Jumping Journal: June 28, 2007

Crazed jumpers, residual soap effect and warm weather made for an interesting evening of jumping.

 

After a weird start to the summer season the weather has finally started to tame down a little.  The temps, for the most part have returned to what you would normally expect for this time of the year.  Granted last weekend into early this week the highs weren't even making it into the 70s and the past couple of days the highs have been in the 90s.  It all evens out quite nicely though.  Today the highs were still in the mid 80s with the temps suppose to drop back down into the lower 70s or upper 60s over the weekend into next week.  Ever since the rain both on Thursday and Friday last week it has remained dry, hence why I didn't jump last Thursday.

 

I got to the hill and about dropped my mouth on the ground.  Matt was there and it looked like he was planning on jumping.  Now the story here goes, Matt doesn't like to jump the 25 but he will jump the 50 and even jump the 90.  He just doesn't like the 25 in Lebanon very well, also, he has never jumped on plastic.  The only thing other than in Lake Placid around here that has plastic is the 25. He had been avoiding it all summer thus far.  Admittedly he did have surgery on his foot/lower leg recently.

 

After a nice warm run we changed into jumping gear and headed up the hill.  My first jump was short, granted there was no soap on the jump so no one was soaping up there skis.  I still did get around 13.5-14 meters but it was shorter than normal.  It seemed like I didn't do a very good job at cocking my ankles.

 

I get back up top and find someone scraping wax out of the grooves on their skis using the spray nozzle from a garden hose.  I wouldn't even have thought about mentioning it but he brought it up and said I should post it on my blog.  He said don't tell who did so I won't.  All I'll say is that he does have the same last name as my first name, LOL!!!  I guess his first run was a little hairy since he didn't wax in the normal way you would wax for summer jumping.

 

My second jump goes better, granted now they have found a bottle of liquid soap and all the other guys are using it like its the most plentiful thing on the planet.  I don't even bother to put any on mine since I know I will have the residual effect of the soap coming off their skis as they go down the track and it will end up soaping up my skis for me automatically.  I end up down closer to normal, in the 15-16 meter range.

 

On the next jump Cannonball gets me to try for the V.  It doesn't happen.  Otherwise the jump was pretty much the same once again.

 

Jump number I go for the V again and I end up initiating it a little later than normal.  It keeps getting wider and wider and wider and...Cannonball and I both was a little worried if I was going to pull back out from the V before I landed.  It just kept on spreading itself further apart by the millisecond.  That's not the first time I've had that experience though.  I think it is one of the reason that I normally don't always end up putting a V in in the first place.

 

The fifth and final jump and back to normal, maybe a bit of a V but not all that much.  It was one of those jumps where you just want to get the jump over with and end the evening on a good note.

 

By the way after riding the landing hill once Matt went up and ended up taking four or five jumps on the 25.  Maybe Matt is turning over a new leaf.  I hope he doesn't read this, LOL!!!

 

Crash