Jumping Journal: March 03, 2006

Day 49.  One more before the big 50. 

 

I had planned on getting to the hill around 9AM to help Cannonball get a new track cut in the inrun.  The track from yesterday had fallen on very hard times by the end of the competition.  I'm still surprised that I didn't hear any of the kids complain about it.  I didn't manage to get to the hill until about 10:30.  I stopped to pick up a picture of Bob Rollins that will be used in the final results program.  I ended up talking with Bob's son and daughter in law for much longer than planned.

 

By the time I arrived they had most of the new track cut and were almost ready for a couple of us to take some jumps to check the inrun.  I knew I had to get the bindings changed over to the skis I have been using most of the winter.  Since I changed boots the old bindings wouldn't work with the "new" boots.  I started to change them over when one of the other jumpers mentioned an idea.  I decided to hold up with changing the bindings over.  I knew I couldn't use the bindings on the skis that they were already on since a couple of the screw holes were stripped out and was causing the adjustable bindings to want to adjust whether I liked it or not.  Naturally, I didn't like it.

 

I ended up putting on another pair of boot, not my old ones or new ones but another pair that was setting there that I knew fit halfways decent like.  I picked out a different pair of skis that had Silveretta style bindings and headed on up the hill.  I had never used Silveretta style bindings before and I could tell that there was going to be rather interesting problem, the long cords.  Pretty much I have always been keeping short cords.  This pair of skis had long cords on them and with the windy conditions I knew it could end up being rather interesting, to say the least.

 

On the first jump I flat out take it easy to test the skis out and to try to get a feel for how the longer cords was going to react with the wind the way it was.  I didn't have a very good as a result.

 

I went up and took another jumper before being told to call it quits so they could start icing down the track.  The second jump went much better as I did actually jump and cock the ankles, lightly.  The wind tried to take over control but I held my ground and walked away with a better jump then the first one.

 

I spent the afternoon helping to ice the track before going to the Junior Olympic Committee meeting.  Funny thing I heard at the meeting was about trying to go out and get the NCAA back into ski jumping.  The approach that they are talking about investigating further isn't a bad idea, get the ski jump facilities around the country to be willing to host the meets versus forcing the colleges to have to have ski jumps.  Part of there idea still needs some work at least in my head it does.

 

I made my way back to the hill to find the wind once again gusting right along.  The target jump competition did manage to go off with nothing more than a couple of stalls to let the wind calm down some.  Their was many real nice jumps put in by the competitors.  The funny thing about the target comp was being able to predict how far the jumpers were going to go before they even started down the inrun.  I have been the Chief Starter for the whole event so far.  I guess I have gotten to know the kids pretty darn well.  I was guessing their distance quite accurately, 75% of the time just by watching the jumpers prior to them and seeing which bar they were choosing to jump from.

 

Crash