Jumping Journal: August 18, 2007

Unthinkable.  It'll never happen, not in a million years.  Or so I used to think.

 

In the previous post, The Mental Deception, I never have jump on plastic anywhere other than in Lebanon.  Me make the trip up to Lake Placid to summer jump, not a chance.

 

After two uneventful evenings, yes I did manage a full nights sleep both nights, VERY SURPRISINGLY like.  I took the drive on up to Lake Placid this morning with on and off rain showers most of the way over.  That was the first strange thing, it was raining, not snowing.  At least the temperature was seeming a little more winter like as it was only 47 degrees when I got into Lake Placid this morning.  Definitely didn't feel like August.

 

After a warmup run and doing some fix up work down at the bottom of the jump, Dan, Cannonball and I headed back up top to suit up and get ready to jump.

 

I have heard the stories from both Dan and Cannonball about their unfavorable first attempts at jumping on plastic on the 48.  Both had ended up taking nice tumbles on their first couple of jumps due to the change in position of where the plastic/sawdust transition line falls.  According to both of them in Lebanon it is much further from the landing hill transition point than it is at Lake Placid so if you aren't expecting the quicker transition to sawdust you will find yourself tumbling.  When I was looking at the hill first thing this morning it didn't seem like it was that much closer to the transition than it was in Lebanon.  Both Dan and Cannonball had trouble with it though in the past and I kinda wondered about it, too say the least.  It did look like it was a mute point.

 

One other thing that I has heard was that if the grass was wet to expect to go all the way to the boards at the end of the outrun and still need more space to stop, err plan on doing a setting down hockey stop to come to a stop if the grass was wet.  Well the rain that had fallen earlier was definitely making for wet grass.  I thought about that fact very shortly after I got to the hill before Dan and Cannonball ever pulled in.

 

After suiting up all three of us decided to take a ride down the landing hill.  For me to ride the landing hill is an awful sin anymore, but I wouldn't have jumped without doing it first.  Dan and Cannonball went first and I watched them.  It seemed like they were stopping with plenty of room, granted it was only the speed of the landing hill and not with the speed of the inrun included.

 

I was looking down the landing hill, rather nervously like.  The plastic at the top of the landing hill seemed like it was quite narrow in width.  Boy am I ever use to much wider plastic right from the takeoff.  It seemed strange, for the first time since I jumped the 48 for the first time back in 2002, I was actually nervous to ride the landing hill, yet along to jump.  Both of the two times I have been nervous before jumping have both been on the K48 in Lake Placid, VERY WEIRD!

 

The ride down the landing hill was smooth as butter.  I had no trouble stopping and everything seemed effortless.

 

We headed back up and after Cannonball took his first jump for the day it was my turn.  I was looking down the inrun and it looked like when you landed you would be lucky to not end up landing on grass versus plastic.  It seemed like there was more plastic on the left side than the right side.  i headed down the inrun, nice and comfortable(no nerves) and jumped.  I was surprised, rather quickly, that I centered right over the plastic.  It truly is an optical illusion.  I landed, it seemed short, and rode the landing hill and made it across the sawdust and grass fine and came to a stop.  Talk about a relief...  That was a big relief.

 

The second jump was about the same, it did seem like I had more speed going through the transition on the landing hill on the second jump than on the first jump.  The second jump was nice and smooth ride out as well.  So was the third jump.  Then things changed.

 

On jump four, the jump went smooth.  I made it onto the sawdust and found myself getting the tips crossed as I was riding across the sawdust.  I ended up on my side before I stopped.  Yeah, I was mad.  I kinda knew what had happened.  Jump five I decide to avoid that problem and instead find myself trying to do the splits, so as to make sure I couldn't cross the tips of the skis.  I end up sitting down before I come to stop.  On the sixth and final jump of the morning I just ended up WAY too far back and ended up losing it again.  No real crash or anything like that but it did make a sawdust mess all over the skis and the jump suit.

 

After grabbing lunch and watching the freestyle aerials exhibition Cannonball and I went for another warmup run and then all three of us headed back for more jumping.

 

My first jump went smooth, once again, like all morning and pretty much all after long, I was landing roughly in the 30 meter range.  Definitely not as far as I was over the winter, but as Cannonball pointed out, I'm not out jumping 50 jumps a week right now on the 50 meter jump in Lebanon like I was all last winter.  I had seen two jumps in the past months prior to today.

 

My second jump returned to sitting back too far going through the sawdust.  I ended up going down again.

 

The third, fourth and fifth jumps of the afternoon were all better and I managed to keep myself up like I need to going through the sawdust.

 

I did manage to keep the ankles cocked better during the afternoon than I was in the morning.  It took me several jumps before I ever realized that I wasn't cocking my ankles.  I do need to get back to putting more effort into the takeoff.  I guess, according to Cannonball, that I was being pretty whimpy about my takeoff.  If I was jumping late I had power, if I was jumping on time I didn't have power.  Time to get that problem straightened out once again.

 

All in all it was the nicest day of jumping I think I have had ever since I started jumping.  The hill looks even less intimidating during the summer than it does when it is covered in snow.  That does puzzle me.  The K90 even looks VERY inviting granted I will wait on that until I can pretty much replicate the conditions I had when I took the digger last winter.  I want to see how the subconscious mind is going to respond.  I know the conscious mind doesn't remember any of the crash at all, not even now six months later, but the subconscious mind knows what happened and I have a feeling it will try to do everything in its power to keep me off the 90, especially under the same kind of circumstances.

 

Not bad for a first time jumping on plastic other than in Lebanon, 11 jumps.  I think that is close to the most number of jumps I have seen on all plastic during the middle of the summer months.  Springtime I have seen more, I think, but never during the warm part of the summer.  Admittedly, when I left today it was still only 60 degrees.  It's mid August and the high temperature is only in the lower 60s.  Something is terribly wrong with this picture.

 

Time shall tell.

 

Crash