180 million in 6 days. Good for you, Sam and company.

Independence Day Weekend, 2004: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Actually, this bit will be the bad, the ugly, and the good, because I prefer the high notes last.

The Bad: I woke up Saturday with a muscle spasm in my back. I haven't had one in nearly 7 months; I had almost forgotten about them. At that point in time it was so bad I saw my doctor. The best we could come up with is it's the consequence of an injury I suffered when I was 15 - I broke my 5th thoracic vertabrae in a car accident.

The muscle spasm occurs in the same place every time - slightly to the left of this break but before my shoulder blade. What is essentially happening is a nerve there sends out a signal -"hey, I'm hurt!" causing the muscles to clench up around it, causing it to send out a signal "hey, I'm hurt!" etc. in a wonderful positive feedback loop that translates into a lot of pain and the inability for me to turn my head. Doc prescribed 2 things: Flexaril, which makes me sleepy, and another med that I can't pronounce but it's in the same class of painkillers as Ibuprofen.

The end result was I was a zombie for most of Saturday and Sunday - but my back loosened up finally. I still have some residual stiffness but it's nothing that good old Vitamin I can't take care of.

Also bad were 2 AFF level 1's. It's getting to the point that I wish people would do Tandems for their first skydive no matter what. We can't make it mandatory; not without losing business to other drop zones. And I do feel uncomfortable with that blanket statement because I never did a tandem and I had a great AFF level 1. BUT - we have a severely low student retention rate - everybody does. Less than %10 of the people who do AFF go on to complete the training. Most of the time it is because they only want to do one jump. They do AFF because they think it's more macho. This attitude is stupid, mea culpa's notwithstanding. You are leaving a freaking airplane! Take someone with you who knows what they are doing for the whole ride. You might learn something, like whether you want to do it again.

I have developed certain prejudices: I like AFF 1's with: young men, especially military men, and women. Young men think they're invincible, so while they are scared, they aren't as scared as older men. Military men listen to instruction better, as do women. Women also tend to be more flexible and can arch better than men. Plus women tend to be smaller, so I don't have to worry as much about handling them if things go bad.

Anyways, both the level 1s were older gentlemen. They couldn't arch, and they had their feet on their ass the whole skydive. They both failed to respond to hand signals and had to have their parachutes pulled for them. One of them was real nice but had no short term memory. The other one seemed to remember better but was a real jackass. I hope neither of them ever show up at our drop zone again.

I hate being an ageist. It's wrong. I have known some fantastic skydivers who are in their sixties. The biggest difference: they are in shape. Astounding shape. Their dedication to keeping themselves physically fit seems to keep their minds fit, as well. So that's a nice word of advice to all of us rapidly aging couch potatoes: get up and move!

The Ugly: The AFF's were on Saturday. I slept most of Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday. I woke up and my back felt good enough that I wanted to do a skydive. A thunderstorm was headed our way, but by all reports we had time for one more load. We were wrong. By the time our full (13 people) load got up to altitude, the storm had swept over the drop zone and the pilot was informed that the winds on the ground were 14 knots gusting to 22.

We all decided to land with the plane. Once the pilot got us under the thunderhead, the wind gusts shook us pretty good. We were dropped in a wind shear near the ground; the pilot fought hard but got us on the runway safely. As I told someone as we left the plane, I was really surprised that there weren't 13 holes pinched into the carpet on the plane's floor. Rick earned his money (and a lot of gratitude from us) that day. He won't have to buy any beer for a while.

Also ugly: Drunk guys with fireworks. Also certain husbands who know how to construct acetelyne (sp?) bombs. I won't go into more details; suffice to say no one got hurt.

The Good: The T-storm on Sunday passed pretty fast so the 4th of July demonstration jump into a football stadium in Huntsville went off as planned. It is an annual event; after the jump there's a honking fireworks display. Our tradition is to load up the Skydive Alabama van with people and beer and get into the show for free as 'ground crew'. We didn't stay for the fireworks because we were all too hungry. After the successful demo, we all took off in the van, drank like crazy, and hunted down a Japanese restaraunt. Some of us had a hankering for sushi.

I was amused - wasn't this what I was doing when I was 17? Except we were looking for a Taco Bell or a Krystal's then.

Also good: a 17 point 4-way and a 4-point 10 way. I'm especially happy with the last jump (these were on Monday) because I normally don't get to do "big" ways (jumps with more than 4 people) that are that successful. I'm also proud of the homegrown jumpers who were on that skydive; I feel like I've accomplished something when I see them go out there and do good. *Sniff!*

Also good: and this just made the whole weekend for me: one of the older jumpers, Mark, invited Jon and I to Costa Rica for a week. He and his wife have a free week in a condo there (his wife's parents own the place) and there's a second bedroom. He thought of us because he knows we like travel. I checked Travelocity and the ticket prices were entirely reasonable. We weren't going to do any kind of travel this year (except maybe to the Gulf Coast or Tennessee) but since the place to stay was free, we both jumped at the opportunity. Hooray!

I will post details of the trip as I know more.