Yippee! It's Tuesday!

Every Tuesday for 23 1/2 years I spent doing exactly the same thing. First: unload a tractor trailer full of crap. By hand. Second: sort, price, and put away all that crap. One of the kids who worked for me coined the phrase "Yippee! It's Tuesday!" in an effort to turn mindless physical labor and drudgery into something that was fun. Strangely, it kinda worked. But for the last 10 Tuesdays there have been no trucks, no crap to sort and put away, and there never will be again. From now on I get to do whatever I choose on any given day, Tuesdays included.

This Tuesday started with a Mr. Potato Head Dive. As Diane put it "If we start the day by doing something stupid, it can only get better." Today was supposed to be a warm up day for Mission 100 which starts tomorrow. But we slept in and arrived late, only to discover that they had started the big ways without us. When Celine mentioned that she had a Mr Potato Head in her bag, we pounced on the chance. Pierre Dalcourt volunteered to take charge of the potato piece and the other 5 of us quickly divvied up the rest of the pieces and devised a plan. I got an arm and an ear, Diane got the eyes and the other ear. I was the first person to dive out the door after Pierre, and quickly jammed the arm in before sliding out of the way for someone else to install a piece. Celine was next, and I looked past her to see Diane fighting with the arm of her suit as she sank out and wound up about 50 feet below us. How the hell could anybody wind up low on a Mr. Potato Head jump? It turned out she had planned to dive down on me as I was trying to install my first piece, grab hold of me, and fling me across the sky before I could accomplish my task. She had stuffed her pieces up the sleeve of her jumpsuit to leave her hands free but I got to Pierre so quick she never had the chance to launch her nefarious scheme. That left her having to dig the pieces out of her sleeves which is why she lost so much altitude. In the end we were left with the ugliest Mr Potato Head I have ever seen. It was like some bizarre kind of potato orgy as people jammed whatever body part they happened to have into whatever opening was available. 

Thank god this is a serious skydiving event! I'd hate to see what kind of stupidity we might get up to of we were there just to have fun. 

We joined the larger group for some 40 ways later, with varying degrees of success, but none of the nonsense we'd had on the first jump. Even Celine screaming in and docking on Diane to prevent herself from going straight past it ended well when the formation just soaked up the wave she created. That's the sort of move thats usually like cracking the whip on skates. Everybody just passes the kinetic energy on to the person they're holding onto until it gets to the person on the far side, who gets tossed off like a cowboy losing the fight on a bucking bronco. 

Martin is spending the afternoon slotting everybody for the 100 ways that are due to start on Thursday. Wednesday starts with practice jumps for the base and the different sectors. People are still arriving and getting checked in. Brian borrowed my SUV to fetch Jean Aitken  and Monique Andrie from the airport, and by bedtime tonight skydivers will have taken over every hotel and bed and breakfast within 30 kilometers. Some hotel owners may regret that by the time we all bugger off back to whence we came from. as long as we have early mornings the clown show should be fairly well behaved, but once we get that record.......