I was on the road to Skydive Elsinore by 7:45am, on my way to my first skydive adventure at someplace other than Skydive San Diego. I was really excited, both to be going to a new location but also because I was going to be able to use my new camera.
I arrived at a few minutes after 9am, went to the office and filled out waivers, got my BONEanza Boogie beer wristband and paid for 5 jumps. I then went off to rent a rig. When I walked into Squre1, the first thing I heard was someone else being told that there were no rigs available to rent unless someone brought one back. So, the wait was on...
In the mean time, I decided to go shopping. Since the gear store is about 95% a clothing store, I found some great t-shirts and some stickers for the back of my car. I also decided to pick up another Optima since I now have the HypEye D Pro Expansion. Now, I get both audible and visual altitude warnings. I also got a bite switch so that I can take photos while shooting video. The biggest problem was installing the Expansion. The screws on the back side of the HypEye D Pro require a jewelers phillips head screw driver, but the closest thing that they had at Square1 was a microscopic flathead. I made it work, and managed to get the Expansion installed after some frustration. I continued to wait, enjoying the air conditioning in the store, for about an hour. Then I decided to go see if anyone was there who I knew. It didn't take more than a few seconds to find Rocco and Andrew T. We chatted as they prepared to do their next jumps. It was about 11am when I went back to Square1 to see if anyone had returned a canopy. Still nothing, but Andrew was feeling ill from a bit of over-consumption the night before, and he offered me his canopy. Unfortunately, he's flying a 169 sq. ft. and I'm flying a 200 sq ft., and that was way too much of a down-size for me to want to risk. So, I continued to wait.
I continued to check back with the store every hour, but still had no luck. It wasn't until around 4pm when I went back and they mentioned that there was a woman who had rented a rig but had gone off to hospital with a fellow who pounded into the ground several hours before and that her rig was just sitting there, plus she wanted a smaller canopy anyway. So they found me the righ, and while they were doing that I filled out the paperwork. As I was doing that I noticed that it was going to cost me $49.50 per jump for the rig, so I decided that it wasn't worth that much money. It was then that the woman who runs the store, without any prompting from me, offered me the rig for free! Wow, now that's service!
I took the rig and went to manifest and asked to be put on a load. I had two options, 13 minutes or 33 minutes. I decided to go with the 33 minutes wait until I saw that everyone on that flight, other than me, would have been students. So, the opportunity to jump with someone was going to be pretty slim. So, I chose the 13 minute route, but that was somewhat of a mistake.
I rushed to get into my jumpsuit and get everything ready. I was really excited that I was going to be able to jump my new camera helmet. So, I got everything together and waited for the "now call" which came very quickly.
Jump 105
I was the second person to board the plane, which put me all the way at the front of the plane. By the time the plane was 1/2 full, I realized I had forgotten something very important--my visual altimeter! I thought about getting off the plane to grab it, since it was only a few feet away, but getting past all the people boarding wasn't going to be easy. So, in the end, I decided I would just do a high pull.
There was a big group on the plane that was jumping together along with several others. I asked the pilot if it was OK to do a high pull, and after he conversed with ground control, I got the OK. Once we got to altitude, I assumed everything would work like at SDSD in that people would board the plane in the reverse order to how they would exit. Instead, the large group of jumpers was intermixed with the others. So, I was a bit confused as to when I should jump. After the first collection of people exited, I asked the pilot whether he wanted me to go now or after the other group. He said to go then, so I ran to the door, looked down and jumped. After getting stable, I pulled my pilot chute and the canopy popped open VERY fast and hard. Ouch! I wasn't expecting that.
One positive thing was that I could do corkscrews for a long time, so I did. My altitude awareness isn't quite there yet, so I stopped when I felt like I was getting close to the ground and then just started to doodle around. About a minute later my audible went off to tell me I was at 5000 ft. So, I spiraled down a bit longer and then went in for a landing. I tried to use the other jumpers as a guide to which way I should come in for a landing, but it was next to impossible because everyone was landing every-which-way. Then I noticed that the windsock was moving around every few seconds, first with winds out of the north, then out of the west, then out of the north again, then the south... It was confusing. As I my audible beeped to tell me to start my landing sequence, I took a southerly direction, then turned east and for the final leg, somewhat north west, as the wind was still changing. The final leg was a bit scary because of turbulence, but I ended up having a nice soft landing.
Jump 106
After packing, and then repacking, I saw that Rocco was doing some sort of load organizing, so I butted in and asked him what he was doing. It turned out he was organizing a sunset tracking jump, so I got myself on the list. After a very long wait, in which I could probably have done another jump and gotten packed, we gathered for the briefing. The large group was split into two, one for the fast fallers and one for the slow fallers. I figured I was a fast faller, so I got into that group, but that ended up being a mistake. I was to be in the door, just behind the leader. Once we were at altitude, and this time we hit around 14k feet, I got into position and the count was given and out we went. Man they fell fast, and I couldn't descend fast enough to get level, although I was more than able to keep up with them. It was fun to watch though, and the jump was fun. The landing was a bit sketchy again, because of changing winds, but I managed a soft and on-target landing.
Party
After the jump I went off to dinner with Cindy, a woman I met, and some of her friends. We went to an Italian joint which, as was to be expected, I was underimpressed. I should have ordered off the menu, but I went with what they had to offer. So, I got lots of starch and oil. After dinner, I headed back to the DZ for the party. I broke out the bottle of vodka that I brought and started to drink. I know I drank way too much because when I woke up in my car, I didn't remember going there to sleep. Since I had to DJ at Dance Church in Encinitas, I got the car going and left. I got all the way to Fallbrook before I rememebered that I had set my tent up (but couldn't figure out how to inflate my air matress) and had to go back to get it. Damn. I managed to make it to Dance Church with 2 minutes to spare, but no shower and no fresh breath--not at all like me.
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