The airplane, often seen from a distance, but now so up close and personal. The ride up, in the beginning seemed to be that last slow walk down the green mile, but later becomes an unbearable delay from your own sweet release. The open door at altitude, the doorway into another world. Freefall, where you finally spread your wings and fly. Pull time, when it all gets serious. The canopy, is it there and is it square. The ride down, can this thing do a cart wheel? The landing pattern, downwind, base, final.. then.. wait for it… wait for it… FLARE!

Yeah, thats how a skydive works in my mind. But “skydiving” transcends the “skydive”. After all, every tandem student has done a “skydive”, but do they understand “skydiving”? So if not just the skydive, what else is there? Well, a lot! Not the least of which is the dropzone’s atmosphere itself!

The friends, the students, the Coaches and Instructors. It’s a beautiful spring day spent waiting in the shade, casual chatter all about. Idle time spent learning about aviation from the pilot and teaching new students about the skydive, explaining the difference along the way between fact and and your own opinion. Enjoying the day at the dropzone, not skydiving, just relaxing.. and waiting for the skydive.

It’s not easy. It’s took me three years to get used to it and another year to learn to enjoy it. It’s hard to understand, much less appreciate this part of skydiving in the beginning -- when it’s all about the skydive -- but now, a fine spring day, spent outside with friends.. that’s enough to make me smile any day of the week -- of course, getting some altitude at the end of that wait is great too!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk8cSEnEd6E

I’ve got pretty good range with my own jumpsuit, but with all the warnings I was receiving, I thought I’d better grab one of the bigger spare suits in the back. I ended up with giant blue and yellow balloon suit that I could have fit into twice! I was able to do two jumps with the student. The first, I went out poised with her diving behind me. As I released and glided down the hill, I recall wondering if she had let go of the plane yet, she had, but was.. well a bit floaty! I de-arched and “hugged the beachball” as quickly as I could, but to no avail – I was able to keep myself from falling any lower, but couldn’t get back up! I had to turn my head sideways and watch her do her turns from 20 feet below!

The second jump I knew what to expect. I had her go out poised and dove out two seconds behind her and instantly de-arched and then let myself slowly sink to her level. This went much better and I was able to stay on level and watch the dive. The student herself did very well on both jumps, I was easily able to check of her objectives. Unfortunately, she’s had a hard time going through the progression as many of our Instructors and Coaches have had a hard time falling slowly with her.

Anyhow, the definition of good hump day at the dropzone? Being there to help out the anxious students.. the ones that can’t wait until the weekend. Getting more instruction myself from the current Instructors – my Coaches from years past! And ending the night down at Muk’s – 1/2 burrito, hot, sour cream & hot pepper on the side and a tall Labatt – that will be missed as much til next season as the jumps!

So, a perfect day? Almost. The gopro has starting acting up on me a little bit. Each jump the camera didn’t turn on until I thought I was turning it off – two long clips of me flying the canopy (in a huge balloon suit), so every will have to wait until the next post to get their video fix!

I had plans to drive down to Ohio for the weekend to meet with Ashley Mead from SkydiveChick.com and take a small tour of the local dropzones in her neck of the woods while helping her check off the last few items on her progression card and hopefully to be there when she got her license!

The first stop was Cleveland Parachute Center for a few jumps from their Cessna 185, the first jump was Ashley’s hop-n-pop from 5,500 feet followed by my exit.  Watch carefully – you can see how I figured out that the step on a 185 is about six inches higher than a 182!

The second jump was an interesting one.. but no story about it here (go watch the video, be observant), you’ll have to come find me around the bonfire to hear me tell you the story about it!

After the second jump we took off back to Cleveland to meet up with Shawn at http://www.voodoomonkey.org/.  We know how many skydivers wear  a closing pin necklace.. but how many of them would put that pin on them permanently?  Only two that I know of..  but who among us couldn’t use a little good luck charm on that pull hand?

After the tattoo’s it was back on the road the Canton Airsports to meet up with the crew there just after sunset.  I got to meet a lot of great people and couldn’t wait to come back Sunday morning to jump with them.  First jump was with Rick, Christa, and Tkoa – we never quite built the first round, but a fun jump anyhow!

Next I got to fly outside camera for a hybrid attempt, it was the group’s second try at it and they were pretty sure they were going to get it.  The were so sure, they made two of us squeeze onto that camera step to do the video for them!  I couldn’t keep up with the fall rate once Rick stood up under the two way, but I love the footage I got of the first camera guy colliding with group at exit!  I tried to go into a sit, but I just couldn’t hold it stable, I need to practice my free flying abit more for these situations…

And finally, the last jump.  All during Sunday we’d worked on getting Ashley card checked off, three ring maintenance, packing (I got to jump her pack job on the first jump of the day), and she was on the plane during the second jump during her check dive to get her A license!  We thought that was the end of the day, but a few more tandems walked in, and we had just enough to send the plane back up.  For her first licensed jump, she said she just wanted to do something fun.. no learning, no practice.. so I offered to just spin her around and see how far I could throw her across the sky!  This was a great end to a great weekend.. A great new dropzone to visit, a newly licensed skydiver to jump with, a new skydiving tattoo.. it doesn’t get much better than this.

Had to wait two weeks for this one, then on Friday the day before I was going up, Mike at NSC calls me and tells me they won’t be flying for the weekend… Thought about letting it drop at that… but could bare to make myself wait another week. So I started looking for another DZ in the area that was open… I found my way to Tecumseh Skydiving… decent place… busy for sure. I got my jump in, but it took awhile though, it seemed like I had to wait in line behind any tandem jumper that walked in. Stayed the night out there, but Sunday morning the winds were to high for me to jump (as a student I can’t jump in anything past 15 mph) so had to go home with only one jump in for the weekend… better luck next time I guess.

Was nice to use some different equipment though, I used a 235 sq ft main chute this time, rather than the 288 sq ft I had been using, also the deployment method of the rig was different, BOC vs. the rip cord. I do have to say I preferred the equipment at Tecumseh…

I think after a day of waiting around for them to find instructors for me kind of blew my nerves. The jump wasn’t so great, I kept “potato chipping”, rocking front to back, so they could never let me go, I’ll have to repeat this jump again :(

Other than that… I’ll just say that there is a difference between DZ’s and there is a difference between different teams of instructors… and next weekend, I.ll find my way back to NSC.