Of course I'm qualified.....

Of course I'm qualified for the Invitational Event, the check cleared didn't it?

There was one slot left on the sequentials organized by Mark Kirkby of Airspeed for the 25th to 27th. He must have been desperate to fill it because he took me even after I told him how current I wasn't. He had 15 minutes of tunnel available on Thursday evening and offered it to me to help get me up to speed. Let me think about that for a minute: 15 minutes of one on one tunnel time with the captain of the Best 4-Way Team On The Planet, who coincidentally was the instructor on my very first tunnel camp a decade ago. HELL YEAH!!!!!

I spent $270 to have him reteach me a bunch of stuff I used to know about flying but had forgotten over all the years of boogies, 4-way, and big ways. It was some of the best $270 I have ever spent.

Friday morning Mark split us into 2 groups of 16 each for our first day, he took one group and Chris Farina took the other. Beth and I were among the least experienced people in the groups. The quality of the skydives was incredible, by the time we got to our third jump we were breaking into 4, 4 person diamonds, flying them around and turning points. The ceiling was coming down and on the 4th jump we exited at ten thousand five hundred feet and still turned points. Everybody was all exited about it but all I could think was "I come from a Cessna drop zone, exiting at 10.5 means we got 500 feet of bonus altitude, of course we turned points!"

On the last jump of the day Joseph forgot his helmet so the pilot passed back a pair of ratty, cracked, beat up goggles. The ceiling had come down even further, and since he was front float, he was the first to climb out and cling to the plane at the front of the door, in rain at 100 mph. I was the very last diver coming out the door so I wasn't expecting the rain but since I had a full face helmet on it didn't really bother me. Joseph, on the other hand...... Imagine yourself getting sandblasted at 120 miles an hour.

http://www.skydivingphotography.com/events/airspeedinvitational2040ways-012513


This is the link you can click on to see the pics and video from the day. My videographer was George Katsoulis, and Beth had the other guy. I'm in the dark suit with a blue helmet and a sky blue container with red and yellow stripes.