Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Brenda's Diary from JFTC

(Tuesday, September 22nd) Not much time this morning (Tuesday) Yesterday we left the hotel at 7Am and got home after 9PM. STRAIGHT to bed! yesterday was busy - lots of safety briefing type stuff in the morning and then we broke down into whacker groups to practice. Our group got three jumps in - the first two were no-grip 60-ways. On the third we were allowed to take grips. That got a little exciting!

Hard to explain all the cool stuff going on out here. Skydiving-wise - some new grip plans and interesting break-off plans. Last night - opening ceremony where we always get a visit from Lambchop.
More to come......


(Sunday, September 20th)
Hey, hey...the gang is mostly here. I arrived in Perris yesterday and got checked in determined NOT to set foot on the dropzone today. Karen Wood and I spent an awesome morning up in Mt. San Jacinto State Park where she got a quick introduction to birding. We got a late start for birdwatching but I still picked up three life birds in the visitor parking lot. We had a nice lunch up on the mountain and then wandered back down to the DZ mid-afternoon. So much for not setting foot on the DZ today! There are so many friends I haven't seen in years and it is so good to pass around the hugs and get caught up.

The POPS (Parachutists Over Phorty) were doing record attempts this weekend - no success but they came close enough on the last scheduled jump that several wanted to try one more time. It ended up not happening - i think too many of the participants had to leave to catch flights, perhaps? Their break-offs looked pretty good! Watching the aircraft in formation, it appeared that A-plane was lagging behind a bit on jump run. Hopefully, that won't be an issue for us.

The dropzone is slowly becoming pink - lots of bright jumpsuits walking around. It will be VERY bright tomorrow AM! Women have been rolling in and registering since mid-day yesterday. We meet in jumpsuits at 8AM tomorrow - it will probably be our latest start! It's windy out here. I've seen several dust devils - hopefully that will calm down as we start jumping this week. If it stays like this, I'm going to want my small canopy back!! I traded with Kyle for the week because I knew I'd probably be landing out a lot and wanted something a little bigger. Oh well.

Now, I'm headed upstairs to make sure that all my gear is prepped and ready for tomorrow. We made a grocery store run today as well so we're loaded with food to keep us energized throughout the day. Tomorrow's jumps will be small - not sure when we'll start the record attempts by Wednesday for sure and hopefully sometime Tuesday. The first day or two usually consists of various sectors jumping together in smaller groups so that we can start to figure out what our section is going to look like before we put everything together. It's a good warm-up. A few lucky guys volunteered to set a base for us to dock on during the warm-up jumps. I heard they had more male volunteers than they had available slots. Lucky dudes getting to jump with beautiful women in pink (and yellow, and white, and blue!)

Two computers and a hotel full of skydivers on the same schedule. By tomorrow, I may not be able to get in here very often so be sure to check the website for updates throughout the week!

Blue Skies,
Brenda

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