Jumping Journal: February 12, 2006

Day 35.  As the comment was heard today, "This was the first meet of the season at Newport."  Normally they have had a couple of high school meets by now, but not this year.  Granted it was only the second day that the hill has been jumped this year.  Yes, Mother Nature has been rather cruel this year, too say the least.  I spent Friday night helping make snow at the jump.  We shut off the compressors around 7AM and after rolling up hoses and getting everything returned I left the hill around 8:45.  I was going to jump yesterday at Andover, but I couldn't get myself out of the car.  Granted, there was only two jumpers jumping on the 38, and that didn't help the motivation factor either after not having any sleep in over 24 hours.

 

Today I headed for the Newport Winter Carnival Jump Meet, one of the few meet that I actually jump in each year.  As I got there final touches were being put on the hill and it was actually snowing, quite a twist from what the rest of the year has brought so far.  Fortunately, the heavy snow had stayed to the southeast of the area and never made it into Newport.  Also the windy conditions also never made it into Newport.  They also stayed down to the southeast.  The Newport jump really takes a hit by any winds coming out of the north.  There were a few gusts of wind during the day but nothing like what it was down along the coast.

 

I put on the jump suit, yes, I decided to be crazy and wear the jump suit, thankfully.  I did an outrun and saw probably the best outrun conditions that I have ever seen at Newport.  I headed up the landing hill and when I got to the takeoff Ron Beaudet was telling another man that he should grab a picture looking up the inrun as a jumper was coming down the inrun, and just duck down before the jumper got to the takeoff.  Ron looked at me and asked me if I minded him doing it when I jumped.  I said, "Sure, definitely do it on the first jump since the conditions would be the slowest on the first jump with the fresh snow falling".  I was going to end up being the first person down the inrun for the day.

 

I walked up the tressel and put on the skis.  I started down the inrun and the guy ducked before I got to the takeoff.  I landed the jump and in good old fashion I went down shortly after the old fall line.  As I got up I just laughed saying "I have the jump suit on."  As I made my way back up to the takeoff I find out that the photographer chickened out and didn't press the button hard enough on the camera.  I told him to try it again on the next jump.

 

I walked up the tressel and put the skis on once again.  I had to coax the photographer, from the top of the inrun, to get him to try to take the picture again.  I started down and this time as I looked up around the transition on the inrun I noticed he wasn't moving as quickly this time.  This time he did get the photo.  It looked pretty good from what I could tell by looking at the digital screen on the camera after I got back up to the takeoff.  Admittedly my inrun position wasn't the greatest from what I could see.  I'll have to wait until it gets put on the web to really be able to tell what the position looked like.  I'll also post the link to the photo once it gets up on the net and see if I can't possibly grab it for myself and put it on the blog.

 

Each of the remaining three practice jumps went pretty decent as well.  Definitely not much speed on the inrun thanks to the fresh snow that fell for the next couple of hours.

 

The meet started up and I thought I had a pretty decent first jump, turns out it wasn't as good as what I thought it was.  The second and third jumps weren't much better.  I was only managing 21.5-22 meters on the 30 meter jump each of the three jumps.  I was outdistanced by all the jumpers in the out of high school class, which included four masters, one female and one college jumper.  I ended up being beat by both Dan Brown and Bill Ryan, who attended the US Masters Championships last month.  Amazingly, Bill still only has around 30 jumps this winter, most of them at US Masters.

 

A few of the kids and I took two more jumps after the meet was over and then I called it a day with 10 jumps.  Finally, I managed to jump Newport for the first time this year.  I'll probably spend the next three evenings jumping in Newport.  As much as I don't like the Newport jump, I can't avoid jumping there.  It's just one of those crazy things.

 

Crash