"Dave! you haven't had a reserve ride for a while...."

I've often mentioned the curse placed upon my head, and upon my children, and my children's children, and my children's children's children, by Dan BC a couple of years ago. Today he gave us a further demonstration of his powers. The beginning of the event included his usual thorough safety briefing. he doesn't simply say "Don't cross the runway if there's an airplane on final". He explains what final means, where to look for the planes, where to wait for it to pass, even showing us on an enormous blowup of the DZ to make sure we understand what he's saying. He doesn't assume we know what "Wait behind the flag line" means, he explains what it is, where it is, what behind it means, and defines the word "wait".

When he started to talk about emergency procedures he discussed the process of deciding when to cut away a malfunctioning parachute. then he started pointing at people in the room saying "Sergei! You haven't had a cut away lately! You're probably going to have one today! Dave Becker! Oh man, when was the last time you had a cut away? You're way overdue! You're definitely going to have a cut away on your first jump today."

So, of course, Dave had a cut away on his first jump today. If Dan singles me out in a safety briefing for  anything, I'm not going to jump that day.

We did 5 jumps on the first day, but with only limited success. Our coach didn't prep the dives very thoroughly, we only spent 10 minutes on the dirt dive for the first one which isn't much for a complicated dive for 18 people. The other 2 groups spent over half an hour getting ready, going through the lineup, the exit, and the dive, over and over again. Then they lay down on creepers and went through it some more. Our lack of preparation was reflected in the sloppy, largely unsuccessful jump. Our best jump of the day was number 3, but when we went up to repeat it we didn't do anywhere near as well.

Day 2
I'm with a new coach today, Josh Hall, who I've worked with quite a bit in the past. We spent a lot more time in the dirt dive, and despite my sliding into the wrong slot and having to fly around somebody to get back to where I needed to be it was a great jump. I even managed to make my extra moves look good. You can see the days jumps at: P3 60-Way Speed Invitational Day 2, Josh's group.

I've either been in the base or close to it on all the jumps so far and for the third jump I asked Josh if I could be one of the divers, putting me further up in the plane. I wound up being last diver, all the way up behind the pilot. I love that slot! I get to run the length of the plane, throw myself out, and dive down to catch the rest of them.

There's a tiny little very cute artificially enhanced Asian girl named Rosie in my group, and she didn't manage to stand up a single landing all day long. The winds were almost non existent and when she tried to run out her landings she kept tripping, doing a face plant, and sliding along in a cloud of dust. We wound up standing next to each other on the packing mat as we pulled our gear off and she apologized to her packer about all the dust. "Just look at me!" she said holding her arms out to display her formerly black jumpsuit, now dirty brown all down the front. I thought I was using my inside voice when I said "Would you like me to brush that off for you?" There were probably a couple dozen guys that had taken her up on the "Just look at me" invitation, they all stopped what they were doing and suddenly all conversation within 30 feet came to a halt as everyone waited to hear her reply. She straightened up, smiled, turned to face me, thrust her (considerable!) chest out, paused as she seemed to think about it for a moment, and smiling even wider, finally replied "Thanks! but I brought my own scrub brush of shame." A sigh went across the mat as everybody collectively let out their breath.

Nobody was more disappointed than I.

Saturday morning the warm ups are over, the first jump is a 56 way, Dan has promised beer if we do well.