Fandango? Really?

Right now I should be home, sprawled on my couch, remote in one hand, Grey Goose and lemonade in the other hand, my own bed upstairs beckoning me, my gas barbecue clicking and ticking as it cools after I've seared my dinner to perfection, my bike making similar noises as it cools after I've wrung it out on River Road coming back from Kemptville….

But instead…. I’m still in Florida. I’m sittin’ in a trailer recoverin’ frum havin’ written no less than SIX exams in less than 4 hours. Even if I left now now now now right now! it would take an absolute minimum of 2 days to get home, and aside from the fact that I’m way too trashed to drive right now there are so many great bike roads between here and there that it will take me at least a week just to get through the Ozarks, let alone Deals Gap and all the other roads that surround it. And on Saturday I start the AFF Instructor course, six 10 hour days with homework, going out the door with guys whose job is to play the role of the worst skydiving student in all history. They are going to be doing everything they can to screw me up and make me crack under the stress.

So here I sit. Thousands of miles from home, eating microwave meals from Walmart, trapped in a trailer on a DZ in Florida, surrounded by Skydivers, with a Bar 114 steps from my door (I counted), barely 2 quarts of Vodka in the freezer, no ice, THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MOMENT, …..no ice. NO ICE!!!!!!!

“What’s your point” you’re asking?

Here it is: As John likes to say “Let’s all feel sorry for Larry!”

I have to keep reminding myself that:

“I’m not at work”

“Everything wriggles, everything works”

“There is no snow here”

“I’m not dead” (despite my best efforts to the contrary)

“I’m in Florida”

“There’s this girl….”

“I’m living in a trailer on a DZ,”

“My bike is fully fueled and waiting for me just outside the door”

Sigh. Life’s good.

The last time I saw him back in December Dan planted a seed “While you’re down there, go sign up with Skydiveratings.com, get your AFF rating, I can get you work!” I’m thinkin’ he missed the whole “It’s not that I can’t find work, I’m doing my best to make sure that work can’t find me!” thing. I had put the course completely out of my mind but a chance encounter with Bram Clement on the porch outside manifest in Z-Hills got it started all over again, and with Diane’s encouragement I signed up for the course. I don’t know if Dan gets the credit, or the blame, for what I’m about to go through, I’ll be able to answer that in 10 days.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My last entry was 2 weeks ago. Diane and I were on our way to the “I Wanna Lei you Luau!” in Deland. I had to get a pilot chute stitched onto my D bag when we got there, on my last jump in Z-Hills the day before the hacky tore loose from my pilot chute when I went to deploy my main. When I picked my rig up from Trevor he recommended that I replace the pilot chute, pointing out that it was getting quite worn and wouldn't be yanking my main out as well as one that wasn't so porous. I didn't pay him anywhere near as much attention as I should have, at that point I didn't even know if I would ever jump again, let alone plan to actually bring gear with me on the trip. The jump itself was a mess, the dirt dive was rushed and the guy keying the points must have thought he was with Airspeed he was keying the points so quickly. After I had tracked away and it came time to dump the pilot chute came out of it’s pouch just fine and pulled out my main, but in that brief instant between coming out and being released, the hacky had torn off the top of the pilot chute. I didn't even know something was wrong until I went to pack. If it had come loose a half second earlier my main would have never come out, I’d owe Trevor a bottle of his favorite party beverage when the reserve saved my life, and a case of beer for my first reserve ride. The moral of this story would be “If Trevor says Fix something, then FIX SOMETHING!!!

I found myself thinking about the 2 people that had died here a week earlier. A large group of skydivers had come down from Iceland for a couple of weeks, mostly experienced skydivers but also some students. An AFF instructor and his student were missing after a jump and a search found them a day later in the forest, a few feet apart from each other. They had never deployed their mains, and while the reserves had fired automatically when they got low enough they didn't inflate in time to save them. Nobody will know why they didn't deploy, and while there is no good reason to die, going in because of a worn pilot chute would have to be a particularly stupid one.

The boogie itself unfolded pretty much as expected with everything getting pretty blurry after the sun went down and the band went on stage. I do remember Hula girls though.

I dropped Diane off in Orlando last Wednesday to catch her flight back to Winnipeg then headed for my hotel near Z-Hills to spend the next 2 ½ days holed up in my room studying the books for the AFF course and for the Coach course I would have to do as a prerequisite. Out of all the hotels I have stayed in over the last month and a half, this one set a new low for decrepit and seedy. The blanket on the bed had so many holes in it that it would make a better net than a cover, the chairs and carpet were covered with various stains, one of which I’m positive was blood, and the toilet was so disgusting I actually had to clean it before I was willing to use it. Oh well, this is what you get when you go with the lowest bidder. I pulled a sleeping bag and sheets out of the camping gear in the car, I chose not to sleep on the ones provided with the room. At least it was quiet. Until the last night. That’s when I woke to the sound of sirens pulling into the parking lot. I spent the next 3 hours telling one Cop after another that I knew nothing about the guy who’d been stabbed on the floor above. It did have one perk: there was a Subway right off the lobby. I never actually eat there but the night the Coach course finished and I wanted to have a few drinks, it provided a steady supply of lemonade to mix with the quart of Polish Vodka I had bought for only $22. It started out okay, but every time I returned to refill my cup I was weaving and giggling more and more, until the girl behind the counter finally filled a large plastic jug for me and sent me on my way. I didn't know if she was being helpful or just didn't want me coming back again, nor did I care. I've now moved into Deluxe Accommodations in a trailer on the DZ, complete with running water and electricity, the very height of luxury.

The Coach course is over and done, I now have a few days off before the AFF course starts. The 6 people sitting at the table during the course represented 5 different countries: the US, Canada, Iceland, Germany, and Sweden. The first thing David, our facilitator asked for was our forms showing we had been signed off for having done our prerequisites of helping teach some first jump courses. Gunnar, one of the guys from Iceland said he had helped teach a course just before he came to Florida. “Great!” said David. “Is the instructor here? You need to get this signed before you can get your rating.”

Gunnar paused before slowly saying “He’s the instructor who……” The unfinished sentence hung in the room as we all realized the guy he was talking about was the one who had died the week before with his student while teaching AFF. Crap. It was only then that it started to sink in that I was going to take a course in a few days to learn how to do something that had cost 2 people their lives only a couple hundred yards from where we sat the week before.

The Coach course mostly went OK, but it did have it’s moments. One night my homework was to write a lesson plan to teach canopy control and how to fly a landing pattern. I spent 4 ½ hours on it, and the next day presented it with the other candidates as my students. It started well, I was drawing stuff on the white board to explain the concepts of “downwind, base, and final” but as I went on I started to get a little stressed and found myself skipping parts of the presentation, then backtracking to be sure I covered everything. I was soon scribbling more and more things on the board, until David finally stopped me and said “Step back here. Now look at the board and what do you see?” It was an incomprehensible mess of lines, squiggles, numbers, circles, and arrows. “There was a movie starring Kevin Costner filmed in the 80’s that had a skydiving scene ……” I didn't hear what he said after that as everybody in the class including me erupted in gales of laughter and then Peter started doing a word perfect delivery of Truman Sparks giving the worst, and most famous skydiving lesson of all time: “Okay now you’ll be coming out here and you’ll be doing a stable fall face down frog modified, now out here comes the static line cuz it goes from this to here see, and then the pilot chute will open and it will pull the bridle out and the main canopy will be open because they’re all connected…”

20 Years of Skydiving, a fortune poured into training, courses, classes, ratings, and I've become Truman Sparks?!?!?! A new low. Can’t wait for the AFF course.