Three weeks later...

...and I finally managed to find the time to make it out to the DZ again. I'm all for conserving money so I can pay off my credit card and start saving up to buy my own rig, but three weeks really was too long. Between the crappy weather and my financial situation, odds are good that it will be another three weeks before I get to jump next time.

Today was nice--a tad cold (45ish on the ground), but sunny at least. We had a grand total of three loads go up for the afternoon, and I made it on two of them.

Jump #31

The first load was me, Pat, Kevin, and a tandem passenger. This was the first time I've been in the plane with a tandem, and it was kind of amusing to watch him and think back to how nervous I was and how much of a rush I got from my first tandem, which really wasn't long ago. Since it had been a while since I'd been in the air, I went solo to have a chance to re-orient myself and relax a bit. I've been somewhat unstable on deployment in the past, so I took the opportunity to do practice pulls the whole way through freefall until I was totally stable in them. I think I've been bending at my hips when reaching for my hackey, which puts me into a slow turn... not good for on-heading openings. Once again, I screwed up my flare for a rough landing. I also misjudged the winds and ended up a few hundred feet away from my target landing area.

Jump #32

Pat and John went for a 2-way, and I did another solo. I dove out and did a couple somersaults on exit, which was new and fun. I practiced doing turns with my legs--something else I haven't tried before. I dipped a knee and went spinning one direction, straightened back out, dipped the other knee, and went spinning the opposite direction. I'll have to play around with that some more to get the hang of it so that I'm under a bit more control. I was on target for canopy control, but my landing still sucked, and Kevin was there to get it on video again. I'm used to having new things come easily to me, so all this difficulty with flaring is rather irritating.

I'm going to be working full time instead of part time for the rest of the school year. That will be great for saving money, not so great for having free time. After New Year's I'll have to go back to taking Sundays off from work so I can still jump every once in a while.

On another note, I'm hoping to do a bit of travelling next summer and in my year off from school. I've grown rather fond of the little Cessna-182's I've been jumping all this time, but it would be fun to get some jumps out of larger planes... and maybe a hot air balloon or helicopter too.