Traveling Thoughts

I did my second skydive today, which was really my first AFF jump.  AFF being Accelerated Free Fall, accelerated in terms of the quick learning pace of the course, but really, my free fall was slightly accelerated when compared to my last jump, so take it as you will ;P

The day started with something like 6 hours of ground school.  Elijah tought ground school, Ken aided him when necessary.  I learned all sorts of things.  All of it was rather important in terms of I really needed to know all of it, but there were a few things that stick out in my mind mainly because it’s the things that either I didn’t do (and needed to) or the things I had to do (and wouldn’t have needed to had I done what I needed to).

It was the FIRST FJC (first jump course) that Elijah taught, and he did a good job as I have survived.  He taughted me everything I needed to know for everything that I encountered. 

This jump was basically 3 chapters, and in each chapter we were to focus on that chapter and only that chapter, although I find it difficult to think about much more than what I need to while I’m up in the air.

Chapter 1: Exit
We spent a fair amount of time on the exit (while we were on the ground), and I did my hotel check and count really well (in the air). 

Chapter 2: Freefall
But then I had problems, instead of arching I dearched, and basically I feel as though I may have tried to ball up when I let go of the plane and jumped backwards.  That was mistake one.  We did get me into arch position pretty quickly though (we being Ken, Elijah, and I). 

The next problem I had was with my leg extensions, I had them bent too much at the knees, so instead of flying belly parallel to earth, I was more knees paralell to earth, which created a few problems for me.  We were falling at an incline, which is difficult for me to describe here but when I get the video I’ll put it up.  They tried to get me to fix my legs, and at one point they were fixed, but then I went back to bending them.  They were giving me the proper hand signal but a few times right before I waved them off I was reading it wrong.

My arms were an issue as well, I held them too closely to my body instead of 90 degrees at the shoulders and 90 degrees at the elbows.

My arch was good though, I only recall getting the arch hand signal once.  I did all 3 of my practice deployment sequences well (where I touch the ripcord and put my other hand behind my back).

According to my altimeter we jumped at 10120 ft.  I don’t remember the altitude for most of my circle of awareness checks, but I did look at it at 6500 ft, saw the hand signal to straighten my legs, looked again, was at 6000ft, locked on to my altimeter, waved off at my 5500 ft, grabbed for my ripcord, it was tougher to pull it seemed like than when I tandem jumped, but I got it out, and hung on to it :)

Chapter 3: Canopy Flight
Due to my arms and legs however, when I did deploy I was turning so my lines got twisted, but that’s one of the 3 correctable routine opening problems so I was able to correct it.  I simply grabbed the risers above me, pulled them apart and kicked and I became untwisted.  I checked my chute again, it was big and square and full of air which meant that I was good to go on my controllability check.  I made sure that I was clear of traffic, released my break lines, did my 90 degree left turn, my 90 degree right turn, and my flair, I was in control of my parachute.  At this point, I heard Lee over the radio (we had radio control to guide us to the dropzone, but in an event that I lost contact, I did know how to at least find a clearing and land, even if it wasn’t at the dropzone, my priority at this point was to land safely, but I did have contact so I’ll continue on now)  Lee sent me in the general direction of the dz (dropzone) and let me spin (when you pull one toggle down to turn, but you pull it down hard so that you spin fast, that was fun. 

When I was at about 1000 ft, we set me up for my landing and I began my little box pattern (Lee directed me of course) and I was paying close attention because at some point, I’m gonna have to do this all by myself.  It was cool though, because instead of doing 90 degree turns, Lee instructed me to do 450 degree turns (360 and then my 90).  It was a lot of fun. 

When it was time to land, I was all set up to practically land in the middle of the target (which is what will eventually be my goal when I have to land with no radio instruction) I flaired on command and landed on my feet, but my parachute went forward so I went down on my butt.  I said it was a butt landing but everyone else didn’t think so, it’s like I basically sat down after I landed.  It was a lot of fun.

Big John helped me up and helped me pick up my chute (actually, he did all the gathering), as we have to be very careful to not drag it on the ground.  And off we went to the van.

In the van I had my debriefing, in which we talked about my arms and my legs and what I did right and wrong.

And now the fun stuff, speeds, numbers and logbook entry.

I jumped at 10,120 ft
Locked on my altimeter at 6,000 ft
I waived off my instructors at 5,500 ft
I pulled the ripcord at 5,000 ft
My parachute was fully deployed and functional at 4,170 ft
My fastest speed was 138 mph
My average speed was 130 mph
My slowest speed was 120 mph
I had 36 seconds of freefall time

As the logbook tells us, I had:
Good climbout.  Good count.  Dearch on exit.  Legs to far in.  Good response to hand signals.  3 prep’s completed.  Good altitude awareness.  Work on leg extension, arm postitions.  Clear to Cat B.  Good canopy work and landing.

I think the most important thing there is that I’m clear to do my Category B jump.  It’s basically the same thing as my Cat A jump, but I also get to be aware of where I’m heading.

Can’t wait to jump again, I’m thinking 2 weeks and I’ll be in the air again.

So, I’m preparing for another jump tomorrow.  Yup, that’s right, this will be my second skydiving session (it’s my first AFF though).  This whole week has been like Christmas.  Each day I went to the mail and each day I got something new.  Monday it was my logbook and cover.  Tuesday was my goggles and altimeter.  Thursday my SIM (Skydiver’s Information Manual) came.  And today Friday, well, nothing was in the mail, but I found my mascot online.  I was surfing around, I think that I saw this on ‘you tube’.  It is just so me.  I can’t even describe it at this point, so, have a look:

So, now I’ll try and explain, not sure you’ll understand, but I’ll give it a shot. You’ll definately get it if you know me though.  First off, I like polar bears, they’re my favorite bear, and the bear is my favorite mammal, which for all intensive purposes, could be my favorite animal.  Secondly, I am now an official skydiver (I think) and guess what, hot dog, that bear is skydiving.  Thirdly, it wouldn’t be beyond me to jump with my backpack on my back, and it would have my lunch, and if I was traveling, my skimpies…(it’s not often that I’m seen without my backpack anyhow, someone commented the other day about how I could leave it at work, and I said ‘no’, it goes with me everywhere).  Lastly, this bear, he’s a massive showoff, can we say Courtney?

Well, after waiting all week (since monday because that’s when it was mailed) and eagerly checking the mail each day, I got my video from skydiving.  It’s great stuff.  I can’t show the entire video because there’s people in it from whom I don’t have permission to put them on my website.  And because my videographer did such a good job and there was enough footage to make me a 21 minute vid, I cropped out the plane ride and all the training.  It’s really good stuff, and Matt did a good job of putting it together.  Unfortuately, I can’t show that quality online.  I made the quality low, and the size pathetically small just to get the vid to 20 megs. But it will steam as you watch it because I uploaded it to google video :)

If you ever go skydiving in NM and want a videographer, ask for Matt.  He does an awesome job.  Of both filming and putting the vid together, and he even picked out some good music for me :)

And now, I present you with the video of my first skydive.

I bought my altimeter last night.  I got the Alti-Track at the recommendation of my Jumpmaster.  The price was a little killer but with all that it has to offer I think that it’ll be well worth it. 

I’m a detailed oriented kind of girl. When my jump was finished, besides me thinking I knew how high we were when we jumped, I needed to know how fast I was going, how long I freefalled, when I opened canopy (because I may not have opened it when I was suppose to open it).  And this altimeter can tell me all that good stuff.

Another plus is that it doesn’t have to strap onto my wrist, it has an ergonomically correct fit that puts it on the top of my hand, which I think is better because I felt that I had to twist my head to far to see the one that was on my wrist.

I just had to have it.  And now I will.  Really, all I’m doing is preparing for my up and coming future in skydiving.  Who can blame me for wanting the proper gear?

There was a detail that I left out the other night as I regaled you with the story of my jump from the sky.  That’s where for a slight second we had an “oh no, that’s not good” moment.  I looked up and we’re not quite under canopy.  At least, not as it should’ve been, the canopy was out, but it hadn’t opened as it should.  The weird thing, I wasn’t afraid.  I knew that if the main didn’t open up, we would cut it away and we had the reserve.  But don’t stress over it, I’m just telling you what our back up plan was.  We didn’t have to resort to it.
 
I didn’t previously write this because no one ever wants to know what could possibly go wrong.  That and in the event my mom reads this she’ll freak and try to tell me that I can’t jump ever again.  (Sorry mom, not going to happen).  But here’s the deal, this is an education for those people that don’t want to know.  Because in matters like this, you have to know, you have to know what your next step is if something like this happens to you during your jump from a perfectly good plane ;)

At no point during your fall to earth do you give up, you keep doing what you have to do, right up until you either land and live or you have a brutal crash landing and your goggles fill with blood.  You keep going, at no point do you take the time to make peace with your holy one.  (You should’ve done that before you left the ground, because if you do it while you’re in the sky you’re wasting precious time in which you could be saving your very own life.)

So, as I previously said, I wasn’t afraid, could’ve had something to do with the fact that I had Dave strapped to my back and he knew what to do in these situations.  So I just hung there and watched him as he tugged on the (thingy’s with handles) and fixed our canopy and then said ‘that’s good’.  Even if he had said, ‘oh shit, that’s not good’ I don’t think I would have panicked, really, only that situation could tell us if I would have panicked, but you can’t panic, you’re falling from the sky, I was strapped to another person.  Panic would have caused chaos.  Kicking and screaming isn’t going to help anyone in this situation, in fact it would only have put us in more peril. 

I just had to write this because I don’t think that my post Saturday night told everything, and I want to remember everything, right down to “oh no, that’s not good” because there’s a lesson in that.  A very important one that if this ever happens again, I’ll want to remember it.  So that I can recall how calm everything was and let the situation be surrounded with calmness again.

By staying calm and knowing what you have to do in the event that something goes wrong, skydiving is so much fun.  I guess that’s what I’m trying to say here, even though something could’ve gone horribly wrong, it didn’t because we were calm and we (Dave) knew what he needed to do.

It may sound weird, but I feel as though I have nothing to fear while skydiving.  I felt as though I was one with the sky and the air on Saturday.  And it was such a cool feeling.  I still feel like I’m flying.  It’s a beautiful feeling.

It’s been one of those days where all you can think about is the last greatest thing you did.  Which for me, was my jump from a perfectly good plane yesterday.  Gotta love skydiving.  It’s only gonna be 12 days till my next jump, but like a kid near Christmas or birthday, the counting comes and believe you me, everyone will know most likely everyday how many days are left until my next jump.  I’m just so excited that I can’t contain myself.

I bought my SIM (Skydiver’s Information Manual) today.  It contains all the information I need to know to be a skydiver and become certified.  I also went browsing (the internet) for goggles and gloves and helmets and jumpsuits and parachutes and an altimeter.  But really I just need goggles and gloves.  I have a pair of goggles in mind, the lenses can be changed for night diving, and then two for day diving, smoke for sunny days and amber for overcast days.  As for the gloves, any gloves will work, but I have to be stylin’ so I haven’t decided on any yet.  I also was looking at log books.  I want a nice one, but realistically, anyone will do.

Speaking of log books, I’m going to ask my jump master’s if they mind if I put their names on my site, I want to do a log book online.  Just so the world can see that I made another jump, what my stats were, what I did, and what my feelings about the jump were.  I’ve even started working on a special layout just for those posts (sorry, I’m a geek).

I’ve been thinking about all the things that I want to do and I know that I’m not going to be able to do them on my first AFF jump, but I’m just so excited.  I’d love to do a flip out of the plane, it’s like being a kid on the diving board at the pool, we always wanted to do flips.  And then there’s holding a heading, I think it’s a delta move or something where your arms go behind you.  There’s just so much, and I want to do it all.  And I’m going to have to go jump in places where ground elevation is sea level, because hopefully I can get to jump from a higher elevation which means more freefall time, which means more time for fun and tricks. 

I know that I just have to give this time and that I’ll eventually get to do everything I want, but I’m just so dang excited!

I went skydiving today.  It is seriously the most thrilling adventure I’ve had thus far in my life.  It won’t be the most thrilling adventure of all time though, because it was a tandem jump.  And I think that more thrilling than tandem has to be AFF (Accelerated Free Fall).

There’s so much to document about this adventure that I don’t even know where to begin.  Perhaps we’ll start with the fact that I went with 9 people I didn’t know.  8 from work, the 9th is a cousin from someone at work all these other people know I guess.  So, completely unfamiliar territory with completely unfamiliar people, you really don’t get much more out of the box than that.

After we had all signed our lives away and were ready to begin our crash course in tandem jumping, the first question is, why did you all decide to go skydiving?  Everybody basically had the same answer ‘because we’ve always wanted to’.  My answer though, ‘because I have an addiction to danger’.  [more about that later] So we go through our crash course, and the first three suit up.  When they get to the drop zone we got 1 ‘that was great i’m doing it again’, 1 ‘it wasn’t as thrilling as i thought it would be’ and 1 ‘it was fun’.  The next three suit up, they all thought it was great.  Us last three suit up, and we get to chill for a while because of the winds.  I was bummed, I wanted to jump, but the wind straightened it’s attitude and I got to jump.

It was so exhilarating.  There was no stress or anything (not on my part anyhow).  It was great.  We almost did a whole flip coming out of the plane, but Dave, my jump master, he corrected it, so we half did a flip, half fixed it.  And we jumped with Matt.  He was my cameraman.  Stay tuned, I’ll have footage up soon.  That and Dave had a wrist camera on.  It was cool.

So Stats:
I jumped at 11,200 ft
I pulled the ripcord at 5,500 ft
My parachute was fully deployed and functional at 4,500 ft
My fastest speed was 135 mph
My average speed was 129 mph

I didn’t quite do everything I was supposed to.  My legs were supposed to be together in the beginning, and they weren’t.  But that got fixed because Dave let me know with his legs.  But I did pull the ripcord all by myself and I did a very good job of it.  And our landing was perfect.  No sliding on the butt or anything.  Even when we landed on our feet we didn’t fall down.  It was beautiful.

I got to fly the chute and make turns.  That was really fun.  I really liked spinning.

So, about my addiction to danger.  This was so much fun that in 2 weeks (Nov 3).  I’m taking the first AFF class so that I can become certified to jump on my own.  I’m very very very very excited about that.

I said this wouldn’t be my last jump, and it’s not.

A word about my diabetes (the fear of all this) I asked if it were going to be an issue, and they asked me if it were going to be an issue.  I decided that it wasn’t and it wasn’t.  And if nothing else, this is a very good reason to keep my diabetes in good standing order.  I wouldn’t want to jeopordize my opportunities to jump out of a perfectly good plane.

So, what can you look forward to?

• Video footage and stills coming soon to this website near you
• Stories from my jumps, the next one, in two weeks.

This is a continuation of my list from last night, when I went to bed I thought of more things, so when I woke up this morning, I wrote them down:

My favorite animal is the bear
My favorite bear is the polar bear
They’re so cute ;)
My favorite bird is the penguin
Yes, I’ve got something for those artic creatures
My only fear about sky diving is that they won’t let me jump because of my diabetes
I think I may have mentioned that in a different manner previously
My favorite movie is You’ve Got Mail
I love photography
Landscapes are my most favorite
It really annoys my mom when I’d rather take pix of landscapes instead of people
Landscapes really aren’t all that much fun to scrapbook
I love my little dog
My so called mountain dog
Doodle bug (dominick)
He’s just a poodle
But he loves me unconditionally
(most of the time)
I guess that’s more conditional love isn’t it
My favorite chapstick is Burt’s Bees
I like their cuticle stuff too, the lemon stuff
Sometimes, my favorite color is red
I’m a gemini
Yes, there are two of us
By us, I mean me
There are two of me
I really don’t hate my sister
I do love her
But most of the time it’s displayed as hate
I can’t help it, she provokes it in me
[i’ll still withhold names to protect the idiots in my family]
One day, I want to go on a cruise
To Alaska prefably
I’d like to see some whales
And some seals
My favorite skimpy’s are my Hanes Boxer Briefs
They’re really not all that skimpy
But I look cute in them
But you’re not allowed to see that I’m cute in them
I had once hoped to be able to ride a skateboard
But I gave that up
I couldn’t stop flying face first everytime I hit a crack in the pavement
I hope that I’m strapped to a ’strapping’ young man
He could be not so young, older than me is fine
But he gets extra points if he’s cute
One day, I want to move back to Washington
I love the rain
I’m happiest on rainy days
I am going to have such a blast when I jump!
Skydiving, here I come!

I’m going skydiving tomorrow and I thought that warranted a post, just in case something happens, that you can all remember me by.  (by the way, nothing is going to happen)

I am 25
I’ve been waiting to do this since I was about 15
I’m way excited
My favorite band right now is the Classic Crime
My favorite color is still blue
Midnight Blue
I have decided that I don’t like chocolate
My next vehicle will be an SUV
Here I come Nissan Xtera
My favorite tv shows currently are House and Grey’s Anatomy
My favorite chinese food is from Pei Wei’s
it’s where I go for fun and laughter, on Friday’s for lunch
We put ‘in bed’ after all the fortunes
And, I get two, one before meal and one afterwards
I’m not going to die
I really do love my job (really)
I really hate school (really)
But I do like to write, even if it’s a lame blog from time to time, but every now and then, there’s good stuff in there
I’m part of the brutal rusty nails mob
I’m not really a whore or a prostitute, just at work
The last book I read was -> Star Wars, Heir to the Empire
Yes, I still love Star Wars
I’m reading all the Star Wars books
For Christmas, I don’t want Christmas
I’m filling up the Operation Christmas Child boxes
I hate my diabetes
I have for the last 14 years
And no, I don’t take care of it the way I should
Only on certain days, when I feel it’s not a pain
That doesn’t happen often
If I come back to this post because I couldn’t sky dive, because of the aforementioned disease, I’m going to cry
I’ll cry big crocodile tears in fact
My favorite blog site of all time is Dooce
My favorite clothing store (currently) is The Buckle
My first pair of Doc Martens are on order
I look cute in my clothes from The Buckle
I’m not going to hit the ground and go splat
I’m not
I’m thinking I don’t want to go to grad school
I change my mind on that daily
I want to travel to Italy
I want to go kayaking
I want to swim with the great white sharks
I would have loved to be a marine biologist
I’m still sore that I can’t join the Air Force
I love my mom
She’s the person I lash out at because she’s closest to me
She’s abused by me really
The next time I lash out, she’s going to put me on the street
But really, she’s a really good mom
I have a really good dad too
He’s taught me a lot
I’m not afraid to be going skydiving
This will not be my last skydiving trip
I’m really really really excited

We’re at T-15 and excitement is mounting.  I’ve been wanting to sky dive since I was 15 or so and I haven’t because mom said ‘please don’t’.  For some unknown reason I respected that.  But now that I have her consent, we’re clear to go.

I’m going to get the video so that will be something to look forward to.  In preparation for my video, I’m choosing songs, I get to have a song before the jump and one during the jump.

So far on my list I have
Kenny Logins - Danger Zone
POD - Alive

That’s all that the moment.  I’m so excited that I can’t think.

If you’re curious, I’m skydiving via Sky Dive NM