Weekend Wash

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

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