Today in New York it is a beautiful and spring-like 65 degrees. And once the weather turns warm, my mind instantly turns to one question:
When does skydiving season begin again?
I know it’s bound to turn cold again soon and last year when Bear and I started to learn to jump, it was too tempestuous and cold to really, truly go continually until the end of May. Still…it is absolutely gorgeous outside and I want to jump out of perfectly good airplanes!
Yesterday I actually attempted learning the dance moves to “Single Ladies” but soon gave up because I didn’t have a mirror in front of me to verify that I looked like a complete fool.
Snow again this morning in New York. The world looks lovely and crystalline and pure and beautiful but feels like death. 18 degrees Fahrenheit this morning with a windchill of -1. Negative fucking one. (Yeah, yeah, all you people in the Midwest/Canada who are used to this, I know, but I don’t care where you grew up; a windchill factor of -1 is fucking cold.) It is mildly warmer now. It feels like 8 degrees.
My closing pin.
A picture of the closing pin pendant Bear gave me for Christmas. (For reference, this is what an actual closing pin looks like. It’s roughly two inches long and made of stainless steel.) Isn’t it lovely? Click on the thumbnail for a sense of scale and me wearing my proof of pride in Bear’s med school emblazoned across my chest. I could string the pendant on its own chain, but I rather like the look of the teardrop and the closing pin together. What do you all think?
I am out of coffee filters and because I can’t bring myself to weather the freezing cold to buy some more from the corner deli, I caffeinated myself with a pot of oolong tea this morning. I have certain routines I must perform before I start my day: I must make my bed, I must take a shower, and I must be sipping at a warm caffeinated beverage. (It’s less the caffeine so much as the ritual of it all.) It was oolong today because I have no black tea left. I always trick myself into thinking tea has less caffeine than coffee and as a result, end up with a heinous buzz. It doesn’t help that I accidentally dropped my tea strainer with the loose leaves into the pot, resulting in a much stronger brew than I would normally make.
I got actually a little revision done on Elijah’s Chariot yesterday, but I think I need to muddle out some other themes/issues before progressing with it.
The first was a bit of a revelation for me. On a whim, I decided to enter Colleen Linsday‘s Query in 140 Characters Or Less contest, not because I want to win the grand prize (because ZOMG MY BOOK ISN’T FULLY REVISED YET), but to see if I could somehow extract the essence of my pitch from my novel. In my previous “what my book is about” sentences I always struggled with trying to describe the setting and politically fraught situation surrounding my protagonists. Somewhere in there I figured it was about “saving the day” because isn’t that the natural narrative for war stories like mine? Except if my book is about “saving the day,” then the end of my book offers absolutely no resolution or conclusion and instead becomes a sort of cliffhanger, which is not at all my intent. I mentioned this to Wicked Cool Riley last night, to which she simply replied, “Of course.” It just goes to prove that my critique partners sometimes know my book better than I do.
Oh god, I could finish this chapter, but I swear I can’t keep my eyes open.
The novel now stands at:
70,508 / 90,000 words. 78% done!
Projected word count has been changed once more. It looks like it will no longer be 100k, thank goodness. I am so close to the end I can practically taste it and it’s killing me. It’s rather like running the last mile of a marathon, when your lungs are afire and every last fibre of your body is screaming to stop and take a rest, but you know you can’t, you are so close and almost done.
Alas, my body defeats me. I have no stamina. I must be off to bed or else wake up a zombie tomorrow morning.
I have one week in which to write the shitty first draft. Then I shall edit and send it off to the Kitchen Girls for a critique. I look forward to their merciless shredding of my magnum opus. I need my ego lowered substantially but I also know I’m too close to the material right now to see its flaws and I know there are flaws. However, after I send it off to the Kitchen Girls, I will be on a plane to Los Angeles to attend my five year high school reunion and I will not do a damn thing related to writing, or at least related to Elijah’s Chariot for a month. Then I shall rewrite and revise and polish as necessary before querying agents. My goal? To begin querying by January 2009.
By the way, if anyone is interested in reading my book before it is sent off, let me know.
It is now officially fall. I am resisting. It cannot be autumn yet, not until I’ve gotten my skydiving A license and finished my novel. But the weather belays my thoughts and I’ve added another blanket to the bed because it’s gotten cold at night. Dammit. I miss my warm fuzzy Bear, especially on nights like this, but snuggling with a White-Harp will have to do.
So it was bound to happen. Someone as accident-prone as I was bound to sustain some sort of injury in skydiving. The verdict? A minuscule hairline stress fracture in my pelvic area that will put me out of commission for 4 to 6 weeks. The good news? It’s so damn tiny that it will heal on its own; I just need to take it easy for a while. I’m semi-mobile at least, if on crutches. The bad news? I FUCKING BROKE MY PELVIS.
Anyway, I suppose that for someone as “clumsy” as I should consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to have a 12th house Jupiter; it helps me survive things. (For the record, I do not consider myself clumsy; in fact, I think I’m rather well-coordinated if not graceful. But I do have a habit of getting major sports injuries.) Like walking away from a boarding mishap at Santa Monica with a ruptured disc and misaligned spine. Like falling 1000ft off a cliff at Mammoth Mountain while skiing. Or like plowing face-first into the ground in speeds in excess of 40 to 50mph. Oops.
It was my mistake, of course. Mishaps in skydiving usually are. It’s a very safe sport (much safer than boarding or skiing or even driving for that matter) but accidents in my new hobby tend to get more press attention precisely because they’re more rare. And while it sounds sensational, the honest truth of it is, I just had a really, really hard landing.
As it was Bear’s med school orientation week, I decided to be a bad girlfriend and take the train down to New Brunswick to steal his car and go jumping out of perfectly good airplanes all weekend while he was stuck painting clinics or something. It was the Fiesta Boogie this weekend (my first boogie! Lots of fun) which had a lot of events planned like a record-breaking women’s RW (relative work), skateboarding competitions, Mexican food, all culminating in the “swoop ‘n’ shot” competition during the sunset load, in which divers will swoop in on their parachutes (accuracy wins here), grab some tequila, and shoot it down. Afterwards we’d break open the keg of Dos Equis and paaaaaaartay!
One weekend at the dropzone has passed and already I owe an obscene amount of beer. I committed the cardinal error of saying the verboten words “first jump,” I landed 12 fucking inches outside the beer line, and because it was my first jump out of the Skyvan, I owe more beer for that.
The Skyvan is a rear-exit aircraft, unlike the Twin Otter (which is what I’ve been mostly jumping out of) which opens near the left wing. In addition to this, the Skyvan is also large enough for people to stand in, meaning you can leave the plane any which way you please: cannonballing, backwards, headfirst, sideways, it doesn’t matter! It was the first “fun jump” for both Bear and me (now that we are no longer students) and what a way to kick it off!
My grandmother is so badass.
Because I went down to Pennsylvania at the last minute this past weekend, I couldn’t dump my skydiving equipment behind so I had to lug it all with me on the train (my poor helmet is getting increasingly banged up and I’ve hardly even used it!). She took one look at it and blithely remarks, “Oh, so you motorcycle?”
“No, Halmeoni,” I said rather sheepishly. “It’s a skydiving helmet.”
“Ah!” she says admiringly. “That’s neat!”
I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this is the woman who taught me how to spike a volleyball over a net and played goalie for me at the tender age of 75. It’s not like her balls of steel have softened over the years at 84. My Halmeoni would probably go skydiving with me if I asked her. I should consider this. After all, the Colonel still dives at the age of 83 and he practically needs a walker to move about the dropzone.
If there is one thing my mother excels at, it’s having the worst timing ever. For instance, Sunday night she calls me at Bear’s house to ask for a favour.
“Sure, Mum,” I say, “What is it?”
“Can you come down to Pennsylvania? It’s a bit of an emergency; I’m in the hospital.”
After a bit of a OMGWTF?????, I was roped into becoming a chauffeur service for my little brother and my grandmother…again (see also Most of 2005 As I Was Recovering From Surgery). Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind so much if it didn’t require me having to take a day off work today for what I consider a trivial affair. Of course, my mother being in a hospital is most certainly not a trivial matter; she has third nerve ocular palsy (fancy words for “double vision”) which can be a symptom for a multitude of problems, from stress and fatigue to multiple sclerosis to brain cancer. The doctors have not yet ruled out anything definitely. As a result I am at my parents’ soon-to-be-ex-house acting in loco parentis to my brother and the de facto head of house. You can only pick up your puppy’s shit so many times without being a little annoyed.
However, this weekend was rather nice, even though the weather sucked and Bear and I couldn’t really go skydiving. We drove down to Cross Keys on the 4th so Bear could do his low solo and to possibly learn how to pack our own parachutes.
My personal trainer totally beat my ass into submission last night. I am not quite sore…yet but dear god, I can tell this weekend might suck a little. After I tottered into the door, Wicked Cool Riley remarked, “You look wrecked.” And I was.
But man, did I sleep like a baby last night.
I managed another 465 words yesterday and I intended to write some more once I got home after the gym, but collapsing into bed seemed the more attractive option. Tonight The Inimitable Bex and I are having our writing date at Think Coffee before I head into New Jersey to spend the long weekend with Bear and I am determined to make some serious headway into the fifth chapter, if not finish it. And then I will have to figure out exactly what happens in the next act, but I won’t worry about that now.
As per usual, it looks like rain this weekend. At least Bear and I can take our packing classs if we are weathered out down at the dropzone and now that we are no longer students, there isn’t so much pressure on us to jump every chance we get as we can take as long as we’d like (as long as we stay current) to earn our A licenses. Still, I would like to get mine before summer’s end so I can start flying with other people. It’s rather lonely when you’re skydiving all by your lonesome without anyone to interact with in freefall. A few of my friends at the dropzone have all point-blank told me that they’re waiting for me to get my A so we can start formation diving, which sounds kind of exciting. Laticia is also running a wind tunnel camp that I would love to attend, but unfortunately it takes place during the week and all my other paid time off days are accounted for.
However…
TO ANYONE LIVING IN THE METROPOLITAN AREAS OF NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, AND WASHINGTON, D.C.
Next weekend is the weekend after my 23rd birthday and of course I will be down skydiving at Cross Keys. This is an open invitation for anyone to join me. You do not have to jump. You may come down and simply hang out with the awesome people there and drink once the sunset load has gone up. However, if you WOULD like to jump, I highly encourage it. Make a reservation at Freefall Adventures for Saturday, July 12th. Bear can drive three people in his car for those who are coming from New York City. The dropzone is only 15 minutes away from Center City, Philadelphia in Williamstown, New Jersey, so I gather it will probably be about an hour and a half drive for those coming from DC.
I would love to see whoever I can! Email me at thegreatmissjj@gmail.com if you have any questions.
And now work. Although it’s rather slow in the office today…
Oh I Can Haz Cheezburger, you have never been more awesome.
So I made an interesting discovery last night: my altimeter is glow-in-the-dark! I’m so easily amused. Like a small child. Ooh shiny!
Coming into work from New Jersey this morning probably was not one of the wiser decisions I have ever made. Bear and I returned from the dropzone around 10:30pm last night and while I could have caught the 10:54pm train back to the city and have been home by midnight, I was exhausted and not a little drunk, so one more night of snuggling with my Teddy Bear and a White-Harp sounded vastly more appealing. All told, it took only an hour to commute into midtown Manhattan from Cranford, but as a result, I am now wearing Friday’s work clothes and have on no makeup. Ugh.
On the way home, Bear and I discussed the possibility of my becoming a skydiving instructor. (“Think of how many skydives you could have if you moved down to Philly with me for my third year of med school!” he said. Am tempted, but not yet swayed.) While it’s certainly true that I love this sport and I love mentoring others in it (what little experience I can offer with only 12 jumps), I’m not entirely sure being an instructor in any capacity is my calling.
When I was in junior high, I had one of the highest math averages in my class (…what happened?) and was often “employed” by my algebra teacher to tutour others in the subject. I was social, I was patient, and I was good at it. Unfortunately, what came intuitively to me did not come so easily to others and I could not find a way to make them understand. I came to abhor the question “Why?” because I could not explain how I understood things; I just did. Many things come to me easily: algebra, dance, fencing, skiing, etc. but whenever people have asked for my advice or guidance, I have a tendency to make them more muddled or frustrated.
On Sunday Nathan, the other AFP instructor, had one particularly difficult student. He was older gentleman, of middle years and considerable girth, who had purchased a coach jump as he was jumping for the first time at our dropzone. He had 30 jumps under his belt, but hadn’t yet obtained his A license for reasons that soon became clear. Nathan isn’t much bigger than me, but he is considerably bigger than Laticia, which is why he was the unfortunate one saddled with this man. Nathan spent about three hours correcting his erroneous ideas of the landing pattern and then strapped on 30lbs of lead in an attempt to keep up with the much bigger student’s fall rate. I wasn’t on that particular load, but Nathan came down incredibly frustrated. The student was only barely “safe” as did not listen or respond to Nathan’s hand signals nor was he exactly stable. But he pulled at the right altitude and managed to land, which constitutes only the basest level of “safe.” Because he was so much bigger than Nathan and fell so much faster (despite the lead weights), Nathan had to sit-fly, ruling out most chances of saving the student should he start falling out of control.
Situations like that make me nervous about being an instructor. If I had students like myself or Bear or The Inimitable Bex or many of the other students I’ve met at the dropzone, I should take it up immediately, but the fact that students like the aforementioned gentleman exist give me pause. What would I do in a situation that did call for me to save him? Every skydive is first and foremost your own responsibility, not your instructor’s, but still, what if? I’ve always felt as though Laticia and I were generally “playing” up in freefall; never once did it cross my mind that she might have to save me in my later dives. And I don’t think she did either as we played tag across the sky.
It was a bit lonely on my high solo without her, actually. My high solo went perfectly well but without someone to interact with in the sky it felt extraordinarily long. Out and stable within two seconds, after which I excuted a back flip and a few 360 degree turns. I was still above 10,000ft at that point, so I decided to change my fall rate. My high solo was the first time I’ve ever consciously looked at the ground during a skydive and I looked below me as I flattened my arch as much as possible. I could hear the wind speed change and lessen and I could even visibly see myself slow down, which was really cool. Still above 9500ft as I arched again, so I did a barrel roll. Still above 8000ft. At that point I had rather run out of things to do, so I pulled forward to avoid falling through a cloud (which I only sort of missed) and waited what felt like an eternity before I pulled at 5000ft.
Bear was in the same load as me on his graduation jump and I looked down the jump run to see if I could see him deploy. I think he opened before I did, but this was the first time under canopy I got to witness people in freefall hurtling past at 120mph while I was floating at a very gentle 12mph, which was very surreal. That was me? As per usual, I was dead last to land because of my ginormous canopy (can I downsize yet?) and had some trouble with the landing pattern because of MY HUGE FUCKING PARACHUTE. I left the holding area at about 1000ft as I was supposed to, but had passed the dropzone by 800ft, causing me to turn around and back a few times to start my crosswind leg and final approaches at the correct altitude. Canopy work is still not my thing.
A few hours (and a weather hold) later, I was up for my low solo and Bear for his high. Because I was the only one exiting at 5500ft, I was a wee bit self-conscious as all the other experienced jumpers in the load were jeering and teasing me. The door was open and Nathan told me to lean out to spot the DZ. It was directly below the plane and as I was the only one exiting, I didn’t have to worry about a count. I did a float, kicking a bit as I fumbled for my pilot chute. I pulled within 500ft though as I was fully open above 5000ft. Dan Ortiz, one of the freefly coaches, filmed me as I left the plane and apparently I look like a paddling puppy. Oops, not exactly graceful, but at least I was stable and pulled.
The only time I have ever experienced vertigo during a skydive has been under canopy and it was definitely during my “hop ‘n’ pop.” I believe 5200ft is the highest I’ve ever been open. Opening during a low solo is very different as you haven’t yet hit terminal velocity as you throw your chute. As a result, it takes much longer for the parachute to fully deploy. In ground school they teach you to throw the pilot chute and then count five seconds before looking over your right shoulder to determine whether or not you have any canopy malfunctions. After five seconds my parachute was still in the process of opening.
As I was the only one in the sky, I took the opportunity to play a little and found the stall point under my canopy, which is the point at which all forward movement stops and only downward movement remains. Laticia, who was monitoring me from below, suggested that I try rear and front riser turns as well instead of steering with the brake toggles. Experimenting a little, I pulled on my left rear riser, which was much more difficult to manipulate than a toggle. The resultant turn was very slow. I attempted a front riser turn, which was practically impossible. Range told me later that I needed “guns” (with attendant pose) to perform front riser moves in a rig that size. Fine then, I’ll just work on that with my personal trainer. No radio assistance was needed, although I still came in on my ass. I lucked out on my first AFP jump when I managed to stand my landing; every other jump as been an ass landing. Dammit.
Bear bought his graduation case of beer and we spent the rest of the evening sitting by the pool, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, talking with the other skydivers, and cheering as jumpers from the sunset load came in swooping the slip ‘n’ slide they had set up. Fabulous.
Oh dear god, I am poor, poor, poor. In addition to my high and low solos today, I bought a helmet, an altimeter, and goggles, which was much more expensive than it ought to be. But the altimeter was rather necessary as I was entirely on my own today.
Saturday was spent being naked and lounging around in bed all day being lazy (yes!) like a White-Harp. Today Bear and I went down to the dropzone so he could graduate, which he did with no problems. Huzzah! We were in the same load for his graduation jump and my high solo. I was a little nervous about my high solo being as it was the first time I’d be going out the door without an instructor beside me. I was still on radio in case I needed it, but I was otherwise on my own for an entire 60 seconds of freefall.
I did a float exit, which I hadn’t done in a long time (my past three exits have been dives) and then a back flip, changing my fall rate (hearing the change in air speed was eerie) and then fell belly-to-earth the rest of the time, wondering what I should do with all the time I had left. I moved forward a little to avoid falling through a cloud and pulled at 5000ft.
The low solo was a little weird, being as I was the only one to exit at 5500ft. I pulled within two seconds of exit and was fully open above 5000ft, meaning I was under canopy forever. Still, it was pretty cool to have the entire sky to myself. I practiced rear and front riser turns and landing was fine with no radio assistance needed.
And now I’m beat. A better update to come later. More snuggling with Bear. Do not want to go to work tomorrow.
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