Crazy Larry's Excellent Adventures

On the first jump of the second day of the camp, Remi Aguila, whom I first met when he lived in Montreal, joined the big-way camp. He wound up being the very last diver coming out of the SkyVan. That meant he had to run the full length of the airplane before hurling himself headfirst out the door to chase the rest of us. Except there was a problem with one of the benches about halfway down the plane, and instead of it being folded up out of the way it was still down. I pointed it out to the person behind me, but they didn't bother pointing it out to Remi, who was behind them. He had beat me to the formation by a wide margin the day before so I was surprised when he didn't show up, and when I turned to track away and he was nowhere to be seen I remembered the bench. He never had a chance. He hit the steel frame and plywood bench at a full charge, and went down like a sack of wet cement. He never left the plane. But the guy who was running beside him was wearing a video camera and caught the whole thing. We watched it several times in the debrief, including a couple of times in slo-mo. It turned out Remi was by then sitting on a chair outside the debrief room with a bag of ice on the goose egg on his shin that was already the size of a baseball. He heard the groans and gasps when we watched it the first time slowly turn into cheers and applause by the time we were watching it in slo-mo the second time. Don't worry, there was no permanent damage, the bench will be fine.

We were waiting to board the planes for another formation load when I spotted this gorgeous, sleek, sexy, fast looking home built airplane on the ramp. At least, I assumed it was a home built, I've never seen anything quite like it. It reminded me of a smaller version of a P51 Mustang, with side by side seating, and a better paint job. I remembered Gord saying something in the Bent Prop a few parties earlier about having an app for his phone where you could enter the registration number of an airplane and it would give you aircraft type, model, year, owner, etc., from the federal database. It took only a moment for Gord to look it up, which is when I noticed what the number actually was. N51PZ. It was registered as an Experimental Aircraft (home built), made in 2002. I want one. I wonder what Mathieu is planning for next winter? Maybe he'll want to build a plane.

When our coach for the day asked if anybody wanted to be Super Floater, which means you leave off the lead plane half a second before everybody else, Beth leapt up, squealing and waving her arms. You get to fall away looking directly back up the line of flight and watch as everybody flies in from the other plane. It was a slot I had never tried so later in the day when he offered it up again I did my best Beth imitation, leaping up and down, waving my arms shouting "Me me me me me!" There was a bunch of people that stuck up their hands but I got the slot so for the next couple of jumps I put on my video camera. It was awesome! The cameraman and I left side by side, tracking upwards, and suddenly I was 20 feet above the base and just swooped down into my slot. I found out afterwards that Kurt had turned his camera around to video me as I came in to grip his leg. If I can figure out how to edit his video together with mine it should look pretty cool.

The Canadians have earned quite a reputation this year, with a disproportionate number of reserve rides, injuries, landing problems, and general bonehead moves. I watched one guy flare late, a split second before crashing into a bush, coming to a sudden stop with the lines, canopy, and bush, in a tangled mess. His next landing he flared halfway then finished the flare with only one arm,making a  diving turn into the ground. He got up afterwards, limping. Aidan saw me watching and said that it was one of the best landing the guy had made since he arrived.

Somebody made a reservation at a restaurant in Casa Grande last night for 40 people, but only gave them a couple of hours notice so they didn't have time to lay on extra staff. After we'd been there for an hour and there were still people waiting for their first drink order a bunch of us abandoned the place, power shopped Walmart, and enjoyed barbecued steaks back at the house. Text messages were going back and forth as soon as we left the restaurant, and the race was on to see who would eat first. We were on our second bottle of wine by the time they got their drink orders, and were cutting into our steaks before the rest of them had any food in front of them.

It's Sunday, the last day of the Invasion. There will be pizza tonight at Lyal and Cathy's before the people who are left catch their flights out tomorrow. The place will suddenly be very empty and quiet. That's a good thing, the pace of partying is wearing me down.