It’s been way too long since I’ve written – another Blue Ice camp has come and gone, along with lots of other stuff. Summer is, as always, wonderfully busy. In early June, my parents came out to visit – we kept busy with a trip to the DeYoung Museum, exploring and wine tasting in Sonoma, and a Giants game, among much catching up and hanging out in Oakland.
The American Boogie was at the end of June and was a good time as always. I strained my shoulder on the first day (where I did six jumps), took Friday off, and did another two on Saturday before deciding to call it quits and let my shoulder rest. Still, it was a fun boogie, and the jumps on Saturday were some of the coolest I’ve been on. Photos of those jumps (among others that I wasn’t on) are here - we did bigger jumps (24 to 28 people) and color coded the jumpsuits for visual effect.
July 4th had us back up in Davis again for the annual 4th of July demo into the fireworks celebration in downtown Davis. This year, Sean was lucky enough to get a slot on the jump, and I was there to watch him (and the others) land. Very cool, as usual. The firework launching point was moved slightly, and our front-row seat was just a little too close to the action as we found bits of cardboard and ash raining on us throughout the show. Nothing still hot or flaming, fortunately!
Then it was off to Perris for another 4-day training camp. This time, the weather was on our side (save for a bit of fog the first morning that got us off to a late start) and we were able to complete the planned 8 jumps per day, for a whopping total of 32. It’s a pretty hectic pace, but a lot of fun. I was also able to catch up with a lot of old friends who happened to be out there that weekend, which was great.
Yesterday I went up to Davis for some fun jumps, and spent much of today in the city volunteering for AIDS Walk. Our group totaled up the pledges that came in on the day of the event, allowing the organizers to announce the grand total at the walk’s closing ceremonies.
Coming up is a work trip to Pasadena next week, then the following week is our annual trip to Montana. August is also chock-full of skydiving trips, with two training weekends, and a trip up to Oregon for the annual boogie at Skydive Oregon. Finally, USPA Nationals is in September at Skydive Chicago!
Work is still … well … work, but things have improved somewhat on my project in that I at least have a couple of sounding boards within my own department who have become more involved in the project and now see from the inside what a mess it is…