I'm Really Uncoordinated

Today I turned down my manager's request to stay and work a full shift (I was only scheduled for three hours but one of the other cashiers called in sick) to go rack up some more debt at the drop zone. It's a good (or maybe bad) thing the DZO lets me run up a tab and pay it off every couple weeks. Otherwise my jumping would have to be really spread out.

The weather was actually pretty nice. Some scattered clouds, but mostly blue skies. The only problem was that so few people showed up that we had to sit around waiting for enough jumpers to fill a load.

Jump #29

Eventually some other people arrived and Brad, Dan, Pat, and I went up. This was the first time in a long time that I felt nervous on the way to altitude. Last night I had my first very vivid dream about a malfunction and a hard reserve pull, and I guess it shook me up a little bit, but still didn't stop me from going ahead with the jump. Pat and I did a 2-way again, and Dan followed close behind practicing his camera flying. Our exit went fine--no tumbling or anything of that sort. We planned on releasing and then doing some more fall rate adjustment after just falling face to face for a couple thousand feet. For the majority of the free fall, though, we were in a slow clockwise spin, most likely due to some of my leg asymmetry, so we didn't release our grips until just before time to turn and track off. Despite my best efforts to focus on holding my flare, I let up again about 5 feet from the ground for another rough rolling landing. It's really irritating how I continue to mess up my flare without even realizing what I'm doing.

Jump #30

After taking my sweet time at packing the gigantic, new, and slippery 260sq-ft student canopy I've been jumping, I went up on the third load of the afternoon for a hop-n-pop. Brad got out a couple miles from the DZ--right over his house so he could swoop into his rather tiny back yard. Impressively, he made it into the yard without hitting any houses or fences, and Kevin got it on video. My jump went better that the last few I've done. Although I flared about 5ft early, I managed to actually HOLD the flare all the way through for a decent landing. I stood it up, despite the fact that I had not planned on standing up any landings for a few more weeks.

So I made it through the day without injuring my ankle again... that is until I went to walk to my car to leave. I nearly re-sprained my ankle while walking out the DZ door. Doh.