Skydiving, it'll take your job, your money, and everything else you own.
Hey, so in virtue of keeping our blog entertaining, and informative as well, we’re looking for other skydivers who want to post their stories/have a place to document their adventures.
Contact us, let us know your details, and we’ll be glad to hook you up
– Adam
I finished my A license courses, I’m now at 27 jumps, started my studies for the A license exam…
Basically, I gotta memorize two books about skydiving. That, and finally learn to pack a parachute… Back pain awaits =)
I was playing some Simon says in the sky with Valerie, basically just following her movements (swimming in the sky, learning the mantis position, grabing my foot with my hand, etc…)
Did more Tracking, some dive exits, and ended the day with a huge grin on my face, knowing that 1 month from now, I’ll be doing my A license exam.
As it stands, I’ll probably be doing my B license exam at the end of the summer… I’m going from having planned it for the middle of next summer to planning it for July/August :D.
Damn this sport’s taking all my money!
– Adam
After 22 jumps, I’ve spent at the very least 18:32 minutes of my life falling…
(Not including falling on the ground, falling out of trees, bungee jumping, or any other kinds of falls :P)
Today was an AMAZING day for skydiving, got 5 of my VR jumps in for my A license.
The day was mainly aimed at people coming to do free-flying, so I got to see a SICK formation being done with a 15 person big way. I was the last off the plane with my instructor Valerie, who was quick to point out to me that we should watch the plane, (we got to jump at 15000 feet instead of the usual 13500 on this jump, and since we were last off the plane (which is a rare occurrence unless you’re a Tandem) we got to watch it spike (fly downwards about as fast as we were falling) after 10-15 seconds of it spiking, we started out track practice for my 7th VR jump. This was a great way to end a beautiful day before going to another drop zone to meet Valerie again for my last 3 jumps.
This is a video of some great tracking…
[youtube]fJrEWqBDae8[/youtube]
For those of you who don’t know, tracking is very important when doing group jumps and formations… You basically do it at the end to split up in the sky so that you can get enough distance between you to not crash into each other when deploying your parachute 🙂
– Adam
Earlier, I read mike’s status to say: “so it’s official, I enjoy falling.”
All I have to say to this is:
I don’t enjoy falling… I’m addicted to it… In my dreams, I’m falling, in my nightmares, I’m falling, in my DAY dreams I’m falling… I look outside and I simply want to fall… Soon enough I’m gonna make a living off falling, then I know for sure that I have a problem 😛
So all in all, we ended up being 2 regular jumpers and 19 tandems.
Load 1 got off the ground without a hitch, well apart from a PFF student having a botched landing and face planting and a tandem with a heavier girl landing rolling into the parachute… We had a good laugh :-).
The twin otter stopped to gas up for load 2 which I was on with a buddy.
Jump went impeccably.
Load 3 also went without any problems…
Load 4 however… Never got off the ground, leaving 6 of the tandems I had brought hanging around waiting for their turn…
Turns out that the registration fees for the NAFTA weren’t paid… Or so Transport Canada’s inspectors claimed.
So we waited for 2 hours, and still nothing… By hour 3, the owner of the DZ announced that people could either take the risk and keep waiting, or go come and come back another day.
Needless to say, I decided to go home after having done only one jump, the same goes for one of the other tandem jumpers (who’s also my co-worker)… The others waited and ended up getting onto a load after 6 hours of waiting…
At this point, I’m obviously frustrated, as it was a PERFECT day for skydiving… and By perfect I mean: Not a cloud in the sky, 30 degrees celcius outside… a Perfect, sunny day. Which is something that VERY VERY rarely happens here… Especially in the month of May.
The tandems who got to jump were obviously extatic with the experience, two or three claimed that they want to take lessons… We’ll see where that leads… I know Mike’s in for the long haul, that’s for sure.
By the way: If any of you want to write for our blog, feel free to send us a note, we’re always happy to hear other divers’ stories and of course publish them 😉
– Adam
So this friday I’m bringing 20 people with me to have their 1st tandem…. That includes Mike.
Some of these people seem more excited than others… Mike for example kept trying to convince me to move the date forward and skip my trip to the Bahamas so that he could do it earlier haha.
I’m honestly looking forward to seeing everyone’s reactions on the plane and then their final reactions once they land on the ground…
I’ll be jumping out before them so I won’t get to see their faces as they get out of the plane… hopefully some people will get a cameraman haha =D
Note for Mike: If you feel the need to pee while falling… please do 🙂
So this past Saturday was opening day for most of the drop zones in the area. It was a fairly cloudy day with clouds at 7500-9500 feet. But that’s not something that’ll stop us from jumping out of a fairly good aeroplane, that I can say for certain.
So I was waiting in the Manifest as the first load took off and hopped on the 2nd load for a fun jump.
Injured myself on that run… My left index finger got a scrape… (Bet you all thought that it was something way worse haha). The landing strip for the plane is simply a patch of grass, on my 1st run I landed on it as the plane was coming in, I had to run out of the way canape in hand haha.
The next load I was on, I was the only fun jumper and was accompanied by 4 tandems who came for someone’s birthday… We sang him happy birthday on the plane as his girlfriend shivvered in fear and held onto her friend’s hand for dear life… So we made fun of her and everyone held hands with the person in front of them… We were 9 people holding hands on the plane making whiny noises and laughing at her…
I hopped out first, did a frontflip and got a great run in.
At the bottom, the girl who was shaking seemed to have enjoyed it more than anyone else… I doubt that they’ll be doing this again though.
Come time for my 3rd jump, my buddy who’s also an instructor at the DZ decided that we should do a few of my required jumps for my A license, so we planned it out and hopped on the plane for a run. It went well, it was basically just forward movement practice.
At this point, I was starting to feel hungry… I then realized that it was already 1 pm and hadn’t eaten a thing all day… (I woke up early, wasn’t hungry, drove to the DZ, the restaurant wasn’t open that day, so I just proceeded to start my jumps…)
Anyways, this was obviously a big mistake, but I only realized this once I was on the plane for my 4th jump…
Everything was fine until about 8000 feet… That’s when I started to feel nauseous.
My stomach was churning, the pressure changes had gotten to me and here I was, sitting in front of a cute chick who I had just met who was doing some fun jumps to get enough for her A license and sitting just across from my instructor buddy.
My stomach’s going nuts, finally I feel it… I’m about to burst, my buddy sees my face and jumps up onto the bench (we’re flying on a twin otter). He knows that look all too well..
I’m about to explode when we hit 13500 feet and the doors are opened.
The fresh air rushing into the plane instantly makes me feel a bit better.
We’re 2nd to hop off, so we get out the door, I’m praying I don’t puke right into my face
Countdown, 3, 2, 1, we jump, and instantly, I feel better.
we work on some 90 degree rotations (I’m rotating 90 degrees around him at a time)
I do 10 or so of them, then we just grab onto each other and spin each other around in circles.
I think I also figured out why I had been having some trouble with my landings.. I’m fairly on mark, but I’d usually hit the ground a bit rough, I think I finally figured out the sweet spot however I’ll only know once I test it out a few more times.
Hoping for good weather to get another few jumps in this coming weekend before I head to Jamaica.
See you in the clouds.
– Adam
Ever since I was little, I’ve always found myself participating in activities that most people would call stupid.
On my 5th birthday while everyone was outside the house waiting for me, I colored myself blue with the food coloring that my mom was using to make my cake… Then to my astonishment, when I went to show my mom, she got mad at me… At me!!!  On my birthday!!!! Ok, given I was blue and everyone was waiting outside… But I looked so cool! I was a real life smurf =)
Fast forward about 10-11 years, before the movie Jackass came out, I found myself in the street at 3 am with a couple of friends pushing a buddy down a hill in a shopping card with a broken wheel. Sparks were flying, the cart sped up and went out of control, and I lost grasp of the handle as he sped towards a speed bump. Oh how funny it was! Until he went flying out of the cart into the street… I was still laughing as he rolled around in agony.
This winter, I decided to learn to snowboard. Armed with about 1500$ in new gear and Mike as my instructor, I took to the hills and within 2 months, I was on the double diamonds… Not to let anyone down, I decided it was time to attempt a jump… Without scouting it… I went for it, started flying in the air, then lost balance, hit some ice, sprained both of my wrists and hurt my knee… Aren’t I smart? (Side note: I’m DYING FOR THE SEASON TO START UP AGAIN!!!!)
On to the topic at hand… From what you probably realized by now, I’m a yes man… This doesn’t mean that I give people all my money, or jump off cliffs… Ok scratch the second part, I have that planned for the week of May 9th…
The “Yes man” thing lead me to try bungee jumping last August (See below)
Once I tried bungee jumping, I realized how much of an addiction to adrenaline I really have… It’s not the fact that I like doing stupid things, it’s the fact that I’m addicted to the rush of adrenaline that usually comes with the accomplishment of these stupid things.
So I decided it was time to step up to the plate and try the ultimate rush… Or so I thought…
I had spent the next 2 months organizing a group of 30 people to jump with me. On the day of the jumps, the weather was too cloudy for us to be allowed into the sky. The owner of the drop zone called me at 6 am to tell me that we’d have to wait till later in the day and we weren’t sure if we’d even get off the ground… So we went go karting instead… And after 30 minutes of go karting, out driving everyone who had came with me, I got bored and annoyed and decided to take the risk and drive an hour away to the drop zone.
Octobe 4th 2009, the day I did my 1st tandem jump. My instructor, who’s name I forgot at the time in all the excitement was a 6 foot tall guy who didn’t say a word and had black gloves with green skeleton hands printed on the back. He wore an orange and white jump suit, and towered over me like a hungry gorilla…
I asked him what brought him into the sport to teach and his response: “I don’t like to work.”
I turn to my friend Louis who was on the same plane load as I, and he says “This is the first time I get on a plan in which I will not be landing”… What great statements to attribute to my future addiction for which I was so excited to finally be part of.
It was the shortest minute of my life.
As soon as I walked back into the Manifest (For those of you who don’t know what it is or don’t sky dive, basically it’s like the administrative office for the drop zone) I went straight into the owner’s office and spoke to him about taking lessons. He was fairly quick to offer me to come with his school to Zephyrhills Florida (Skydive city) and take my PFF there in March. (The weather in Montreal isn’t exactly sky dive friendly between November and April)
So I started putting money aside and come March, I was on a flight to Zhills…
I am now CSPA Solo certified with 12 jumps in my logbook, I’m planning on completing my A license in May.
– Adam AKA Double A
Welcome to our blog! Here you’ll find the stories of Adam, Mike and the rest of the contributing skydive community. Bare with us while we get all our stories from our stored memory and onto here. In the upcomming weeks we’ll feature pictures, videos and stories that will make you weep, giggle and roll all over your kitchen floor.
We really hope to entertain our audience while having a place to keep track of all our crazy adventures.
Stay tuned!