Jumping Journal: March 09, 2006

Day 55, err day 11 in a row.  Don't you just love the sting of wind driven sleet when it hits you in the face while jumping or it hits you on the back of the neck while standing atop the inrun.

 

Oh yes, a rather interesting afternoon of jumping the 50 once again.  Around 10AM this morning it started snowing.  The wet, heavy variety, not the usual dry, fluffy snow we typically get here in New Hampshire.  By 4PM it had mostly let up but there was still some snow/sleet/rain that was falling as I drove to the hill.  There wasn't much in the way of accumulation, around 1/2 inch or so.  It was enough to slow things down though since it was so wet.  Temperatures were hovering right at the freezing point most of the day.

 

I headed up and decided to play it smart and take an outrun, shame for shame.  Everything was fine on the landing hill and the outrun, on the way out.  Coming back in was another altogether as Dan and I both found a couple of sticky spots that only effected you while you moving slowly across them, with jump speed you didn't notice them at all.

 

As Dan headed up for his first jump Cannonball and Esky showed up and flagged us for our first several jumps.  I walked up behind Dan and had a pretty decent first jump given the conditions.  I wasn't hesitant at all.  I normally would be.  I guess I was dropping on the hands though at the takeoff according to Cannonball.  At least I jumped instead of letting myself just slide off the end like I typically would end up doing.

 

Each jump over the course of the late afternoon/early evening saw improvement.  I did have one real nice jump where I actually jumped on time.  That has been on real big problem that I have had in the second half of this winter.  The first I didn't have any trouble jumping on time, but here in the past several weeks I seem to be jumping late every jump.  I'm not sure why.

 

I did grab one or two nice V's and managed to stick each of the 8 jumps all the way through without crashing.  I did go down at the very end on a couple of the jumps but it wasn't anything I would truly deem as a crash, more conditions related than anything else.  So far the inrun is holding up and the landing hill is holding up as well.  We may still get several more days of jumping in before we have to call it quits for the year on the 50.  Right now I'm just hoping to pull off four more jumps on the 50 before the season is over.  196 jumps so far this year on he 50.  I would love to get 200.

 

Crash