Skydivers make Lion Tamers look.....

Skydivers make Lion Tamers look sane and well adjusted

I've been too busy partying and skydiving my ass off, but I'll try and get ya'll caught up on the happenings before we got the record.

I'm pretty much up to speed on big-way techniques, having done 4 events since January, and haven't hesitated to speak up in the briefings when I felt I had something to offer. There are a lot of people here who have never been on anything  anywhere near this big or that have ever done a big way camp. That's all I've done for the last year and a half. To my great shock Martin Lemay actually asked me for my opinions a few times during briefs and debriefs! ME! If my head swells up any more I don't think I'll be able to fit it into my helmet.

Brian has done a spectacular job as Beer Cop. He takes a couple of minutes at the end of the second last briefing of the day to call out all the people who have had fines imposed and whether or not they've paid. Twice during a debrief Francois Leblanc's phone has rung. The first time he was fined a six-pack, and the second time he said he would bring a keg to the banquet. We found out later that someone else at the briefing had been phoning him so he would get fined. I forgot to check in after a jump, but Brian announced that Diane had paid the fine for me and that I could "work it off later". He used to be a tax collector. When he stands up and starts to reel off names and their sins the whole tent is consummed with gales of laughter, and they quickly pay up.

After having my exit slot changed half a dozen times I finally wound up where I knew I wuz gonna, Front Float. The curse imposed by Dan B.C. is still following me: "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 means your at the back of the plane beside the door, not quite the coldest seat but damn close. I'm also the first person to climb out and cling to the fuselage of the plane getting as clear of the door as possible so I can break the wind for everybody who is climbing out after me. That means I have to hang out there in the wind for longer than anybody else. Over the last  5 days I've been inside the plane, outside the plane, floating, and diving, but I seem to keep getting put back into front float. They move me out of that slot once in a while just to tease me, making me think I've finally been redeemed, and then they put me back.

On the jump after the record, Angus Smith, who was the only person jumping without a suit, going in shorts and a T-shirt, took his rig off, removed his shirt, and started to pull the rig back on. Mario Prevost stopped him saying, “Put the shirt back on or go naked, but you can’t go halfway.” The temperature drops 2 degrees centigrade for every thousand feet we ascend. We’re jumping from 18 thousand feet. You do the math, it adds up to pretty friggin’ cold. Some airplanes have retractable gear. People generally do not. But if you take a short, skinny little guy, strip him naked, and put him in the door of an airplane at 18,000 feet, you quickly learn what retractable gear really means. His “guys” were probably hiding up somewhere around his chin as they tried to find a warm spot. Not only would nobody else have done it, nobody else could have pulled it off. He made his slot with style. The day before he had deliberately landed on the roof of the building. Because he is who he is, he didn't get in trouble for it, but he was told not to do it again. Later on I saw him coming out of the landing area carrying one of the signs that say “Danger! Parachute Landing Area!” He climbed a ladder to the roof and zip tied it to an antenna. He was just staking his territory.

Most of the tracking groups have been doing well, and the group I’m leading have been rock stars. The point of tracking is to achieve horizontal separation from everybody else to get to where you can safely deploy your parachute. Ideally your vertical descent will actually slow down as you move horizontally. If they make team tracking an event at the Nationals I’m going to enter my group and we’d have a lock on the gold medal. The same can’t be said of all of the groups though. I overheard one of the guys on the base describing how one of the other people on the base was tracking. “He tracks like a set of car keys”. Not my problem. By the time he leaves I'm already in another county. 

Martin has promised us a bunch of challenging skydives to keep us engaged for Saturday and Sunday, maybe a sequential record, battling 50-ways, whatever. We've already accomplished all we needed to do here.