Jumping Journal: November 05, 2006

End of the summer.  Strange to think that summer is over and winter is just around the corner.  The early setting sun does give the feel that the seasons are a changin'.  The snow that has fallen on a couple of occasions has also helped.  Not far from Storrs Hill there is snow on the ground, it's just a little higher in elevation where the temps are a few degrees colder.

 

This month marks the picket fences month, err month 111 consectutive months of jumping.  It took me a minute to figure out what Cannonball was talking about when he mentioned picket fences.

 

It ended up just being Cannonball and myself out jumping today for the last jumping session on plastic for the year.  I ended up taking five jumps without the use of soap as there was no soap around.  The first jump caught me a little off guard as there wasn't much speed without the soap on the bottom of the skis.  I didn't really notice the lack of speed as much as I noticed the lack of distance on the jump.  It was one of the shortest jumps I've had on the 25 in quite a long while.  Cannonball's first jump was only about 16 meters, he normally jumps closer to 20 meters.

 

The second was further down the hill, closer to 16 meters where I typically land.  The rest of the 5 total jumps I took for the day were pretty much in the same general area.  It seemed like I just wasn't doing quite as well, comfortwise as usual.  I figure that is because of not having jumped since the beginning of October.

 

The fall months definitely didn't pan out quite as I figured they would.  I thought I would be out most every weekend from late September on except both Columbus Day Weekend and the weekend after that.  Boy, how things change.

 

This definitely wasn't the summer of 2005 by any stretch of the imagination.  Last summer I ended up with around 225 jumps and I only had 2 weeks that I didn't jump all summer long.  To end up this summer with only 70 jumps is quite a contrast.  Winter is just around the corner, though, and I pretty much put all my focus on winter jumping and hopefully this year will give more days of jumping and more jumps than last year.  Also I hope for longer jumps than last year.

 

Maybe this late season stretch without any crashes might be a good sign as to what is going to bring.  Hey, I could take a winter with 4-500 jumps without any crashes.  I wouldn't complain at all.

 

Crash