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Never thought that giving something would be so hard….

This week is one of the Héma-Québec blood drives, they’ve been putting ads all over the place with the whole “Give blood, give life” thing.
I figured to myself that I’ve done quite a bit of living, might as well share the wealth.

I’ve never actually done this before, so I wasn’t familiar with the procedures, so I decided Well, since I have a half hour lunch, been eating all day, that should be PLENTY of time.”

WROOOOONG!!!!

Turns out that the 2 minute procedure of drawing a liter of blood is actually followed by a 58 minute proceedure of filling out forms, answering questions and eating cookies….
I went to donate blood, and was sent packing because I wasn’t able to give them an extra half hour of my time…
I even offered to come back at the end of my work day, which is 4 pm give or take 10 minutes (sometimes I’m stuck working on something for a bit, but USUALLY I’m done at 4)

The woman tells me that they stop taking patients at 4 pm and aren’t willing to wait 5 MINUTES for one more…

They have a counter going on, and it’s aimed at 75 donors… They’re at 40 and today’s the last day… They spend millions on ads to get more donors, yet they can’t wait 5 more minutes for one?
Hell, they planted themselves inside the biggest office building in Montreal… 44 floors of offices, easily with 5-10 thousand employees overall, but they set themselves up to work 9-4?!?!
They’d have more donors being open from 7 am-9 am then 4 pm to 6 pm….
4 hour work day but at efficient times… Work smart not hard was something that I had always been told…

Anyways, I’m done ranting haha.

On another note: I WANNA B.A.S.E. MY OFFICE! Heck, if I don’t survive, Héma-Québec can take the blood that splatters on the pavement 😉

-Adam

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The hazards of skydiving:

So, as all of you know, skydiving is a sport with certain risks, people can get hurt, people can get scared, people can get sick…
Well, the other day at the DZ, one of the tandem students did just that, he puked all over his tandem master’s leg…
Poor guy’s jump suit went from black to orange….
Now, to make matters worse, the next day, THE VERY SAME tandem master was up with a student who started puking… and guess what…




He avoided it hahaha

Seriously speaking though, one of the tandem students didn’t listen to his tandem master for the landing (You’re supposed to lift up your legs, and the instructor tells you to several times if you don’t)
Well, the guy didn’t listen, and broke his lower leg… Note to all of you future skydivers: LISTEN TO YOUR INSTRUCTOR!!!!!!!!!!

That is all.

-Adam

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Opening day for the Montreal skydive season and I was already injured…

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