"You are condemned to forever be front float...."

"You are condemned to forever be front float,
And so shall your children, 
And your children's children,
And your children's children's children."

The curse placed upon my head by Dan B.C. two years ago at the Canadian Record continues to haunt me. I called out the organizers when they didn't follow their own rules, fined all of them beer in front of a crowd, and in return was cursed for all eternity.

We didn't jump at all on Saturday but at least we didn't have to sit around all day waiting for the clouds to clear and the rain to stop. The organizers used the Skydive Photography website to post updates which allowed us to go into town or back to our rooms and sleep. By the time the rain stopped in the early afternoon the drop zone was totally submerged. We were done for the day. After a nap Beth and I joined a crowd of people heading to a movie. Since I had already mixed some Grey Goose into a couple of bottles of bottles of Gatorade all we needed was some popcorn and we were set for the afternoon. By the time we finally got to the Bent Prop some people had been drinking since mid afternoon and the party was building to epic proportions. The Sisters In Skydiving Boogie had carried on as if everything was going according to plan, but as I looked down the length of the bar I couldn't help thinking their plan had probably included more boys. Normally in a Skydiver Bar the ratio of men to women is 10 to 1. Tonight however, in this Skydiver Bar, the ratio was totally reversed. And these girls were ready to PARTY!!!!!

The drink of choice for the evening was white wine zinfandel or cocktails instead of the usual draft beer, the girls were all dressed in their Saturday evening finery, and there weren't anywhere enough boys to waste it on.

I grabbed a stool at the bar (that's where you get the best view), and had just ordered my first drink when I was introduced to a very attractive, very friendly, and halfway trashed lady who turned out to be be Sally Kirkby, the wife of Mark, the host of our event. She's the touchy feely type and likes to flirt, but it's all in good fun as nobody in their right mind would dare cross the line with the wife of the Captain of Arizona Airspeed . Unless they didn't know she was the wife of the Captain of Arizona Airspeed. I could see on the television showing the live feed from the wind tunnel that Mark was coaching tonight, and Sally told me he would be done at 9. I figured he'd need about half an hour to debrief his student and would be in the bar for 9:30. I started feeding her drinks as fast as she could pack them away and at around a quarter past nine I called over young Curt and introduced him to her, only telling him her first name, then casually backed away. Sally quickly discovered that all it took to make this kid blush bright red was to look at him and smile. By the time Mark came through the door a few minutes later Curt had bought her a drink, and she had one arm around his shoulders and was running her other hand up and down the kids arm. The look of horror on the poor kids face as he realized who the cougar who was draped over him was married to was priceless! By then half the people in the bar were watching to see how it would play out. Mark just shook his head, and saying something about ''the babysitter is waiting", half carried her out the door.

At the dirt dive the next morning when Mark was putting us in our slots for the planned 35 way he put Curt next to him in the base, "Where I can keep an eye on you". By then anybody who hadn't been in the bar had been told what happened and the remark was greeted with howls of laughter and several of the girls growling or purring like cougars. Right on cue, Curt flushed bright red. But my role didn't escape Mark's notice, and I was sentenced to be front float. Coincidence? Karma? Or was it was Dan's curse still following me around? For most of the day I was the first guy to climb out the door and block the wind for the rest of them. Late in the day he had me swap places with Curt, putting me where Mark could watch me, and making Curt front float. Oh yeah, he knew exactly what he was doing.

We did 6 difficult jumps Sunday to give us a total of 11 for the event. There wasn't an easy slot on any of the dives and everybody got to try leaving from various exit positions into different slots, and most of us got to try leaving from both the lead and chase plane. My favorite part was breakoff on jump number 5 of the third day. The whole dive had us turning points with diamonds or zippers, and since we'd flown the pieces around during the skydive, when it was time to leave we tracked away in our own little formations. People often leave in tracking groups, but watching the video of all those diamonds and zippers turning and leaving brought cheers and applause from everyone.

But the best part of the day came at Curt's expense. In the late afternoon as we were sitting on the trams waiting to take us to our airplanes, in front of about 50 people, Sally Kirkby came strutting through through the loading area on stiletto heeled black leather boots. She stopped a few feet short of our tram, and with everybody watching to see what was going to happen, with a huge smile on her face, waved and called out "Hi Curt!", before she tossed him a wink and strutted back to the hangar. Everybody let loose in gales of laughter as Beth shouted "Oh MY God! He's turning purple!" I thought the poor kid's head was going to explode.

I first came to Arizona in January of 2004, met a couple of guys from Airspeed, came back for a skills camp in the spring of that year, and left the camp with a videotape of the jumps we'd done. To fill up the extra space at the end of the tape they added on footage from the previous years Arizona Challenge. It was the first time I had ever heard of the event, and was blown away. These skydives obviously weren't designed to be successful, they were designed to be A Challenge! If it was easy anybody could do it! I had never seen pictures or video of any skydive that could be so large and at the same time to complex. I tried to imagine myself some day having the skills to be able to participate in that event, and at the time it seemed almost impossible that I would ever be invited.

When Mark did the closeout on Sunday, he told us that everybody on this event would be receiving an invitation to the next Arizona Challenge, to be held in May. I guess he's forgiven me for getting Sandy trashed and hanging her on poor young Curt.