Jumping Journal: November 15, 2006

Okay...so I lied.  I didn't know that summer wasn't over yet.  It was scheduled to be over but no one ever told that to Mother Nature.

 

Temps over the past week have pretty much not dropped below 45 degrees, day or night.  Today they even hit 59 for the high.  Temps like that wasn't about to freeze the irrigation pipe that feeds the jump so with the nice weather that was forecasted for today, why not go out and jump.

 

I received an email from Dan last night asking if I wanted to jump this afternoon.  I said sure, so we got together late this afternoon and did quite a bit of late season, notice I'm not saying end of season this time around, jumping.

 

I ended up using the winter skis, 262 Elan's instead of the usual 250 (heavy weight) Fischers that I normally jump in during the summer months.  This might be what was playing a role in the first couple of jumps that I took this afternoon.

 

The first jump surprised me quite a bit since I wasn't using soap on the bottom of the skis and I ended up with a decent jump of aroud 16-17 meters.  The second jump was even better before everything started to fall apart.

 

The strange thing that i started noticing on the second or third was that it seemed like, for several jumps, that I tilted coming down the inrun.  It felt like I was riding the inside edge of my right ski.  This problem seemed to throw me off for the next several jumps and I started landing shorter as a result.

 

The other strange thing that Dan agreed with was that it seemed like the more jumps we took the slower it got and the shorter we flew.  I did notice it while watching/flagging him during the evening.  He did managed to get enough soap out of the bottle on the last jump he took to be able to get a nice solid 17-17.5 meter jump for his last one.

 

Most of my 10 jumps for the evening, yes I did say evening, landed around the 15-16 meter mark.

 

One thing that I have wanted to do for quite some time, even going back a full year ago, was to be crazy enough to jump on plastic under the lights.  I have been wondering what it would be like.  Would it be almost suicidal(sp?) or would it not make much of a difference between jumping on snow under the lights and jumping on plastic under the lights.

 

We met at the hill at 3:30PM and finally started jumping around 4PM.  The sun sets 4:24PM this time of the year.  I knew that either we weren't going to take many jumps or we were going to be jumping under the lights finally.  The lights won.

 

The last jump I took for the evening came around 4:50PM.  There wasn't much of any ambient sunlight left to help illuminate the inrun or landing hill.  Everything was artifical light.

 

I now have to say that I would much rather jump on plastic during the nighttime hours than the daytime hours, this is figuring the whole inrun being plastic like it is here in Lebanon.  Wetting down the plastic and turning on the lights make the jump just as bright as it is during the winter.  The only area that doesn't have much light during the winter, the outrun, still doesn't have much light this time of the year.  It is cooler, especially in the summer months, during the evening/overnight hours.

 

It was quite amazing how easy it was to see everything.  I think everyone, until tonight, thought the same way that I had been thinking, you can't jump on plastic under the lights...you can't see to land.  Now I know differently, and I would do it again, in a heartbeat.  The only hard thing about jumping on plastic under the lights, figuring as I did that you have on amber colored googles, is seeing the outrun before you started down the inrun.  That is quite dark from up top.  Once you are in the air and have landing you can see it quite well enough to be able to ride the outrun safely.  Neither Dan or I had any trouble doing so tonight.

 

Will this be the last time jumping on plastic for 2006...?  Only time will tell.  Last year the first day on snow was November 27th.  By this time last year I think we had already seen the irrigation pipe freeze over and we had to run garden hoses up from the lodge to be able to water down the plastic..  The forecast right now is still keeping the daytime highs at 60 tomorrow and 60/falling during the day on Friday.  More reasonable and below normal temps coming over the weekend into early next week.  Who knows we may still jump snow in November this year.  Time shall tell.

 

Crash