It’s a Good Tired
Seems like a lot of what I do lately on this blog is bitch about being tired, usually from too much work or too much travel or too much stress or too little sleep. So this time I’ll say I’m glad to be tired because it means I really pushed myself in a good way the last few days.
This weekend was our first skydiving training camp for my 8-way team (Blue Ice), following our tunnel camp back in April. Wednesday night I flew down to Ontario and grabbed my rental car for the 45-minute drive down to my hotel near Perris. Up bright and early on Thursday to start training … and faced with not-so-bright skies. We met, stretched, talked about the day’s plans, and waited till about 11:30 before the clouds cleared enough for our first jump. Out of a planned 8 jumps, we got 5 in that day. We were geared up and ready to go for our 6th when the DZ called for another weather hold, and at that point we decided to just call it a day. Turned out to be the right decision as the weather never did clear back up again that afternoon.
Spent a couple hours hanging out in the Bombshelter (Perris’ bar), and was fortunate enough to meet a couple extremely cool folks who were on the DZ consulting on a planned high altitude skydive project called Red Bull Stratos. The first was Bill Weaver, who, as a test pilot, survived an SR-71 disintegration. The story is reprinted here. Pretty cool story, and he’s as down to earth and humble as can be about what he’s done.
The second is a hero to many skydivers, Colonel Joseph Kittinger, who still holds the record that the Red bull Stratos project is trying to break - that of the longest freefall. I was able to talk to him for a few minutes in between project meetings, and found him to be funny and gracious and a real pistol at 81. He was kind enough to indulge my request for a photo as well.
That evening, I headed back up to Ontario to pick up Sean, who was only able to get away from work for one day. Friday, he took the car and headed down to San Diego to catch up with family, while I spent another day on the DZ. Fortunately, the weather was great the rest of the weekend - getting hotter (and with some wonkier winds) by Saturday and Sunday, but overall not too bad at all.
We did 8 jumps each on Friday and Saturday, and 6 on Sunday before calling it a day, turning on 20 minute calls (which means jump, land, drop gear at the packer, debrief, plan the next jump, and be back on a plane within 20 minutes of landing). it’s a pretty different pace than I’m used to - I’m more of a land, chill out for a while, eventually do another jump kind of person.
There were definitely many times this weekend when I wondered what the hell I was doing; things that seemed reasonably simple in the tunnel were maddeningly challenging in the air. Sometimes it was one step forward, two steps back, sometimes two steps forward. The toughest part for me was getting the exit right, which is something that can’t be practiced in the tunnel. The lightbulb finally went off for me late on Saturday and Sunday’s exits were pretty good. I can still refine them, of course, but I think I’m getting the basics of timing and presentation down.
There’s still a lot to learn, and watching the videos with Sean this morning, I was definitely picking apart all of my mistakes, but that’ll help me to know what to work on between now and our next camp in early July.
Headed up to Ontario yesterday afternoon, stopping at California Pizza Kitchen to split a pizza and a salad. Sean surprised me by ordering an apple crisp when he got up to use the bathroom - thus continuing our Memorial Day tradition of pie (or something close to it) that started when we first met. Five years and going strong!
Today’s been a much needed lazy day at home; breakfast, a short walk to do some grocery shopping, and a lot of laziness on the couch. I’m glad we planned the trip this way to have an extra day at home rather than going straight back to work. My body’s pretty bruised and battered anyway, so a day off is a welcome thing. I’m not sure how much energy I’d have had to jump even if we’d stayed down there!