Well, July 2009 has come to an end, but what a great month it was – in more ways then one!
The month started with jump number 229 on the 3rd, a pseudo coaching dive with a Christian, a jumper back from a 7 year layoff. He’d already done a recent recurrency jump with an Instructor at another dropzone and then another with an Instructor at Skydive Tecumseh. But on this jump we were still working on some basic fall rate and docking skills. This jump definitely cemented my decision to enroll in the coach course later in the month. Later that night we did a 13-way dive that had experience levels from 43 jumps to 12,142 – I remember there was a plan, but the video just shows a big ball of shit!
The 4th of July was very special – a six point nine way, a five point nine way, a four point eight way, and one of my best sunset tracking dives! That’s my camera on the leader and it’s me docking on the left. Most importantly, we did night jumps on the fourth, and no matter how much I try, I can not explain how patriotic I felt watching hundreds of fireworks and dozens of grand finales covering the ground beneath me. I got video of my solo night jump, but you can’t really see much – hey, it was night time! But I forgot to turn on the camera for the following four way group jump on the next load! Â That Sunday continued the many more bigways, up to a fourteen way skydive!
Jump number 250 was my first jump flying outside camera for a four-way (they got three points). Being a part of Brian’s 1200th, Margret’s 1200th, and Mike’s 1800th skydive was very rewarding, and was a very well done skydive! On July 16th & 17th I was able to enroll in a Coach Course by Bram Clement at SkydiveRatings.com and got my Coach Rating card in the mail a few days later!
The next day brought my first experience as a Coach – telling my student they were grounded due to weather – even while everyone else was still jumping 🙁 But she took it well and I was able to do my first Coaching jumps the next day on the 19th.
The jumps got lean towards the end of the month, but the quality surely improved. There was a 29 point two way with me and jon; and finally ending the month with Greg back in the air and a five way missing man dancing spider!
All in all a great month… Night Jumps, Big ways, Coach Rating course, my first (and so far only) student, first outside camera jump, and a lot of quality fun jumps in between for a total of 38 skydives!