Category: Adam’s Skydive Blog

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What are you truly passionate about?

take-your-passion

 

Earlier today, someone asked me a question that got me thinking…

He asked me what I was passionate about… Immediately, I replied “Skydiving”. To which he then asked “why?” sell me on your passion.

Six hours later, I find myself still thinking about the question. I didn’t have a hard time answering him at all, but it got me to thinking do we all truly feel the way I do? Does every other skydiver who’s passionate about the sport truly sold the same way I am? Or maybe I’m the one who’s not as obsessive as they are. Some skydivers I’ve met told me that I was stupid to take time off to rest my sprained knee while others just said “that sucks”.

In life, not everyone finds something to be passionate about, some people spend their entire lives searching for this passion while others know it early on in life. I stumbled upon it randomly while on a “yes man” challenge.

I had spent a year as a yes man starting in January 2009 where my best friend and I would say yes to any and all invitations to participate in activities, go to events, learn things, travel, etc… Obviously, we had to use logic in our endeavors (I did however give a lift to a homeless person, which looking back on it, probably wasn’t the brightest idea, but he did show me a spot where I could park my car for free downtown any night).

That year lead me to learning Salsa dancing, traveling to Cuba, New York, Boston and the Bahamas, bungee jumping, doing my tandem and many many many other things. It probably was one of the best years of my life.
After having done my tandem, I had approached the owners of the DZ and asked them about doing my AFF to which one of them replied “that’s what they all say” and laughed. He did proceed to offer me to join them in Zhills for my AFF course and the rest is history.

Fast forward 4 years and I’m now a sponsored skydiver as well as an equipment dealer and I find myself a big part of the skydive community in Quebec. A lot can change in such a short period of time when you love what you do… So what are you passionate about?

 

Blue ones!

Adam

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So it’s been a very eventful season…. Memorable, but not always pleasant.

This year has been very eventful in many ways.

We had many boogies as well as the Canadian nationals.

Among other things however, there were also many sad moments.

My season was plagues with bad luck. I injured myself twice during the season (once from a bad landing and once while on vacation) which pretty much stopped my season dead in it’s tracks end July.

This year also marked the death of many people, friends, acquaintances, people I knew, and some I didn’t.

 

I simply wanted to take a moment to remember those who are no longer with us.

 

Blue skies fallen friends. You will be missed.

 

Adam.

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Atmosphair’s 20th anniversary… Sun… Wind… Weather hold…

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It seems like the theme of the season is “Weather hold”. Once again, my plans to skydive have been thwarted by the weather.

I arrived at Parachutisme Atmosphair on Friday evening just in time for a lasagna dinner at Marquis’ restaurant on the DZ. Had a couple of beers with friends, then went to bed so I could be up bright and early to get on the plane.The staff were nice enough to lend me a camper to spend the weekend in comfort. Saturday morning, I woke up to the sound of the Caravan taking off for a 16 000 foot jump (the load was completely booked before I even finished work on Friday, so I took advantage to sleep in).

With the sound of the plane flying by, I hurried to get dressed and get myself manifested on the second load. Once manifested, I noticed that there were a bunch of people preparing for a big way and asked to join. Niklas Hemlin was load organizing and I didn’t want to miss this. This pushed me onto the 4th load for a 10 way.
The weather was looking nice, but there were still some clouds out, nothing to worry too much about. We went up and managed to get 4 very solid points done. Niklas was great at identifying peoples’ strengths and weaknesses while flying and was quick to help correct them.

After the first jump, I had myself manifested for another big way and we did our dirt dive for an 8 way…

Then it happened…

It started to rain….

Then it started to pour….

We could see the holes in the clouds mocking us but they were being blown towards us. The rain stopped. We prepared ourselves to get on the load when it happened “C and D licenses only, wind is up to 21 MPH”.
Those words tore a hole right through my chest. I had been looking forward to jumping for weeks and haven’t gotten to because of the weather and here I am, at the DZ waiting to get on the plane… What a kick in the pants!

As everyone prepared to get on the plane, the microphone blares “weather hold”. All the C and D licensed skydivers’ faces turned red as they were already geared up and ready to go. They put their gear away and I laughed at the irony.

This pattern happened several times over the next 8 hours. Needless to say, we waited a LONG time for our next big way.

In the meantime, I took advantage to converse with Niklas about life, his experiences, how he ended up living in the US. It turns out it was fairly simple: He wanted to skydive. He was born in Sweden which has similar weather to Canada. Summer time, you could skydive… When the weather permitted of course. The rest of the year just sucked. So he decided to move.

While we waited for the weather to improve, Pierre, one of the DZOs and I gave out several participation prizes that were graciously donated by our friends at Deepseed and UPT (Thank you both!!!)

At around 5 pm, the clouds were all gone and the wind was dying down, so we prepared ourselves and got a 12 way going. Once again, we got 4 solid points and had a good time doing it.

We had just enough time to get one last jump done, just in time for sunset. Niklas decided to make us work harder on this one, a satellite formation. We all had a MUCH harder time with it (myself included), but it was a lot of fun. 3 points and nearly a 4th again. We clearly won’t be winning the world competitions with this kind of performance, but I must say that I had an amazing time doing them.

The day was followed by a steak dinner at Marquis’ which was very welcome as I was famished.

I must commend the team at Atmosphair for their organization. They set up a boogie with some of the lowest prices ever seen in Quebec (20$ + tax for a jump) and managed to pull off an amazing event regardless of the weather. My hat’s off to you guys!

Blue Skies!

Adam

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I. HATE. RAIN.

So for any of you who have been around Quebec… Or actually eastern Canada for that matter, you’ve probably noticed the erratic weather that’s been going on.
During the week it’s extremely sunny, come Friday, they’re announcing thunder showers and huge winds.
It’s hurricane season in the Caribbean and we suffer the consequences. That being said, every one of the past few weeks (Including the CRW weekend) have been canceled due to weather.

This coming weekend, I’ll be attempting to mess with the system and go to Voltige on Monday. Hopefully since it’s a weekday, the weather will cooperate. If not, I’ll be celebrating Parachutisme Atmosphair’s 20th anniversary!!!

Skydive Addiction along with UPT and NZ Aerosports are proud sponsors of the event.

THEY ARE OFFERING 20$ JUMP TICKETS ALL WEEKEND LONG!!!!!

That’s a HUGE deal for a Quebec DZ.

I’ll be there all weekend giving out prizes and random surprises, so keep your eyes peeled for me!

Blue skies everyone!

Adam

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Slow start to the season…

Hey everyone!

 

No, I haven’t disappeared, and no skydive addiction isn’t dead… I simply haven’t had the time to go skydive yet =(.

I’ve been working crazy hours at the office + have been taking scuba diving lessons during the week with Genevieve, so it’s been hectic.

I’ll be at Voltige 2001 this weekend, so I promise to have an update done!

PS: Be on the lookout for me at Parachutisme Atmosphair’s 20th anniversary, I”ll be giving out prizes!!!!!

Blue ones!

Adam

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The winter is long…

So thanks to our long winter, most of the Dropzones around here have postponed opening for another week to clean up the snow that’s been left over and wait for warmer weather.

That part kind of sucks… But while I was waiting for the season to start up, I took advantage to do some wind tunnel training with Andrew Toman at Skyventure Montreal.
Andrew was my first instructor when I first learned to skydive. He was the one who did the ground school, he was also the one who gave me my 1st 20 minute coaching in the tunnel.

He didn’t join us in Florida for the AFF course, but he followed up later on by giving me a good portion of the lessons for my A license.

Now comes the time to learn to back fly and the basics of sit flying.
2 weeks ago and this past week, I had booked a total of 40 minutes of tunnel time with him to work on my back flying.
And work we did… I haven’t had to do it since my B license, so it was quite fun to see myself during the first debrief when I nearly kicked Andrew in the face haha.

In the first 2-4 minutes, we did mostly work in low wind with me simply trying to keep control and move around on the net while learning to change to sit position.
For the rest of the 10 minutes we progressed onto slightly higher wind so that I could work on controlling my fall rate.

In debrief, he showed me what I was doing wrong and we worked on improving that (I was really stiff and flew large, but flew my upper body fairly small….)
so for the next 10 minutes, we worked at improving that and then worked more on holding myself in the sit position.

The following week (this past Monday), I went back to the tunnel to do the second half of the 40 minute block with him.
Armed with some comfort in the back fly position, we went on to see how much I remembered and how I flew now.
I was much more stable, but still had some polishing to do, but we didn’t focus much on that.
Instead, Andrew had me working on my transitions to sit fly and started working on my stability, my turns, my movement forwards, backwards, up and down.
It was VERY awkward… Being that I was someone who had always said that I wasn’t interested in learning to freefly yet as I wanted to focus more on CReW, I was quite surprised to say that I enjoyed it.
A LOT.

I asked Andrew to find me another 10 minutes of time to do some more training, so I’m excited to see how that pans out.

Also: Francois Huot accepted to let me join his CRW seminar in June over the long weekend, so I’m SUPER excited about that!
We’ll be sponsoring a few events this summer as well as showing up with gifts at some boogies, so keep your eyes open for us!

Blue skies everyone!Adam

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Ever heard of Parabatics? Neither did we!

So once again, Nick in Florida has surprized us with a new video.

At first peek, it doesn’t look like anything special, but once you realize what’s actually going on…
Just check it out:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxKKWmxVWMk[/youtube]

I asked Nick to do a quick write up about his experience, here it is:

One of my more recent ventures in skydiving has been learning parabatics or acrobatic flying of 2-4 canopies and pilots linked together either via leg lock or straps. My friend Bob told me that only about 3% of Skydivers actually get into CReW as a primary discipline within our sport and that only about 1% of those 3% every consider or get into parabatics. For me parabatics are a total release. It requires focus, the ability to stay calm and think quickly, and absolute trust of the other person or people connected to the straps with you. Something as simple as turning the canopies left or right is now a combined effort once attached via the straps making coordination between the pilots paramount. My overall learning curve has been quite steep and in 5 jumps I’m told that I’m doing better than most with far more jumps than I have. To be quite honest it almost feels natural to me like its something I am supposed to be doing. For me parabatics has brought me closer to recapturing the feeling of that first skydive many moons ago. Most of our jumps end with a final downplane that we ride to about 1000 feet before severing the strap connection. If there are any other canopies still in the air it forces us to end sooner and if conditions are right the downplane can be ridden conceivably as low as 100 feet giving both pilots ample time to safely land their canopies (something I’m looking forward to doing when the time and place is right). Hope you enjoyed a view into what I like to do under canopy!

Cheers
Nick

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Nuit Blanche 2 – Skyventure

Hello Ladies and Germs!

This coming weekend is take 2 of Skyventure Montreal’s Nuit Blanche event. It’s been booked solid for 2 months now as usual, but we’ll be onsite to give you the dirty.

I’ll be doing some 4 way RW  (Relative work) with some strangers, so this should be quite fun!

 

Also: The Quebec Invasion tour is heading to PST again this year, I unfortunately won’t be present, but if all works out, I should have the videos from their trip. Buffalo Wild Wings seems to be sponsoring the event again.

 

I’ll keep all of you posted about that too!

 

Blue Ones!

 

Adam

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Rise N Shine!!!!

Photo by Rolf Kuratle (Kuri)

We’d like to congratulate Rise N Shine on their performance at the world championships in Dubai.

This was their first attempt at the worlds and they performed marvelously. They were 12th out of 22 teams, I can’t wait to see how they do next time, now that they have some experience on their belts.

 

Amazing job guys!

 

Adam

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The off season….

So while most people here are “enjoying” the off season… Some of our friends are out in Dubai living it up at the world skydive competitions.

 

We’d like to give a shout out to Rise N Shine (Bruno from Brainshell’s team) as well as the Flying Ferns (Shan from NZ Aerosports’ team).
To those of you who who are competing, we’d like to wish you all the success in the world!

We’re all watching you!

 

I unfortunately haven’t gotten the rights to post any photos yet, but as soon as I do, I’ll have an update!

 

Blue skies everyone!

 

Adam