Jumping Journal: June 11, 2006

A whole month without ski jumping, OUCH!  Guess I have forgotten how much you forget when you don't jump in a while.  I use to pretty much only jump once every month, so this was normal.  Last year, jumping once or twice every week, I managed to come to know a different way of things occuring.  Now that Mother Nature, holidays and other things have managed to take me away from the jump for the past month, today was a refresher on why you don't take that much time off from jumping.

 

Since I jumped the last time it has rain all but one weekend which happened to be a holiday weekend where there no jumping planned.  It has been very unseasonable weather around here most of the year so far.  Winter was much warmer than normal.  Mid April into early May was much, much warmer than normal.  Since mid May things have changed dramatically.  The rain started falling again, in one three day period anywhere from 6-16 inches of rain fell across New Hampshire.  Memorial Day Weekend saw fabulous weather.  It really seemed like summer.  Since then the temps have been well below normal, up to 20 degrees below normal.  The past two weekends have seen coastal storm fronts hit the area.  Normally these kind of storm fronts hit during the winter months and dump snow across New England but since the temperatures aren't quite cold enough for snow it has caused the area to get dumped with yet more rain.  The additional problem has been that each of the past two weekends has seen temperatures only in the upper 50s or barely getting into the 60's.  Normally temps should be in the mid 70's this time of the year.

 

All of this crummy weather has kept me away from the jump.  I didn't think I was even going to end up jumping today due to travel plans.  The travel plans got cancelled due to the weather.  I should have seen that one coming.

 

I got to the hill and made some quick duct tape repair to my blue jeans.  I have been jumping in blue jeans during the summer months since I started jumping six years ago.  The pair of pants I have been jumping in for the past couple of years had a rip in the rear, from crashing too much.  I had duct taped the whole but the duct tape was finally coming lose.  I put on some new duct tape to close up the whole.  After stretching I put on the blue jeans and long sleeve shirt and headed up the jump.

 

After rubbing soap on the skis I got up on the picnic table, err stepped on the plastic.  The duct tape was already starting to come apart and I could tell that it wasn't going to be a pretty day of jumping, at least not for anyone that would be watching.  I got the signal and headed down the inrun.  The last time I jumped I had an extremely smooth inrun position.  Today was pretty decent but nowhere near as smooth as last time.  My jump wasn't too bad but as usual I didn't cock the ankles/drive through the heels.  I landed and rode it.

 

I went back up for the second jump and had pretty much the same results as the first jump.  The third jump was good other than the fact that I jumped early.  The fourth jump started off pretty good and then I ended up crashing for no reason at all right about the time I got to the sawdust.  As I walked back up for jump number five I was told by Sam Burke that he couldn't figure out any reason at all as to why I crashed.  I laughed on walked on up the tressel.  I guess he hasn't watched me jump enough over the past couple of years to understand why I crash.

 

As I was putting on my skis for the fifth jump I was also noticing the whole in the pants was going to create for a rather interesting show on the next jump, aka I was hoping that not too many people would watch or they would end up getting mooned, unintentionally.  The tape had come completely loose in the crash and had the rip had grown bigger.

 

The fifth jump went pretty much just like the fourth jump including the crash and the rip getting bigger, including ripping the underwear I had on at the time.  To say the least, I knew not to take another jump.  All in all for not having jumped in a month the day didn't go to bad.

 

Crash