2009-03-21 Jump 22

The morning started early even though the night ended late, and a bit of a fiasco ensued. I was scheduled to attend a trail building seminar and trail-work session sponsored by the San Diego Mountain Biking Association and the International Mountain Bicycling Association. The seminar started at 8am, so with my eyes still bleary from too little sleep, I arrived at the Elfin Forest fire station just before the speakers got things into gear. The presentation was interesting, but I was amazed at the poor presentation skills of the two trail-building experts from IMBA. After all, they do this presentation over and over again, but they were very unpolished, reading from the slides and doing so very undynamically.

In any event, after their talk, at around 11, a lunch was served, and given the lack of a vegan option, I decided to just sit in my car and read my mail and rest. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, a good chunk of time had passed, and so had all of the vehicles taking trail workers. Since the work site was some distance away from anywhere I could get my car, I decided that it was better to just head home.

When I got there, I asked my friend Adrienne, who had been visiting from San Francisco, whether she wanted to go jumping if the weather was good at Skydive San Diego. It was cloudy on the coast, but a quick call to SDSD revealed that they were jumping under a clear sky. So, Adrienne and I loaded ourselves into the car and headed down the freeway.

The journey took the normal hour, and we arrived around 1:45pm. I got Adrienne set up with her paper work to do a tandem and pointed out which instructor she wanted--she expressed the desire to have a hunky-navy-seal, and that's exactly what she got. The unfortunate thing was that we had four loads to wait, during which time I could have gotten a few jumps, but instead I sat around, chatting with Adrienne and Jake.

Finally, after the long wait, it was our time to get into the sky. Adrienne had her Navy Seal, Larry, and I was all geared up, so I asked Blake to watch my landing for accuracy and then we made the journey to the plane. I was the only fun jumper on board, so I was the last person on the plane. Fortunately, the plane wasn't completely full, and I didn't have to sit on the floor or the edge of the seat. The climb to altitude took longer than I remember from past flights, but the view was wonderful. When the pilot cut the engines, and the red "standby" light came on, I opened up the door. I stuck my head out the door and spotted the end of the runway far below but some distance off. I kept checking the location and the green "go" light. Finally, the go light was lit and we were in an ideal location, so I prepared myself to jump.

Jump 22
I did a diving exit from the plane, wanting to be stable right off the bat, but my feet and lets ended up going over my head, putting me into a backflip. I tried to continue the flip, and ended up belly down, but a bit unstable. I arched, and once stable, I did a front flip, back flip and barrel roll. Then I did a 360 and then a track. Then, I continued falling until I hit 4000' and pulled.

The canopy ride on the 230 square foot parachute was fun. I tried doing front riser dips, but didn't really notice any action. I was hanging out over the hills to the south east of the holding area until I got to about 1500', at which point I headed in to do my landing pattern. I did my downwind leg, but was moving too fast in the wind so I crabbed a bit to the south to burn some altitude before the base leg. A quick s-turn and I was on the base leg at just the right altitude. I was watching the cone in the middle of the landing area, and when I noticed it was starting to raise upward in my field of vision, I immediately turned into the wind and headed for the cone. I ended up landing about 10 feet away from it, which was probably the most accurate landing I've had.

Once I was back I started to pack my chute, but it was instantly confusing. I got everything right, but then realized I had forgotten to set the brakes. Then I was having trouble flaking. In the end, Jake helped me make sure I was doing things right. Just after I finally got the chute packed, I manifested myself on the next flight, but it looked like things were winding down thanks to a thick cloud bank that rolled in from the west. While waiting, I asked Blake if he'd seen my landing. Damn, he hadn't but he trusted my account. Since the requirement is to land within 20m/65' of a target, it is pretty hard to goof. He signed off on the past three jumps and also signed off on some other items. There's not much left to go now on my A-License application, and I'm going to try very hard to get it finished on the 28th.