Weekend Wash

September 25, 2006 at 10:31 am · Filed under On the Radar, Skydiving

We rose a little before 6am on Saturday getting our things together to head down to Skydive Carolina in Chester, SC. I was scheduled for an 8am AFF (Assisted Free Fall) class to start my multitude of jumps to aquire a class A skydiving license. We arrived on schedule and it was going to be a beautiful day. Clear skies, light breeze, and a cool morning…man it felt good. Signing away all liability, putting down a chunk of change for lessons, jump, A/V recordings, and a USPA membership I was ready to begin.

There were four of us, Chris, Jason (owner of The Spot), Rick, and myself. We all walked back with our instructor Judy. She took us through 3-4 hours of theory before taking a test and proceeding to an hour of practical testing. Everyone was feeling fairly comfortable, our forms, and knowledge, all lined up well. Judy was proud of us but had to inform us that the weather was gusting too hard and that we were grounded until it calmed down. As we sat around on the ground watching other loads go up and gracefully (if not with crazy precision) come down we learned that getting through AFF can sometimes be a long certification process due to needing near perfect conditions. About 5pm Rick and I realized that we weren’t going to jump today. If anyone did it was going to be the first pair of us and sundown was coming quick so we called it a day and scheduled to return Sunday. Unfortunatly with the Eastern front pushing in Sunday was also washed. Robin took me kite flying so that I could do _something_ in the air. I’ve scheduled to return Friday if they can get two AFF instructors out there. If that falls through it might be mid-October till I can get my first jump.

I’m not discouraged. A little dissapointed perhaps, but no less eager to get into the sky. What I’m really upset about is messing up my weekends a few weeks ago and since this didn’t go right, I also didn’t get to attend SERBC to watch Nick Cho garner first place. I’m hoping we’ll be in Long Beach to see how the USBC goes.

Anyhow, patience..patience..patience..

-a

technorati tags:skydive, weekend

Comments (6)

Quote: Terry Goodkind

September 18, 2006 at 10:45 am · Filed under Quotations

From Chainfire

Freedom is never easy to keep and can be easily lost. All it takes is willful indifference.

Comments

Quickies, here I am.

September 13, 2006 at 11:29 am · Filed under On the Radar

Ah how we love quickies.. well maybe I’m just talking to the male readers haha. Life is spinning and spinning so I might as well throw out an anchor and try and give some details. My car started making noises a few days ago. After taking it in last night I get a call this morning that my transfer case is blown to smitherines and will cost somewhere around four-thousand to fix. Can you understand the depth of joy I feel right now? /sarcasm I love my Nissan dealership but this really puts a crunch on. I’m only 2,500$ off paying the beast off. If I assaulted you lately and disbalanced my karmic-chi-love please forgive. hehe. Oh well, repairs are in progress but I’m without wheels until Monday. Great.

As the photoblog of my feed shows I’ve been quite busy learning how to grill on charcoal, hardwood charcoal to be precise. It’s been a joy. The smell of smoke, the char of meat and veggies, what could be finer? I’m about ready to try something slow roasted. I can only imagine how good it will be, and I bet it will.

I also aquired a used Mantis UL from Debbie on the GWTW forums. I was in debate over what kind of UL to buy and was helped out by some kind forumites. I was able to run out yesterday before the storm and test it out and I think I’m going to be very happy after my experience level rises. The kite is pretty large, with the spreaders out it seems about 9-10’ wide. An awesome sight to behold. I can’t wait to do more flying.

Flying, nice segway, parachute jump date is quickly approaching. While I am very excited for my upcoming jump I misplanned my date. I thought the South Eastern Barista Competition (SERBC) was going to be held last weekend, but that was the year before. I cancelled my faux hotel reservation and do’h, I already have the upcoming (9/23) weekend booked to jump. I’m going to try and get up there on Sunday for the finals but with all this running around I’m not sure if my energy level will be where it needs to be to make the drive. All things willing however and I’ll be there. Back on the mentioned parachuting; I’ve done some research into the odds of fatality and I was really surprised. You have a 1:6000 chance of dieing every time you get on the highway vs 1:100000 you have from jumping out of a plane. You would have to jump 17 times a year before you get close to the car numbers. So for all of you out there that think I’m nuts. We’re all nuts for doing what we do on a daily basis. If anyone wants to take the course I still need a buddy and no one will go hahahaha!

Lastly in our spare time Jeff and I have been busting tail to get this new super secret app we’ve been working on fleshed out. We’ve got another few days of screen designs before Jeff can hammer out the DOM. Once that is done though we’re going to be canvasing those smart minds out there in the UI design world to see who can take on our project. At least whoever we work with will be rewarded with some smart folks who understand what a spec is. If you are someone who is interested in design drop some commentary and we’ll put you in the pool.

-a

Comments (3)