The swoop club event was scheduled for Monday morning, but alas, the clouds and rain just didn’t want to let it happen. Well the rain paused for a moment, so we decided to quickly get the Cessna up and test the ceiling. Well, we were able to get up to 4,000 feet, but it sure hadn’t stopped raining up there! I’m sure someone might have considered not proceeding.. but the next load was already manifested.. and they had already setup the swoop course.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvHq_xvoDWY

Now for a bit of my personal history, I am not a swooper. I hadn’t ever participated in swoop club before. I was on the load for a quick hop-n-pop and I saw the course setup, I thought I’d just use it for a bit of accuracy practice. Of course when I landed, Ryan said I was the only one that had even scored in the round, putting me momentary in first place, so I decided I should stick around and finish it -- couldn’t hurt to learn a bit more about my canopy! Many thanks to Ryan for answering all my questions that day, the rules, scoring procedures, the different rounds, etc.. I really learned a lot.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNgoHY24g-4

Mostly I focused on just hitting the gates with an accurate approach. In the first round (above) I had a 77′ swoop followed with a 42′ swoop in the second round. The rules changed in the third round (accuracy) so I just tried to land in the square Ryan showed me and in the process I hit three of the four gates. At this point, I was the only person to score in each round and I might have had a chance at placing first or second.

Hellfish Swoop Club 2009 - 3rd Place Medal

However for the final round I decided to put a bit more effort into it and hit all four gates, which I did, but landed 10′ early in the “no mans land” area just before the target landing area! Oh well -- How much can you learn if you don’t try hard enough that you might fuck up? All in all, it was a good end to the boogie weekend. One that will be well remembered by myself at the least. And, after a few calculations by Ryan (you’ve gotta love a weighted scoring system) I ended up placing third -- in my first try at swoop club!

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!

January – 1 – Just one jump, but what a great – and cold – one it was!

February – 18 – What can I can, ELOY baby! Hot Air Balloons & High Altitude Jumps!

March – 3 – Waiting for saftey day was rough, but it sure was nice to be jumping back at home.

April – 25 – Not bad and I bitched about the weather? Even had my first official team jumps :)

May – 8 – This was a rough month personally, way too much RW in the way of my jumping :(

June – 37 – Finally back on track for a great month, ended by following out my good friend Patrick out of the plane on his first AFF jump!

So, wth the first half of the year over and already standing at 92 jumps already, 228 total; and with really the best part of summer still coming.. how many will I end up with this year? 300? 350? 400?!

One thing I know for sure is that I need to learn to stop bitching about the weather! I’m starting to confuse myself with someone still on student status!

Jeromy

Ahh, but thats not even why I’m posting today. All winter long, waiting for skydiving season to open, is no easy wait. Mostly it’s the Michigan winters, the combination between the absence of my favorite past-time and just a healthy bit of cabin fever.. it’s not fun, but once it’s done, it’s done.

Opps.. not this year! We had a great opening day this year.. a little cool and windy in the morning, but that settled down very nicely into the evening; I got eight jumps all day (my best ever)! Then the next day, what happens? SNOW! Can you believe it? 6 inches of snow in April? It’s crazy, though, it does look like it will be gone fast enough not to interfere with jumping next weekend.. :)

I did three jumps; a two-way with my coach (to get my license current), a four-way (my first), and a solo jump (where i got stable on my back for the first time). I had three stand-up landings, but all were off target. My first was off by 15 yards, the next two by more than 50! I guess I’ll have to get out there and practice some more!

After five months waiting through winter, and a month waiting through spring weather… It was nice to finally get some altitude. All in all, was it worth the wait? Of course it was! Next year, I’ll try to be more patient!