8-15-99 - My 9th jump,
level 8 in the student program. A diving exit, and a front flip was the
order of the day. This was really a cool jump. Up until now, I
had been exiting facing the relative wind (the same direction the plane is traveling),
this time I was going to jump out like I was Superman! Bruce was going
to be my instructor again for this one, but he was training another guy to be
an instructor, so that guy was going to watch me, and Bruce would be watching
both of us. That guy turned out to be Scott, aka Flail. Scott was
great on the ground, and even better in the air! I remembered thinking
after the jump, "Damn, this guy's gonna be an awesome instructor!".
We went through the jump a few times on the ground - diving exit, get
stable, front flip, and then I wanted to practice a couple tracks. Of
all my jumps on video, I'd love to get this one online. First of all,
these poor guys were chasing me down (did I mention before that I fall like
a rock?!) and you can really see the control and talent that Scott has.
That boy can fly!
My flip went ok, I got about 3/4 of a flip in (almost to a sitting position),
then it just kinda stalled, and I went right back the way I came! It would
have been great had I meant to do it! But, as I was told many times, the
maneuvers aren't what they're looking for, they want you to do something that
makes you unstable, and be able to get back stable again. After my flip,
I started into my track. This one was almost worse than the one from my
previous jump! I just did another little 'U' in the sky, didn't really
go anywhere. Scott was sliding sideways and kept up with my track (did
I mention that boy can fly?!). As we were watching the video (from Bruce's
camera) Scott started laughing when he saw that, he said he even saw me shaking
my head (which I did) like "man... that sucked!" Determined
to get a good track in, I turned away from Scott, and started into another track,
this time picking a point on the ground and looking right at it as I tracked.
The result? A beautiful, although far from perfect, track!
Balki, me, and Jon after Balki's low solo.
Just for future reference, 'Click!'s photo disks suck! 95% of the pictures on this site I took myself, and developed through Kodak processing (at my local Meijer Store) and also had the prints put on a Kodak picture disk (the regular floppy disk, not even the hi-res CD). The picture above came from Click! Is it just me? Or is that awful blurry and grainy?!