The first jump were some fly arounds with Glenn and Ashley, always a good and fun jump to practice fall rates.  The second dive was a tracking dive with Ashely.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB47BuD6WoE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MdxCWxa4ec

The month started with jump number 229 on the 3rd, a pseudo coaching dive with a Christian, a jumper back from a 7 year layoff.  He’d already done a recent recurrency jump with an Instructor at another dropzone and then another with an Instructor at Skydive Tecumseh.  But on this jump we were still working on some basic fall rate and docking skills.  This jump definetly cemented my decision to enroll in the coach course later in the month.  Later that night we did a 13-way dive that had experience levels from 43 jumps to 12,142 – I remember there was a plan, but the video just shows a big ball of shit!

The 4th of July was very special – a six point nine way, a five point nine way, a four point eight way, and one of my best sunset tracking dives!  Thats my camera on the leader and it’s me docking on the left.  Most importantly, we did night jumps on the fourth, and no matter how much I try, I can not explain how patriotic I felt watching hundreds of fireworks and dozens of grand finallies covering the ground beneath me.  I got video of my solo night jump, but you can’t really see much – hey, it was night time!  But I forgot to turn on the camera for the following four way group jump on the next load!  That Sunday continued the many more bigways, up to a fourteen way skydive!

USPA Coach Rating card

Jump number 250 was my first jump flying outside camera for a four-way (they got three points).  Being a part of Brian’s 1200th, Margret’s 1200th, and Mike’s 1800th skydive was very rewarding, and was a very well done skydive!  On July 16th & 17th I was able to enroll in a Coach Course by Bram Clement at SkydiveRatings.com and got my Coach Rating card in the mail a few days later!

The next day brought my first experience as a Coach – telling my student they were grounded due to weather – even while everyone else was still jumping :(  But she took it well and I was able to do my first Coaching jumps the next day on the 19th.

The jumps got lean towards the end of the month, but the quality surely improved.  There was a 29 point two way with me and jon;  and finally ending the month with Greg back in the air and a five way missing man dancing spider!

All in all a great month… Night Jumps, Big ways, Coach Rating course, my first (and so far only) student, first outside camera jump, and a lot of quality fun jumps in between for a total of 38 skydives!

Wow, this is kind of sad… the novelty is starting to wear off… normally on the drive to the dropzone i’d get butterflies in my stomach… but not so much anymore. It’s definitely something that I love to do, just not with the same anxiety as before. Today I was hoping to get a few jumps in, but the weather turned for the worse, so I only got one. Actually, I could.ve had one more, but after the first, I was done for the day.

This will be a quick post here… nothing real exciting about this jump, just my first coaching jump, and i had to practice ‘tracking’. Tracking is basically forward movement in set direction… you try to maximize your forward speed horizontally vs vertically. Anyhow, when the load before got done (about five minutes before we’d go up) they said they noticed it just started raining at altitude, my coach, Brian, said he’d still go if I wanted to, and I was like “yeah, why wouldn’t I?” and all he’d say is don’t be surprised if I saw him on is back and I was just like okay, whatever..

So anyway, long story short, rain falls at about 15 mph… Standing on the ground, rain hitting you at 15mph doesn’t hurt… but do the math, if you’re falling at 120 mph out of an airplane, and hitting raindrops that are going a slow 15, the effect is being hitting by raindrops at 105 mph. Lets see.. This isn’t as bad as a paintball or BB gun… but close… imagine a raindrop sized paintball… lots of them… all over your face and hands…  according to local myth, it’s hurts because you’re falling on them from the top.. aka, the pointy side.. ;)

Also, do to the fact that I was doing a tracking jump, I couldn’t block my face at all (to track effectively, your legs are straight out behind you, and your arms are swept back to your sides) so I was literally diving face first into the rain. My coach, like he said he would, took the easy route and just flipped onto his back and watched my dive from there.

Once we got down, I could’ve taken the next load… but i thought i could just as well wait for next weekend. Oh well, just wasn’t worth the rain to get in two today. Better luck next time.