Tag: Caravan

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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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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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Skydiving in Hurricane Season – Part 4 – Skydive Sebastian

Hey everyone,

 

For our last day in Florida, we decided to make it a big one! We made a 2 hour trek from Daytona Beach all the way south to Sebastian Florida.

Sebastian is a small town with a BIG drop zone… The DZ is known for it’s proximity to the ocean and the beach jumps that they organize.

We got there on a rainy-ish day with mixed weather. It was sunny, then cloudy, then rainy, then sunny, then rainy, etc..

 

For our first jump, Geneviève and I just decided to go and enjoy the view. On the plane, I met a guy named Nick.

Nick, as it turned out was a CReW dog and was going to have fun in the sky. I got so caught up in conversation with him, I barely noticed that my helmet, that I had put on my side before take off had fallen out the pilot’s door which he had opened to get some air. Luckily, I caught wind of it before we took off. (Good thing too!)

She and I did a 2 way fun jump and I opened high so as to just enjoy the view. It’s truly a beautiful view. The plane takes off from the DZ, flies over the ocean then flies back towards the DZ to prep the jump run. Being that the wind was coming from the ocean, we flew out pretty far. Now, Geneviève having never been to the ocean before this trip was in awe. Someone even asked her on the plane if she was scared because she kept looking out the window haha! Come landing time, I ended up making a bad decision and attempting to land crosswind. This was a terrible idea and I ended up messing up my landing and cutting my leg up pretty bad. Luckily, it started raining, so while I was off cleaning myself up, I wasn’t missing much.

 

Afterwards, Nick offered to lend me a CRW canopy so that I could jump with him. This canopy turned out to be quite famous. It belonged to none other than Mike Lewis. Now, for those of you who don’t know who Mike Lewis is… He is a Skygod… But not just any Skygod. He is a CRW Skygod who has helped this part of the sport grow enormously. He has participated in countless records and this canopy was the one he flew for the world record. He joined the formation as number 100. Needless to say, this canopy was more famous than I was haha. It also has 3 holes in it that are un patched and is probably almost as old as I am… Perfect for CRW!!!! =)

So after swapping out my Safire2 and showing me some tricks for replacing your canopy (Thanks Nick!), Nick had put the Lightning into my container. Notice the beautiful look it gave my brand new Vector?

Anyways, during the jump, Nick showed me some basic CRW control maneuvers, we did dock once, I was on top of his canopy on a 2 person stack. We tried to have him dock onto me, but I wasn’t able to get myself below him and close enough to him to do so so we flew side by side and he taught me how to lose altitude in quick bursts before coming in for the landing.

 

As usual, a CRW landing is a fairly rough rolling or sliding landing. I hit my leg again and suffered some more pain. I also ended up getting my new rig filthy… Again! Since I was leaving within 12 hours, I grounded myself so that I could get it clean before putting my main back in there.

 

Overall, I loved the drop zone, it’s much more of a laid back place then DeLand is, it seems to be a DZ where you can just go and have some fun. There are relatively few belly fliers there, most people either do CReW or they Freefly.

 

If you have a review of a DZ that you’d like to share, send me an email, I’d like to post it.

Adam

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My 100th jump.

 

 

Ever since I started skydiving, I wanted to become a CReW dog… I used to love watching them fly and I visioned myself as one of them flying through the skies.
As recently as 3 months ago, I had signed up for a CReW camp at Parachutisme Atmosphair, but was denied by the instructor as I wasn’t experienced enough for his comfort. I took the refusal in stride and kept my head up as I knew I would be able to try it at some point soon.

For quite some time, I had been speaking to Nicolas Huard, one of the DZOs at Parachutisme Voltige about doing it as it is the best DZ in my area to learn it and he himself is a CReW dog =D. You should have seen the look in his eye and the eyes of all the other instructors at the DZ when I said that I wanted to learn. I got high fives all around and nothing but smiles… I knew I was in for the time of my life.

 

The day had come, I was 3 jumps away from my 100th, the skies were cloudy, but had many blue holes, so I took the risk and ventured to the DZ (which is about an hour and a half drive from my place). I figured, I can’t jump if I’m not at the DZ, so I’m going. “Jump or no jump, I’ll be there!” I said to myself.

I got to the DZ at 9:30 am, the first load had gone in the air, an hour later than planned as the skies were quite cloudy by now. My hopes were shattered for the moment, as it was clear enough to skydive, but not enough for CReW (For those of you who don’t know what CReW is, it stands for Canopy Relative Work. Basically, canopy formations). So I kept on waiting, and waiting, and waiting. 4 hours had passed, and I was still waiting, so I decided “what the hell” I’m gonna go get some skydiving done, this isn’t going to be a wasted day! I decided to work on my freeflying. I asked Philippe Thibodeau (the local freefly skygod) for some tips, and I get in the air to work on my sit flying. My new Deepseed Vyper hadn’t arrived yet, so I wore one of the school’s jumpsuits. Needless to say, I had fun flying, but I wasn’t very stable haha. 😀

After a couple of attempts at freeflying, I grounded myself. I wasn’t going to pass 100 doing practice, that’s for sure! This IS a special jump after all.

Come 5 pm, things are looking dire. The DZ is in full swing, tandems everywhere, load after load of tandems go up, Nicolas was replacing one of the tandem masters who hadn’t made it in to work that day. I was starting to feel the disappointment getting to me as I felt that jump slipping away (Especially since next weekend, I’ll be at the Tokaya Chicks Boogie, and I know I’ll be jumping there… Although, a 100th jump with a bunch of skydive chicks would be fun, the idea didn’t mean as much to me as a CReW jump did… Is there something wrong with me?)

At 6:30 I look to the sky and there’s not a cloud in sight… Perfect for a CReW jump!!! But the last 2 loads are already manifested and I’m not on them… And to make matters worse: Nicolas is still set as a tandem master!!! My hopes are shattered, at this point, I figure, I might as well just stick around and have a few beers with everyone before heading home, someone else surely paid for some for some reason or another haha.

 

Mario comes to save the day! No! Not this mario!

 

 

Mario is another one of the DZOs, he pulled me to the side and said “I’m not going to let the tandems get in the way of your 100th, I’m going to replace Nicolas on the last load so you can do your jump!”

The shine returned to my eyes, my smile instantly appeared! Mario had made my day! Nicolas brought me to the side to start the briefing:

Ok, I absolutely HAD to post this picture as we look like complete tools but I find it quite funny!

 

After the briefing, we headed to the plane to get things rolling.

We started off with Simond exiting and popping, I was to wait 2 seconds then jump and pop 3 seconds after then Nicolas to follow me.

As you can see, Nicolas and I are fairly far after only a couple of seconds delay.

 

Now, explaining the rest of the jump would take ages as it lasted a good 8-10 minutes. So here’s a video that Simond filmed.

 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZfB_V5NMaw&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

 

Overall, this was THE BEST time I have ever had skydiving. I have now found my 2 passions in the sport. Big ways and CReW. I spoke to Nicolas about starting coaching to learn it and practice more and more, he said he’d be very happy to teach me, so I’m hoping that by this time next year, I’ll have a bit more experience on my belt. And don’t worry, you’ll all get to read about it!

 

I want to thank Nicolas Huard and Simond Gingras for being a part of my 100th jump and helping make it a reality. I also want to thank Mario for having thought of me and helped make it possible. And I would like to thank Voltige 2001 for being my home DZ and a great overall place to have fun!

 

Saturday, I’ll be heading to the Tokaya Chick’s Boogie, so keep your eyes open for my next article!

Till then, blue skies everyone!

 

Adam

 

 

 

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You absolutely have to get to Boogie Fest….

 

 

If you don’t have the chance to get there by the last day (August 5th) then you ABSOLUTELY MUST attend next year.

This was the first boogie that parachutisme Atmosphair had and what a boogie it was!
It started on July 25th and will be going on until August 5th.

I was lucky enough to be invited to attend by Pierre Bilodeau AKA Peter Pan. He’s one of the 6 DZOs at the drop zone which is located just outside Quebec city in Quebec Canada.
He was setting up the event organized around Festivent which is a hot air balloon festival in Quebec city.

Pierre never ceased to impress me during my entire time at the DZ. He is extremely lively, always up for fun jumps and was simply a blast to be around.

 

Unfortunately I have a day job, so I was only able to attend for a couple of days. I arrived on Saturday July 28th at around 8 PM. Just in time to see a sexy 2 plane 30 way sunset jump. The load was organized by the lovely Katie Woods, an English skydiver who lived at Deland for a while before moving north to the Montreal area. Katie took care of organizing all the big ways of the weekend for us. (More on that later)

After the sunset load landed, I had the opportunity to be welcomed by Scott Bland and Paul Litherland who were running the Wingsuit camp.

 

They were doing a briefing of the last jump that was done with the camp.

 

I had never met Scott before, but Paul and I had met when I was doing my AFF at Skydive City in Z-Hills. He’s a great guy and a hell of a photographer!

After I met them, I proceeded to set up my tent next to the hangar and I went on to eat with everyone at the dining hall. when I was greeted by this:

A sexy BBQ/Smoker for our ribs! That’s right, dinner was a rack of ribs… MAAAAN do they know how to sell themselves to me =D.
Following the dinner, we were given a fire breathing show by a couple of skydivers:

This was followed by a bunch of beers and some partying in the packing loft.
Unfortunately, my camera didn’t manage to take such great shots in the black light, but we were given a live DJ show and a sweet light set up!

 

I went to bed fairly early… In fact, I was snoring by about Midnight. The next morning, bright and early I started roaming around the DZ meeting more people. Pierre got me onto the second load for an 11 way big way which was a great chance for me to warm up and also get to be part of what would be a full day of big ways!

Katie was organizing all the loads and took care of all the briefings and planning. We just needed to go where she told us to be haha. =)

The first jump was done from the Caravan, which was fairly successful. I unfortunately wasn’t able to get my hands on any shots of the jump.

 

The second was an 18 way that turned into a 20 way as we were being briefed by Katie. This was done from both the Twin Otter and the Caravan, 10 in each plane.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFJEaxI2BVc&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

I’d like to point out that Pierre mentioned that this was the first time he was able to dock without issue. Being that he doesn’t have complete use of his legs, being able to dock at all is a feat in itself. Hat’s off to you Peter Pan!

 

The following jump was a 16 way which didn’t go as smoothly unfortunately. What was of note is that Katie divided the jump into two sides, one side being the more experienced skydivers, the other being the less experienced ones. The only side that actually connected completely was the less experienced one. NYA NYA! (Ok, enough teasing, the more experienced people were jumping from a different plane altogether haha)

 

 

The final big way of the day was another 20 way. on my exit, I banged my head on the handle bar and messed up my exit, caught up to the group, but ended up on the wrong side of the formation, by the time I had placed myself in the right area, I was too low to be able to catch up to the group, so I flew off. My messing up lead to it being a very symmetric formation however, so it wasn’t all bad. 🙂

All in all, I learned a heck of a lot during that day and I truly appreciate the fact that this boogie was set up the way it was. No one was left behind, be it their 100th big way or their 1st, they were allowed to participate and were given ample coaching and proper briefings to get to learn.

The wing suit peeps also mentioned that they loved the camp and that Scott and Paul were great teachers (I never doubted it).

 

We finished off the day by doing a drawing and a contest for a few prizes that our sponsors had given me to hand out as well as the event sponsors.

UPT had given me some shirts, packing pull-ups and two 30%/15% discounts on brand new Vector containers. (For those of you who don’t know, Vector containers are among the best on the market, and 30% off the price + 15% off add-ons saves a HELL of a lot of money)

NZ Aerosports sent me some stickers, temporary tattoos, packing pull-ups, bottle openers and a few other goodies.

Vigil sponsored the event directly by giving a 50% rebate on a brand new Vigil AAD and a Vigil backpack.

Frankais also sponsored the event directly by giving a 30% rebate on a pair of Freefly pants, a 100% rebate on a a pair of freefly pants, a free reserve repack and two packing mats.

Aside from these, there were 10 tickets to Festivent (The Quebec City sky festival) and 5 flashlights (Sort of a gag gift I guess)

 

We decided that we would raffle off everything to all the participants of the boogie who had signed up.

Since there were so many winner, I’ll simply name those who won big prizes:

Hélène Bouffard – Reserve Repack
Mario Morales – 30% rebate off Freefly pants
Jérome Caron – 100% rebate off Freefly pants
Odile Bélanger – 30/15 rebate off a UPT Vector Container
Martin Casgrain – 50% rebate off a Vigil

Now, I mentioned that there was TWO rebates from UPT.

For the second rebate, we figured we’d have a bit of fun. Since NZ Aerosports had sent us a whole bunch of temporary tattoos, we figured we’d have a little contest:
The person who came up with the most original placement of said tattoos would win the prize.

Here are some highlights:

We had such a hard time deciding on this as there were lots of great ones, so we ended up picking the top 6 and doing a draw for the winner.

The winner of the contest was Nicolas Alie-Chartrand.

I’d like to take a quick second to that UPT and NZ Aerosports for their generosity and for sponsoring some gifts for the event.

I also want to give a HUGE thank you to Pierre and Isabelle for being so hospitable. I’ll DEFINITELY be back.

Blue skies in the meantime everyone!

 

Adam

 

Photos by:
Marc Guerin
Sylvain Demers
Martin Casgrain
Guy Labarre
Denis Lessard
Jose Calderon
Alain Houde

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What a week for Canadian skydiving!

Hey everyone!

Sorry about the delay on the posts, I had quite a setback with my move, just getting back into the swing of things.

 

So this week was quite an insane week for Canadian skydiving in Quebec. It started with Mission 100, the Lemay family’s 2 year project. (For those of you who don’t know, the Lemay family are also known as team Evolution, they are and have been team Canada for 4 way relative work for many years. They also happen to operate two drop zones in Quebec and part of Skyventure Montreal.)

Mission 100 was first attempted in 2011, but unfortunately didn’t pan out after a few attempts. So they decided to give it a whirl in 2012 a second time. 102 skydivers participated, and 102 skydivers made the formation.

Here is what it looked like from below:

(Picture by Andrew Toman of the Hired Guns – Parachute Montreal)

This was a HUGE event for Canadian skydiving, and it is sure to be remembered by at least 102 people who now have their names in the record books!

 

The second is equally as impressive, but completely different in it’s own way:

This past weekend was the Go Big boogie at Voltige 2001 a weekend oriented around big ways. 17 000 foot skydives, 3 caravans and lots of smiling faces!

They broke the Canadian head down record with 29 people!!!

Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of the record, but as soon as I do get my hands on one, it’ll be on our Facebook page!

 

I’d like to congratulate everyone who participated on a job well done!

And I want to give a shout out to the organizers of these events as without people like them, skydiving would be a lot less organized. =)

 

Blue skies everyone!

 

Adam

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BEER LINE!!!!!!

So this weekend had some amazing weather!

Went to Voltige Saturday night with my girlfriends, had a few beers by the campfire, crashed in a buddy’s trailer on the table we were 8 or 9 people sleeping there haha!

So come Sunday morning, the day began with a 14 way that I woke up too late to participate in, but I got to watch from the ground. Only 2 or 3 people made it back and Skygod bless them for taking it upon themselves to figure out the winds and walk the 2 miles back so that we don’t have to lol!

 

My day started off with a 5 way that involved my girlfriend and 3 others. We planned to do “Doughnut, star – right, doughnut, star-left then caterpillar (for those of you who don’t understand that, it’s basically the names of the formations we did, doughnut is a circle, star is when people turn in that direction and caterpillar is basically where people are a zig zag in the sky).

 

The exit went to hell but we managed to recover it and got our 1st point done however, on the 1st star attempt, I lost altitude and couldn’t catch up in time. On the landing, I tried practicing lower altitude turns (still at about 300 feet) to be able to get some speed and work on my control. The landing went smoothly and I got a fairly nice swoop out of it.

As soon as I landed however, I was rushed to catch my “taxi” (a pick-up truck waiting for me) to get back on the plane as I was informed that I was going to fly with two friends of mine who were on a tandem on the next load. The load was supposed to be one later, but got pushed up. Needless to say, I was rushing like hell and the plane was waiting for me at the end of the runway. At this point, I noticed a huge crack in the visor of my factory diver. =( So I unfortunately had to order a new one.

I was the only non tandem skydiver on the plane, so I decided to myself that I’d do a high altitude opening (10 000 feet) and work on my canopy flying skills. I also got to push everyone out of the way while creeping to the back of the plane haha!

I was working on my front riser controls during this flight, got myself kind of dizzy though and nearly puked inside my now “broken visor” helmet. Wasn’t fun, but I kinda laughed to myself for my weak stomach.
Come time to land, I did the same thing as the last jump, but went out slightly farther so I’d have more room. But this time, I noticed something…. There was no wind in my face… Instead of slowing down, I just kept moving forward farther and farther until I was about 20 feet from the picnic tables… Evasive maneuver time! I flared early, ended up stalling at about 7 feet in the air and landed on my knees about 5 feet from the crowd of people who were all cheering… Why were they cheering you ask? Not because I didn’t hit them… But because I had passed the beer line and I now owed a case of beer.

The tandem masters all came and thanked me, and all day I kept being reminded about how I owed beer haha!

I still owe that beer and I plan on bringing it to Voltige in a few weeks when I go back to do my 100th jump with Nicolas Huard (One of the DZOs) who will be taking me on my 1st CRW jump.

I’m stoked as hell!

I’ll be in Victoriaville this weekend, hopefully back at the DZ if the weather permits, so I’ll have a new post for you guys then and possibly a surprise or two before hand.

 

Blue ones in the meantime everyone!

 

Adam

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Voltige this coming weekend!

So last weekend I got to head out to Voltige for a few hours with a few people who wanted to try out a tandem. Being at a DZ I obviously couldn’t just go and not jump, budget being slightly limited, I only did two. I got an 8 way track jump done (where i lost the group and ended up about 300 feet above everyone) and  5 way spider (I was the left arm).

 

This weekend I’m heading back there with my girlfriend and a couple of friends of mine who want to try out a jump and I’ve got some extra spare funds, so it’s looking like fun times ahead!

The weather’s going to be slightly cloudy though, so we’ll see how things pan out. More to come!

 

Blue skies everyone!

 

Adam

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BOOGIE FEST 2012

This summer has several promising events at the DZs in the region. One that truly caught my attention was the Boogie Fest 2012 at Parachutisme Atmosphair.

It caught my eye for a few reasons, one of which is that it falls around my birthday.  Another is that it’s a boogie aimed at promoting Festivent which is a hot air balloon festival that is celebrating it’s 30 years.
One of the events includes demo jumps into a stadium full of people. (70 jumps total, all will be free for those of you who have their EJR).

The event will also have a wingsuit camp, 2 plane big ways (Caravan and Twin Otter), a 7 seat helicopter and a Red Bull party.

It is the FIRST major skydive event in the region of Quebec city and I’m planning on being present.

See below for the ad.

 

Blue skies,

Adam

 

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Cet été  à énormément d’évènements qui me semblent intéressantes aux DZs dans la région. Une d’entre elles qui a vraiment pris mon attention c’est le Boogie Fest 2012 à Parachutisme Atmosphair.

Il y a plusieurs raisons pour laquelle elle m’a attiré, la première c’est qu’elle sera aux alentours de mon anniversaire. Un autre est que c’est un boogie qui sert à faire la promotion de Festivent le festival des montgolfières qui célèbre ses 30 ans. Un des évènements inclus des sauts demo dans un stade remplis de personnes. (70 sauts total, tous seront gratuit pour ceux d’entre vous qui ont leur CSD)

L’évènement aura aussi un camp de Wingsuit, des big ways de 2 avions (Twin Otter ainsi que Caravane), un hélico de 7 passagers et une soirée Red Bull.

C’est le PREMIER évènement majeur de parachute dans la région du Québec et je prévois y être.

Voir l’annonce ci-dessous pour plus d’infos.

 

Ciels bleus,

Adam

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WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Sorry for the long delays in between postings, I’ve just been so busy with my new job, with my summer plans, with getting Skydive Addiction on the map, with making excuses as to why I haven’t been posting, with procrastinating posting, and with a bunch of other stuff.

Seriously speaking though, getting Skydive Addiction on the map is my #1 priority…
Behind skydiving of course 😛

So anyways, this past weekend, I managed to convince 8 of my friends from a couple of DZs I jump at to join me on a bungee jumping road trip.
Needless to say, I heard at least 20 skydivers say:
“Are you crazy? How could you jump off a perfectly good bridge… WITHOUT a parachute?”

Yes, that’s right… Skydivers asked me the most God awful question in the world…
Why wouldn’t I? It’s quite a different rush from skydiving, and it’s a welcome change from the regular routine… Given, it’s not something you’d find me doing every day, but it’s fun once in a while.

So we headed to the Great Canadian Bungee which claims to be the highest bungee jump in North America. It’s 200 feet over a very very blue lake. Beautiful place actually.
I jumped there last year (as you can see on one of my 1st posts). And it was a lot of fun, so I decided to head back.

Turns out that when you’re 8 or 9 people, it’s actually cheaper to pay for 10 then it is to pay for 8 or 9… Group discount… So that’s exactly what we did.
And since I organized it, my friends were quick to put my name down as the person to do two jumps.
S-WEET!!
So the 1st person to jump is a girl named Stephanie, she’s done 5 tandem skydives, but doesn’t have her license yet. She’s never done a bungee jump however.
(They went by weight)
After 7 minutes of her standing at the edge not jumping and 7 minutes of myself and one of the other guys yelling at her to hurry up, she finally took the plunge… Ok, well she held hands with the instructor and he slowly lowered her backwards until she finally fell. HI HI =)

The others jumped right away, which was a welcome sight =D

My first jump was a normal forward dive with my ankles strapped in, didn’t give me the same adrenaline rush as the 1st time though (Which pretty much proved that once you face a fear, you never get that same rush again =( )

I even tested it… I started running back up the hill to get to the top… Half way up, I couldn’t breathe anymore… If I had an adrenaline pumping through my veins, I probably would’ve made it up without breaking a sweat.
So on the 2nd jump, I decided to strap myself in by the shoulders. The instructors at the top told me that since I was so comfortable with jumping off the bridge that I could do a flip this time.
We decided that I’d do a back flip. That back flip then turned into a double and if I had known how much more time I had, I probably would’ve been able to get a third in. Damn me and my dissatisfaction!!!!!

So after spending 2 and a half hours at the bungee jump place, we then decided to go grab breakfast at some random place in town… This place was on the 2nd floor of a supermarket… And I can say one thing… If we thought waiting for Stephanie to jump was a lifetime wait… Waiting for sunny side up eggs and toast to be prepared was an eternity.

Fast forward an hour and we arrive at Go Skydive. It’s one of those DZs that you wouldn’t be able to find if you didn’t know where to go… We didn’t know where to go.
We parked in the Gatineau airport’s parking lot, looked around for signs, but couldn’t find any.
We were given directions on how to walk there by a girl who had just completed her 1st tandem =).
So we get there, they check out our paperwork, the rigs we’re jumping, and so on.
Then they tell us that even though we’re regular jumpers who have jumped together before, they want us to jump with a coach ?!?!?!?!

My buddy Alex lent me his rig (Sabre I 170 in a Javelin J2 rig), he spent 15 minutes checking the gear making sure that everything was ok even after a rigger took a look at it and I had inspected it too… His reasoning was that he didn’t want my death on his conscience. I laughed, told him that I’d pull the reserve on purpose then went into the plane 😛

In the end, they decided to put 5 of us on a Cessna 182 (TINY plane!!!) instead of their Navaho (Still tiny, but bigger than the Cessna) but this time, we didn’t need a coach.
For those of you who don’t really know the difference, with a Cessna, you have to get out of the door, hang onto a strut below the wing, stand on a step and hang there before your jump.
On the Navaho, you jump out of the door. On the Twin Otter and the Caravans that my home DZs have, you not only jump out of the door, but you have a bench to sit on 😛

Anyways, the DZ’s landing area is bigger than the one at Parachute Montreal but the planes, much smaller.
The staff was nice, but the rigger who packed Alex’s rig after I jumped took ages… He also asked us different questions about the rig and forgot to collapse the pilot chute (a fairly dangerous mistake that can sometimes cause a malfunction). Anyways, all in all, I’d jump there again, but I’d also pack my own rig 😛

Blue Skies everyone!

-Adam