that will make up a batch of those iron-on tattoos for less than a buck each if I get at least 200 of them. I'll flog them off at the event for $1 a piece and donate all the profits to the beer fund.

One of the Russians somehow had his main deploy while he was squeezing out into the middle of the floater lineup. And Bam! He was gone and hanging under his main at 18,000 feet. The same thing happened last summer in Montreal at Mission 100. At least it didn't go over the tail, that could have cost a lot more than just one guy missing from his slot. When an airplane suffers catastrophic damage in flight you don't just lose the plane, you usually lose everybody on it, parachutes rarely help.

Diane and I had bought a bunch of watermelons while drunk shopping at Winco the night before and we brought them out after the 3rd jump of the day. We started carving them up next to the creeper pad and at first nobody took any notice. Then Diane went over to manifest and had them make an announcement and the feeding frenzy was on! We had wondered if 4 was too many but the next time we do that we're going to get even more. A couple people came close to losing fingers as they snatched away pieces of melon while I was still slicing.

But all the watermelon in the world wouldn't have helped the the skydive. We built the completed formation on the first jump on day 3 and despite 2 days of trying we haven't been able to repeat our success since. Everybody has made it in multiple times but not all at the same time. People are getting stupid with the heat, and making bad decisions both in the air and on the ground. One girl who had developed a nosebleed earlier in the day but kept on going showed up for the last jump of the day without a rig and with her jump suit tied around her waist. As the dirt dive finished Josh spotted her and walked over to ask where her gear was. "I'm not going." she announced. And you waited until we were on a 10 minute call to say so?!?!? Not only was she not on that skydive but I'm reasonably certain she will never be on any skydive organised by P3 ever again.

The banquet was on Saturday night, and much silliness and stupidity, fueled by copious amounts of alcohol and certain herbs (we are in California!) ensued. We had prepared far more than the usual amount of Grey Goose and lemonade for the festivities and even a bottle of wine to go with dinner. It seemed that everybody else had the same idea and people were walking around offering shots of liquor and glasses of wine like it was watermelon. The Brits started some kind of drinking game and Doug Forth seemed to have an endless supply of assorted premium Tequila that he was determined to give away. I surprised that nobody got thrown in the pool, and started suggesting it to the Russians, who looked big enough to throw anybody anywhere they felt like. We finally left the party way too late, and it was still going strong.

Day 5
The energy level as we met for the 8 a.m. dirt dive was palpable. People had come from 25 countries scattered all over the world to build this thing, and we knew that this time we would build it, and then make a smooth progression to a second point. The first jump of each day had always been our best for the day, and you could tell that despite the party the night before that everybody was focused on doing the same today.

Kate Cooper started to recite the mantra she had used at Jump For The Cause: "Right here, right now, this skydive, my personal best." By the time she got to the second phrase half the people had recognized it and had taken it up. By the time she started it again we were all chanting it together, all 150 of us. When Dan sent us to our planes Tony Domenico lightened the mood when he shouted "Just get the Fuck In!"

The first jump of the day. Our best chance of pulling this off.

And we got fucked when the pilot of the A plane wound up out of position a few hundred feet back and a few hundred feet low. Everybody came out of their planes and started diving down to where they expected the base to be. By the time the people in the A plane realized something was wrong it was too late, only a few of them were able to correct their course and fight their way uphill to the formation.

To add injury to insult everybody who landed in the north field came in downwind when we followed the designated landing direction. As I turned onto final I could see clouds of dust being kicked up by bodies tumbling ass over tea kettle. I opted to slide in on my ass, sending handfuls of dirt up the legs of my jumpsuit and into my shoes, and when I came to a halt I was enveloped by a thick cloud of dust. Only one person who landed in that field stayed on his feet.When we returned to the packing area we were all warned to stay away from the pool area where Pat Conaster, the drop zone owner, was tearing out a new asshole for the pilot of the A plane. I heard he's an excellent pilot with thousands of hours, and a skydiver with 7,000 jumps, but he fucked up, and we all paid the price.

Maybe today the second jump of the day will be our best. But despite the pilots doing the best they had done all week, giving us the tightest formation possible, the good karma from this morning, all those positive vibes, were lost. There were still half a dozen people out at break off.

As I was preparing to turn onto my base leg for landing somebody went past me under what looked like a main parachute, trailing what looked like another main from it's pilot chute. I was trying to figure out what the heck that was all about when I spotted Larry Henderson coming my way under a pristine white 7 cell canopy. The color is what first struck me, there was no way that canopy had ever been opened on this DZ before and stayed so clean. I suddenly realized that it was his reserve, and that his main was probably the one that went by a few seconds earlier being dragged by the other guy. Canopy collision! 4 People have died on this DZ in the last year from those and there are now extremely strict rules to try and prevent them, but with this many canopies in the air....... I gave him a wide berth and he landed safely, though quite shaken up. Beth had gone out to the landing area with my camera and both guys flew right past her but she was so transfixed at the sight of the guy dragging the main that she never took a shot.

And that was that. We were done. 5 Days, 20 skydives, one complete, very complex, 151 way skydive. It seemed like way too much work for way too little success, but every time I look at the picture I get a gin from ear to ear.

We left late in the afternoon, Beth heading east to Palm Springs and Diane and I heading west to a hotel in LA so we'd have a short drive in the morning.

At the airport the next day I was standing in line at Starbucks when an elderly man behind me started poking fun at the complicated drink orders people were placing. I replied that I preferred to keep it simple, and was just ordering a tall blonde. For those of you that don't know the terminology, at Starbucks tall means small, and blonde means mild strength. Just then Diane showed up on the other side of the rope barrier and leaned over it to study the selection of muffins. The old guy nudged me and whispered "Now that's a tall blonde I wouldn't mind ordering!" Perfectly on cue Diane turned to me, handed me some cash saying " Grab me a blueberry one." When I turned to look at the guy he had a twinkle in his eye as he said "Maybe I should  order one!" A few minutes later they called Diane's flight, just before they called mine, and we said our goodbye's

That's it. This Adventure is over. It didn't provide the level of stupidity and entertainment that people have come to expect from these trips, but that was the plan. P3 is all about quality and success, about learning and improvement, leave the boogie mentality at home. The next big event will be Mission 100 in Montreal, and a new Canadian record. It will be a quality event as well, but since it will be a French-run event, I expect the entertainment factor to be a little higher. The French do know how to have fun. I'm already planning for that, including the cylinder of helium I've been dragging all about North America for the last year, and a couple hundred temporary tattoo's.

"When was the last time..."

"When was the last time you did something for the first time?" Eddie Van Halen

One week ago I set a new personal best for the largest skydive I'd ever been on, and joined the P3 100 Way Club. 

The first jump we did today bumped up the number for the largest skydive I've ever been on by 51 percent, to 151. 

I've only been retired for 3 weeks. I've got another 30 to 40 years left to go. Lord only knows what other pointless accomplishments I can achieve.

Just before we went up on this jump Dan B.C. told Jean Aiken she looked stressed out on every jump. "What you need is a great big cup of I Don't Give A Shit!" he told her. Maybe that was what we all needed.

We're on a hold for an hour for the airshow over at March AFB, after that, we're going up to do it again, and then add the second point!

Days 2 and 3

Thursday started off like every other day in the California desert, hot and dry. By 8 a.m. it was 25 degrees and climbing fast. Despite her best efforts at protecting herself with sunscreen and a hat Diane had been getting fried by the sun during the dirt dives. She showed up for the first dirt dive that morning wearing a home made burka fashioned out of a halter top that left only her eyes showing. It also did the double duty of filtering out the dust. Written on the shirt was "Porn Star Academy".

There's going to be an airshow at nearby March Air Force Base on the weekend so we may have altitude restrictions They're going to try and squeeze as many jumps in today as they can.

Dan B.C. was playing tour guide all day for an older couple who finally joined us for one of the debriefs. It turned out to be his mother, and I can't imagine that any mother ever looked as proud of her son as she did while he ran the debrief for all 150 people.

Towards the end of Thursday the winds started picking up but were going opposite directions in the north and south landing areas. They lay out a large arrow on the ground to designate landing direction so that meant half the people came screaming in downwind. No wind I can deal with, but downwind was about 10 miles an hour faster than I could run. I watched Rob from the UK spend 5 minutes furiously attacking his jumpsuit with a scrub brush after a particularly bad landing. He generated a choking cloud of dust but when he stood back to survey his progress there had been no discernible change in color. It was still Perris brown. I haven't even botheedr to pull out a scrub brush, counting on wind and opening shock to clean most of it off. Fair warning Trevor, the rig is going to need a full wash when I get home. It's actually a lot worse than it looks in the picture.

The Quatari military did some training here a couple of years ago and renovated one of the bathrooms as they didn't like the plumbing facilities that were available to them. I'm sure it wasn't what they intended, but they left behind a bunch of booby traps, and skydivers are well known for being boobies. Twice while we've been getting our video debrief there's been a sudden bloodcurdling screech from next door as another curious skydiver discovers how not to use a bidet.

By the end of Friday we were within seconds of building the formation when we hit our hard deck, which was 500 feet lower than the designated breakoff altitude. Hard deck is the absolute lowest that we will continue to hold the formation, and we only hold it for that couple of extra seconds if the Dan thinks it will make the difference and let it build.

So close, and yet so far. Saturday morning they are going to make some changes and bring in some of the local ringers. It's gonna build, we all know that, it's just a matter of which jump it's gonna happen on.

Nobody makes a fool out of me...

Nobody makes a fool out of me. I'm the do it yourself type.

After spending a sleepless night getting all worked up and psyching myself out we arrived at the airport early to stake out our spot and get well stretched. After much deliberation I decided to start the day with 17 pounds of weight, which was almost all that my two belts would hold. Diane laughed and said it would be a "good start!". Kate Cooper is well known for encouraging people to err on the heavy side, especially for their first jump in a new slot on a formation. Diane had planned ahead and mailed 30 pounds of weights to herself care of manifest at the drop zone. The US Postal Service has a container about the size of a shoe box that they will mail anywhere in North America for $12, with no weight limit. If it'll fit, they'll take it. It beat the hell out of hauling it with our luggage.

We started losing people before the event even began, with cancellations bringing it down to 151 people. Then Vladimir from Argentina had his Automatic Activation Device (AAD) fire on a fun jump on Tuesday. At this DZ if you don't get your pilot chute out before your AAD has to fire and save your life you're grounded for 30 days, no exceptions. He's taking it well, and is helping out by being a gopher for the organizers. Our morning briefing took 50 minutes, with about 45 minutes of it taken up by a safety briefing delivered by Dan B.C. himself.

We've come up with a foolproof method to avoid getting caught off guard by a short gear up call: Watch for a Russian running around in the packing area in their underwear. A lot of them wear as little as possible under their jumpsuits because of the heat, and when one of them starts stripping down that invariably means a gear up call is imminent. Unfortunately it's not some hot babe stripping down to a skimpy see-thru push up bra and thong, but a bunch of overweight, pasty skinned, older men wearing ratty white briefs that look as though they came off a dead Frenchman during Napoleons retreat from Moscow. But at least we're on time for our loads.

Because I'm front float I've been given a radio to tuck into the inside pocket of my jumpsuit with an earphone to help coordinate climb outs and the exit count. Dan B.C. will do a ten second count down, then "Ready, Set, Go!" when it's time to leave. At first it was just one more thing to be stressed about but after a couple of jumps I was used to it and it made my exit timing a lot easier. Which was good, because it was just about the only thing I did right today.

On the first jump I launched off and dove to where I expected the base to be, which put me 200 feet lower than it was. With all that lead around my waist there was no way I was going to fight my way back up.

On the second jump I dropped half the lead and tracked up so hard and so high after exit that I couldn't dive down in time to make my slot before break off. The 35 people behind me couldn't dock for 2 dives in a row because I wasn't there. Josh traded slots with me so he could lead everybody down and I started to worry about being moved somewhere else, or maybe even getting cut.

On my third dive the visor on my helmet came unlatched and slammed open just as I was coming in to dock. I reached up with both hands and slammed it shut only to have it pop open again as soon as I took grips. I didn't want to let go to close it again and spent the rest of the skydive with the added drag of the visor hauling my head back to a painful angle. I had a much better jump than one guy though. When my parachute opened he was directly in front of me spinning like crazy with major line twists and dropping like a safe. before I my brain even had a chance to process what I was seeing he had cutaway and was suddenly under a bright orange reserve.

by the time the day was over the high point for me was getting a ride back from a distant landing area in the back of a pickup truck with a hot British chick in my lap.

I'm sure tomorrow will be better.

"And you are condemned to forever be front float...."

At the Canadian Skills Camp in the spring of 2011, after I had gotten away with forcing the organizers to buy beer, twice, Dan B.C. laid a curse upon my head: "And you are forever condemned to be front float, and so shall your children, and your children's children, and your children's children's children!" Front float can be a tough slot. You're the first to climb out of the plane and wind up clinging to the side for a long period breaking the wind for everybody who climbs out and tucks in behind you. We're also exiting at 16,000 feet, and it can get pretty damn cold out there as everybody else in the plane gets lined up and ready to go. But I wasn't worried, I knew he was just joking. Besides, it's been a year, I'm sure he's forgotten about it by now.

They posted the slots for Wednesday morning's skydive. I'm one of the dark blue guys in the outer ring of the center section in about the 5 o'clock position. I'm front float on the Otter that is flying the "F" slot, right trail trail. I'm fucked. Not only do I have to climb out and cling to the side of an airplane in flight moving at 100 miles an hour for up to 30 seconds in sub-zero temperatures, I also have to dive down leading a dozen people  to intercept the base at the correct spot in space. The guy right behind me will be Josh Hall, world class organizer, member of Arizona Airspeed, and my plane captain. Every, single, mistake I make, will be right in front of him. The person who will be docked just off to my right will be Kate Cooper Jensen, most famously known for organizing every women's world skydiving record in the last decade, and for shouting "Suck it Up Cupcake" as she eviscerates yet another hapless attendee at a big-way camp. After diving halfway across the state of California with half of my plane following me, expecting me to lead them to the right place, I'll be forming part of a 25 person Base. Being in the Base means I have to be prepared to fall fast. Real Fast. Go out the door wearing all the lead weights I can fit into both my weight belts plus throw a few more into my pockets fast. I didn't bring a canopy anywhere near big enough. I'll be landing in the high desert going like a bat out of hell because of all that extra weight and in all likelyhood cartwheeling along in a ball of lines, Zero-P fabric, and dirt. As icing on the cake Josh and Kate will be leading the tracking group I'll be part of when we break off and leave. Every, single, thing, I do wrong, on the next 20 skydives, (assuming they don't cut me before then) is going to happen under the noses of 2 of the plane captains.

I'm fucked. I can hear Dan laughing already.

"And your children, and your children's children's children......."

Like Kissing An Old Girlfriend

After we picked up our rental car, we went back to LAX to pick up Brian Forbes, who had arrived an hour after us, and then headed for Perris. We made a stop at a gas station for beer and mix for the Grey Goose, and settled into the room to have a few drinks and unwind. I must have been wound up pretty tightly because before the night was over a quart of vodka was gone, which lead to a long-standing Perris tradition: drunk shopping at Winco! It's like drunk shopping at a Walmart superstore that also sells booze. It became an early night.

We made first load on Wednesday morning and I was looking forward to jumping my Sabre 2 170 as I hadn't used it in over 2 years. I had gotten  it's reserve repacked regularly, and plenty of other people had made use of it over the years but I had long since replaced it with my Stiletto 150. I brought it on this trip in case I wound up being loaded with 30 pounds of lead weights on a no wind day like the last time I was here. That resulted in me tripping and doing a face-plant on a landing I simply couldn't run fast enough on and a snapped tendon on my driving finger, an injury that still hasn't healed 9 weeks later.

When we tracked away after our first jump and I reached in to toss my pilot chute I was looking forward to the nice, soft, smooth, predictable, on heading opening that I remembered being my favorite of the Sabre 2's many excellent characteristics, in sharp contrast to the wild ride I often got from the Stiletto. The thought flashed through my mind as I released the pilot chute that this was going to be like kissing an old girlfriend: familiar, comfortable, and with no surprises. But I guess the old girl felt the breakup wasn't anywhere near as friendly as I did and decided to bite me when I slipped her the tongue. It opened with a snap and promptly took off in a sharp diving turn to the right, then reversed itself and started spiraling to the left. I got my hands up on the risers and was trying to guess what the hell it was going to do next and what I was going to do about it when, all by itself, it settled out smoothly on the heading I'd originally been on. Okay. Message received. As I released the brakes I made a silent promise to pull it out and play with it more often.

On my very first landing I set the tone for the event. Dusty and dirty. My canopy hit the ground in front of me and immediately everything, my main, my container, and my jumpsuit, was coated in a thin layer of dust. I stood up the landing and got dirty anyway. In fact, by the time the camp ended after 4 days everybody was starting to look more and more alike as the dust continued to accumulate. Some people who didn't stand up their landings wound up with so much dirt impacted into their gear that you couldn't tell what color it used to be. Beth Noel drove over from Palm Springs for the weekend and she told me she could tell who had landed on the grass and who had landed in the desert on the previous jump by the dust clouds that came out when their canopies opened.

Later in the day the winds started getting kinda' squirrely as the temperature climbed and dust devils began to form.  There will be plenty of chances to get banged up during the camp, so we decided to call an early end to the day.

100 Way Camp
"Eight a.m., in jumpsuits, on the creeper pad, no exceptions, no excuses." That's how it starts every day. The dive plans are posted early and by the time you're standing on the pad you need to know which group you're in, which plane you're on, what your slot is in the skydive, who you're docking on, and have several reference points on the base to be able to orient yourself once you're in the sky.

There were a lot of last minute cancellations and we wound up with a 60 way group and a 100 way group. I've written about several of these events before so I won't go into a lot of detail as most of what happens at this kind of event I've covered before. Mostly.

Diane and I wound up in separate groups when she got swapped into the 100 way to fix a problem. That's not a big thing because at an event this size you rarely seem to wind up on the same plane as the people you came with let alone be anywhere near them in the sky. At least it wasn't a problem until we were on jump run and the pilot passed the word back to "Avoid the emergency vehicles in the landing area. Do not land anywhere near the fire trucks or the ambulance!" Crap! I don't want to sound cold hearted, but if somebody I don't know gets hurt at one of these things it doesn't bother me much. Right then all I could think about was that somebody down there was getting loaded into an ambulance and that there was a one in a hundred chance it was Diane. I don't know what everybody else in the planes was thinking but the last few minutes of that climb to altitude seemed to take forever. The fire trucks had pulled out of the landing area by the time we came down, and it turned out one of the Australians had dislocated an ankle. Diane had stood on the sidelines suppressing the urge to tell the guys to just scoop him up and get out of the way. She scrapes people up off the road every day for a living so she didn't see it as a big thing.

Another guy had a low cutaway and barely had time to release the brakes on his reserve and flare before he landed. Dan B.C. pulled everybody together and read them the riot act about safety and not trying to fix a main canopy that had already decided it wasn't going to cooperate. I thought back to the Canadian camp in March of last year when I burned up far more altitude than I realized as I kicked my way out of line twists. Everybody watching thought I was going to burn in, and  I promised myself again that when it comes time I'm reaching for those handles as soon as there's a problem without wasting the rest of my life trying to fix it.

Brian and I were on the 60 for the first 2 days while Diane was on the 100, and her group had 3 successful completions in a row on the second day, earning their P3 100 Way Club patch with style. Brian and I were switched into the 100 way group for the last 2 days and we spent 9 jumps struggling for a completion. We kept getting closer and closer, but on each jump there was a problem. On one jump everybody did make it into their assigned slot and took grips, but not all at the same time as some people left a few seconds before the break-off signal was given. It came right down to the wire, but on the last possible jump, with just a couple of seconds left before break-off, we built it. My first 100-way skydive. And I got a patch to sew onto my jumpsuit to prove it.

After the close out on Sunday the coaches all met to make the selection for the 165-way. There was a hell of a party going on by the time they came out to announce who the lucky ones were, and there were a lot of surprises over who didn't make the cut. I was one of the lucky ones. Sort of. I'm now committed to going up and building one of the most complicated skydives I've ever seen. "The Perris Wheel" It's so complex I can't even begin to describe it, and can only hope they give me a slot I can handle.

Diane and I celebrated our achievement by going to Venice Beach for the day and walking the oceanfront. And getting matching tattoo's. They're just henna so they will fade over time, but for now on our shoulders its says "P3 100 Way Club".

Diane had tickets for us to see  Steel Panther at the House Of Blues in LA. It's a big hair band from the 80's, and not normally the kind of show I would go to see, but by the end of the second song the stage was covered with topless women so it wasn't a wasted night.

The Camp was great, it reinforced a lot of the skills that we had learned on previous trips, and we finally earned those big-way patches we'd been working for. But most of what we had done on this trip so far had been low pressure, relaxed, fun skydives. The pressure will be on Wednesday morning when we go up to build The Perris Wheel. We're all going to be under the microscope, with invitations to the next world record hanging in the balance.

The Skydivers Prayer:
Oh lord,
Please don't let,
Me be the one, 
Who fucks this up.

Yippee! It's Tuesday!

I’m writing this at 36,000 feet, on an Air Canada Airbus A320 headed west for Los Angeles. I’m not standing in that spot in the backroom of the hardware store that I no longer own as I had been doing for almost every other Tuesday since the fall of 1988. No more starting the day unloading a tractor trailer by hand, and then sorting and pricing it all. No more slicing open box after box, having done that job so many times that I could tell just by looking at a plain cardboard box what its contents were.

I’m a free man. It feels as if the weight of the world has come off my shoulders in the last few weeks. It seems incredible that the day I somehow never really expected to get here, the day I close the deal on selling the store, is a week behind me. No more big yellow truck every Tuesday, no more customers whining about anything they can, no more wondering if I’ll be able to take my next day off or if I should even try and plan a vacation, no more of having my life run by some “thing” that I often felt was controlling me, not the other way around.

In case you didn’t get the memo, or read in the paper about “The Retirement Riot”, yes, I’m unemployed. Freedom 52. And I have a dozen shredded red Home Hardware shirts to prove it. I staple gunned them to the tree in the front yard so everybody passing by would get the word. To all who attended, thanks for coming by to wish me well, especially the surprise guests who I didn’t think even knew where I lived. My lawyer was in attendance in case the cops showed up, which was fortunate as John brought along a gift of his latest drinking game involving a candelabra and whipped cream flavored Vodka shots. But despite the racket the solicitors services were not required as I had taken the pre-emptive step of inviting all the neighbors. And I came out way ahead on the deal. My former staff all chipped in and bought me a hip flask, which I have every intention of wearing out with over use, and people brought far more booze than they consumed, leaving behind a huge stack of the excess. I also received gifts of so many bottles of booze in general and premium Vodka in particular that I lost count. The Vodka-sicles were a big hit, you just had to eat them quickly as the high alcohol content meant they melted quickly.

Diane and I are on our way to Perris Valley Skydiving where we’ll be doing a 100-way skydiving camp for 4 days, and if I do well, followed by 5 days of high quality Invitation-Only 165-ways. Diane already has a slot on the 165, but mine is to be confirmed based on my performance over the latter part of this week. I seem to keep going out with women who I’m trying to catch up to skydiving-wise, no doubt Freud and my sister Cathy would have something to say about that.

The whole plan could have gone bad early on while we were changing planes in Toronto. We went by the Duty Free and I spied a large display of Grey Goose. A couple of moments later we each had a quart bottle in our knapsacks, and quickly found ourselves in another store with me eying the bottles of lemonade and Gatorade. “We could make this plane ride go by pretty fast!” I thought. But then I flashed back to the Great Oshkosh Air Show drunk stumble and thought better of it. It would put a crimp in the whole thing to wind up getting tossed off the plane halfway there, not to mention they’d probably confiscate the Vodka.

The store is gone, and now the whole world is spread out before me. There are boogies galore in the offing, evening, weekday, and weekend trips lined up with my riding group, a new Mission 100 in Farnham, tandems at Mile High, and even, wonder of wonders, some unstructured free play time. I’ll be dropping by Mike’s place in Norway Bay for coffee or a beer on a regular basis - it’s only a 7 hour round trip if you know which route to take, cottage weekends with friends, and go over to fix whatever needs fixin’ at my mom’s place when it needs fixin’ rather than  sneaking away from work whenever I can for long enough to put a patch on the problem.

The next 4 days should prove to be pretty entertaining, skills camps are a place where the coaches do their best to push people out of their comfort zones and help them set new limits for themselves. That means there will be a lot of jumps that don't come anywhere near to following the plan. But my defensive skydiving skills have been honed to a fine edge by years of people trying to kill me at various boogies and conventions. I'm sure everything will be fine, as long as nobody does anything stupid.

I wanted to attach a picture of the hip flask I received from the gang at my former place of employment, but the battery on my camera went dead, They had it engraved. The silver plate on the front reads: "Yippee! It's Tuesday"