Jumping Journal: January 21, 2008

A jump I will not ever forget...a jump I never want to repeat.  It wasn't the thrill of victory...rather, it was...

 

As I pointed out yesterday the Hanover jump meet does seem to have a little stigma wrapped up in it for me at least.   I seem to have the memories from the 2003 jump meet that will probably never go away.  Well, I did forget two more memories from that weekend until tonight arrived.

 

On Friday evening that year I remember practicing at Oak Hill prior to the meet the following morning.  I remember the full moon out shining brightly.  I remember at one point thinking why not shut the lights off and jump under nothing more than moonlight.  I have wanted to do that ever since.  I still haven't had the chance to pull off the crazy idea but I would love, under the right snow conditions and a December or January full moon to give it jump.

 

The second memory comes from that final jump that Friday evening.  I decided to hold nothing back and jump like I meant too.  The only problem ended up being I jumped VERY late.  It hurt big time for a few seconds since I was trying to overextend muscles that normally wouldn't be overextended if I jumped on time.  I found myself pushing on nothing instead of on the end of the takeoff.  Yes, the final jump under the full moon...

 

I arrived at Storrs Hill this afternoon and I managed to get the front throws put back on the skis and it seems like I'm pretty darn close to being ready to do nothing more than an occasional wax job and plenty more continuous jumping.  I think all the ski work might be behind me for a while.  HOPEFULLY!!!

 

I did notice something before jumping, a pretty close to full moon was out shining brightly.  I guess the full moon is actually until tomorrow but it looked awfully full tonight.  This time the day after Hanover...spooky.

 

After doing some touch up work on the landing hill and inrun it was time to jump.  I did a little stretching and finished suiting up.  I headed up the inrun for the first jump of the evening.  To say the first jump of the evening was crappy would be an understatement.  In fact each of the first three jumps of the evening wasn't very good.

 

Nick Burke was coaching both I and Cooper Dodds.  Nick hasn't coached any yet this winter on the K50.  It was fun having him coach on the K50 last winter and it great to see him at it once again tonight.  I haven't seen Cooper do any jumping on the K50 in a couple of years.  Last year he spent the winter jumping/going to school in Lake Placid.  He decided not to do it this year and I managed to get to see him jump for the first time in almost a year tonight.  Rather strange to have both of the long time figured around ski jumping at Storrs Hill out at the jump tonight, on a near full moon...spooky.

 

After the crazy first three jumps were out of the way things started to settled down.  I finally started to jump like I had been last week prior to working on putting in a V.  It seems like that is when everything started to go downhill and become rather unusual.

 

Jump four and I was working on getting the shin angle better on the inrun and avoiding from 'checking my wallet'...err, 'grabbing my butt' in the air.  It did go better this jump.  The fifth jump went even better.  I couldn't even begin to tell how far I was jumping, my mind wasn't even of the distance.  I would say I was easily jumping further last week than most all of tonight.

 

Jump six.  The best jump of the night.  I pieced everything together for this one jump.  The only thing missing was a decent V.  Otherwise everything else was mixed together nicely.  I still wouldn't even take a stab at how far I jumped.  Toinght seemed to be a blur on how far I jumped on each and every jump.  I haven't had a night like this one in quite a while.

 

Jump seven and eight.  Each jump had something lacking, either lack of shin angle or grabbing my butt.  I was quite late at the takeoff on jump eight as well.

 

Jump nine, the final jump of the evening.  Yes, the final jump of the evening, under a near full moon, just one day away from the Hanover meet.  Like before the jump wouldn't be pretty.  This time around the jump wouldn't end on such a positive note either.  I remember before putting on the ski looking up at the near full moon and sensing a wolf howling at the moon.  Spooky thoughts.

 

I started down the inrun watching the shin angle making sure I had decent shin angle set.  As I got immediately above the transition/in the transition I noticed I was on my toes BIG TIME.  I haven't ever felt myself that much on my toes before in all the jumps I've taken.  I was way, way, way on my toes.  I tried to get my weight back but it didn't work.  Next thing I knew I was falling over forward about 10-15 feet before the takeoff.  My first thought was this wasn't going to be a pretty landing.  I figured it was going to hurt worse than anything imaginable.  I slid off the end of the end run and as it turns out I don't even remember feeling myself hitting the ground.  I think I managed to stay in a decent enough flight path that I just followed the contour of the hill and 'coasted' in for a crash landing.  I remember flipping and twisting around.  I don't remember the frist ski coming off but I did see the second ski come off.  I finally came to stop at the bottom of the landing hill.  As I was finishing sliding I saw my one ski head straight for the brook and off the side of the bridge.  I figured I was going to have one heck of a fun time fishing that ski out of the water.  I never did see what happened to the other ski.

 

I got up and walked over to the edge of the bridge and saw I got really lucky.  The ski went off the bridge but managed to stop and stick into the snow on the bank on the far side of the brook.  In a matter of a minute of so I had the ski retrieved and was back up on the bridge once again.  After doing some looking around I finally found that my other ski didn't even make it as far as the brook.  It ended up getting caught up in the left bank above the brook, just across from where we walk back up to the jump inn after we finish jumping for the evening.

 

I walked back up to the jump inn and Nick came in a minute or two later.  He said he was quite surprised to find I didn't do any damage to the track on the inrun.  He said he figured he would have to fix quite a few divots but their was none to be found. He also said I actually ended up landing quite a ways down the landing hill compared to what you would normally expect.  I figure that is why I never really felt the landing.  I ended up landing on the path of least resistance.

 

I did manage to karate chop myself across the right calf during the tumbling around on the landing hill but other than a sore spot on my right calf I walked away unharmed.

 

I would have to say it was one of the scariest crashes I have had thus far.  To walk away from it with nothing more than a nasty bump on my calf is very surprising.

 

Crash