I've been to London to visit the Queen"
Or, in this case, they've gone to Arizona, no doubt to devastate the cotton crop. When I was shopping for an RV south Ottawa was under attack by an onslaught of Ladybugs, resulting in dozens stowing away on board the RV. They went into hibernation in the cold and have been coming back to life over the last few weeks. I had been capturing them and setting them free outside until it occurred to me that they're probably an invasive species. If the Arizona cotton crop is destroyed in a few years by a mysterious invasion of orange shelled bugs with black spots on them.......
The Canadian Invasion is over, the madness has ended until next year, Skydive Arizona has become a ghost town compared to what it was just a few days ago. I've been remiss in keeping the blog up to date, I've been way too busy taking part in the general nonsense and stupidity to report on it. Here's a few high points, in no particular order.
The best entertainment going for the last couple of days has been watching the test drops to certify the new Curve container to a new TSO standard. Stu, Beth's Boy-Toy, has been tossing dummy loaded containers out the back of a Skyvan at 400 feet, the previous week he was the dummy, jumping out with intentional malfunctions packed into the container, but at a much higher altitude. Parachute Test Pilot might sound like a fun job, but it would have to a damn well paid one to interest me.
Diane gets a special award for one of the best bruises of all time that didn't result in a broken bone. She was launching a 2-way with a student when she clobbered the back of the door frame with her upper right arm. The livid black yellow and blue bruise went from elbow to shoulder, and when she put a tensor bandage on it to try and keep the swelling down she managed to turn it into a kind of waffle weave pattern, it was really quite pretty. She didn't think so though and when pictures got posted on Facebook she insisted they be taken down before anybody at work saw them. She went for an X-ray, nothing broken, she could still use the arm ok and kept right on jumping.
Aidan had slept in the RV the night he got there and I made the mistake of making breakfast and coffee in the morning, resulting in him becoming my morning wake up call as day after day he knocked on the door, mug in hand, with a hopeful smile on his face. A couple of mornings I came back from a run and found him inside, with a full pot brewing, so it worked out for both of us.
I can't remember how it got started but on the last Saturday the beer that Philippe had bought wound up in the landing area, resulting in several near collisions as everybody tried to beat everybody else to the cooler. All the discipline everybody had been showing all week went straight out the window with people bumping canopies on final in an effort to be first. Even though we were well back in the pack Curtis and I tried to beat each other resulting in us kiting our canopies up the landing area until Monique bellowed at us to get them on the ground, there was still a dozen people coming in and we had turned ourselves into 20 foot tall moving obstacles.
I had stocked the RV with beer and Vodka on my way to Eloy, my room mates Phil and Ray both bought beer, I received a bottle of Tito's Ultra Premium Vodka from Cassandra as a thank you for all my coaching, a couple of other bottles showed up mysteriously, and then when the Canadians left they gave me all the booze they had left. Beer, Vodka, Wine, Jack Daniels, Fireball Liqueur, a plethora of mostly oversized partly full bottles no doubt purchased by drunken Canadians trying to get their heads around the incredibly cheap prices. I have more beer than I can possibly drink before I return home (really! I swear! Even Me!), I went through the liquor and gave a bunch to the retired Airborne Colonel in the RV next to mine, he's having a Super Bowl party this weekend.
I haven't jumped since Sunday, I've spent all my days tearing about on all the roads I've wanted to run on previous trips and didn't get the chance.
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| The road enters the frame on the bottom left, it took 10 minutes of constants twists and turns up Mount Lemmon to get up to where I took this picture. 2,000 feet to 8,500 feet in 25 miles. |
The RV has proven itself to be one of the wisest purchases I have ever made. Living right on the DZ, steps away from manifest, our own kitchen, bathroom and shower, warm and quiet. I have only eaten out half a dozen times since I left home, and with all the food that was left with me when everybody went home I won't have to buy groceries for a week. And I won't have to buy salad dressing or condiments until I'm in Ottawa. I had so much of some things that a lot of it would have gone bad before I could us it so I took all the extra over to the packers, they were even happier to get the free food than the Colonel was to get the free booze.
The only problem so far with the RV was getting the plumbing working. I had been given a 5 minute tutorial when I picked it up, and all I gathered from that was "Water goes in there and there, and comes out there." Simple enough. Until I hooked up a hose and immediately had water coming out there there there there and there, with a rapidly growing muddy lake spreading out around around the thing. Several of the storage compartments quickly flooded with a mix of water and pink RV antifreeze. A couple of neighbors saw my predicament and came to my aid, and it turned out that a couple of fittings had cracked, probably from being improperly stored, and after running all over Casa Grande for parts I got that all squared away and continued the process, turning the water back on.
Which resulted in a whole new series of leaks starting inside the RV. If anybody ever needs to know anything about RV plumbing, just ask me, it took 3 days to get it all sorted but now I have hot and cold running water on demand, the toilet flushes just like it's supposed to, and all the water stays where it should.
I was supposed to leave tomorrow for Vegas to meet up with Mark, he's working a trade show there and has taken some time off afterwards, but there's rain moving in so I'm going to leave as soon as rush hour traffic clears in Phoenix. Mark has rented a fast motorcycle so we're going to explore the the area at speed and try not to get arrested.
After he leaves I'll be heading down to Perris for a bit before leaving the RV there and going to Palm Springs to hang out at Beth's place, returning to Perris for the Dueling Drop Zones Competition (more on this later).
If anybody is looking for a few days away from the frigid north, send me an email, I have plenty of room and can be talked into going just about anywhere within a days drive, you can pay your rent in beer, and Beth and I need 4 more team mates for the Dueling DZ's February 14th.
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