Jumping Journal: March 30, 2008

Last year on March 24th I posted the lyrics to a song parody that I came up with.  I thuoght the end of the season was at hand.  Little did know at the time Mother Nature had other plans for us ski jumpers.  Well, I'll try it again this year.  Hopefully, the lyrics will be as good or better than my attempt last year.

 

Parody of Closing Time by Semisonics:

 

Melting time

Melting snow on the jumps bringing the season to an end

 

Melting time

Time for all the jumpers to start a new season on the mend

 

Melting time

One last chance to take a jump or wait til the end of the year

 

Melting time

Don't miss this chance to jump while its still here

 

I know that winter's almost gone

I know that winter's almost gone

I know that winter's almost gone

 

Almost gone

 

Melting Time

Time for you to go jump to the places you want to land

 

Melting time

This jump won't be open til the snow flies and you lend us a hand

 

So step into your jump skis scoot onto the jump bar wait for the signal to go

 

Melting time

This could be the last jump til another winter snow

 

I know that winter's almost gone

I know that winter's almost gone

I know that winter's almost gone

 

Almost gone

 

Melting Time

Time for you to go jump to the places you want to land

 

I know that winter's almost gone

I know that winter's almost gone

I know that winter's almost gone

 

Almost gone

 

I know that winter's almost gone

I know that winter's almost gone

I know that winter's almost gone

 

Winter's gone

 

Melting time

This could be the last jump til another winter snow

----------------------------------------------------

Day 52.  Things changed, circumstances changed, weather changed, plans changed.  Gee, could anything else change.

 

After jumping Thursday evening it sounded like we wouldn't even contemplate jumping until April Fool's Day at the earliest.  Cannonball wasn't planning anything until this coming week.  He was thinking about trying to get April out of the way right at the beginning of the month.  I didn't talk with Dan before he left Thursday evening but I knew I had hit all my goals that I was really hoping to hit this winter so it didn't bother me if I ended up jumping again this winter or not.  I knew the only two things I could gain by jumping any more this winter was securing April on the K25 and/or reducing the number of jumps I would need next winter to achieve 1000 jumps on the K50 between 2007and 2009, one goal for next year.

 

Overnight Thursday into the day on Friday I received four inches of wet, heavy snow.  Otherwise the temperatures were pretty much right around the freezing point all day long.  It was pretty obvious that the K50 should have plenty of snow be jumped, probably even from house once again.

 

Friday evening I went up to Storrs Hill for the annual volunteer recoginition party.  Talking with Cannonball before leaving he said he was planning on spending this week at home and not come up to the hill.  I figured with the weather forecast for Monday through the rest of the week the odds of getting any more jumping in on snow would be over until next winter.

 

After I got home Friday evening I saw I had an email from an old timer...yes the oldest of the old timers, 70 year old Don West.  The subject of the message was "Any jumping coming up?"  I was quite surprised to see an email from him.  Reading the email and a few that followed over the past couple of days I found out that Lake Placid finished their jumping season on Friday and its wasn't the best of experiences for Don in what is his biggest winter of jumping in quite a few years.  At Mud Meet Don was talking about trying to get out both days they was going to be jumping in Lake Placid the following week and get jumps 87-100 for the winter.  He hasn't taken 100 jumps in a single winter in years.  Well, between that week and last week he managed to get himself up 109 jumps for the winter.

 

Friday was a frustrating day.  Things didn't go as nice as he was hoping for the last day of the winter.  He was wanting to know if we was planning on doing any jumping in the next couple of days before the spring weather moved in.  I forwarded the email off to Dan and a few others as well.

 

Saturday morning I got an email back from Dan saying that he would be willing to jump today or Monday but after that the weather was suppose to change and he had a funeral mid week he was going to be at anyways.  We managed to set up a plan to jump late this morning while the weather was still good.  Admittedly, we didn't finalize plans until late last night.  So we never heard anything back from Don as to whether he was going to come or not.

 

Saturday cleared out nicely and it was sunny from late morning straight through today.  The high on Saturday was 30 and it dropped back into the single digits last night.  Yeah, the average high for this time of the year is 45-46 degrees.  We have been 10-15 degrees below normal for several weeks now.

 

Today started out cold but the temperature rose quite nicely and quite quickly.  By the time I left for the hill, around 9:00AM the temperature was already in the upper 20s and the skies were 100% clear.  As I walked from the parking lot up to the jump inn I noticed that the new snow was hard but trying to soften up.  Dan was already there working on the inrun so I changed into my jump boots and grabbed my skis and headed up to start foot packing the landing hill.  As I was finishing my first pass down Dan started down behind me with the rake.  There was still no signs of Don.

 

I started down for the second pass and got down to where the sledders had plowed the snow off the hill for us and Dan and I decided it would probably be best to change over and start raking the nice pile the sledders left for us.  I went in and changed back into my regular boots and took off the ski bibs I had put on at the beginning, they were way too warm.

 

I walked back out and managed to get most of the left side of the hill taken care of and started working further on down into the outrun while Dan started his second pass down with the rake.  I was working the top of the bridge when I heard Dan say something.  I looked back up toward the jump inn and saw Don West standing there with his skis over his shoulders.  I yelled up "Hot damn, he made it!"  I was hoping he would show up.

 

He came on down and helped finish raking out the outrun and we proceed to help Dan finish off the landing hill before suiting up.

 

It ended up being noon time or after before we ever made it out to jump, I figured we would probably be jumping by 11:30AM at the latest.  All three of us rode the landing hill and I flagged Dan for his first jump from the bottom of the landing hill since Don and I was moving slower than Dan.

 

Dan rather strangely ended up sticking on his first jump right in the transition on the landing hill.  None of us had any trouble when we rode the landing hill so it was unusual to see someone have trouble when they jumped.

 

As Don and I walked up the landing hill stairs Don made mention that he would have to remember to change his inrun position.  For some reason he thinks he has to ride more on his heels on the K50 in Lebanon than he does anywhere else.  I'm not sure what the mentality behind that is.  I've never noticed any kind of difference between any of the jumps, other than ???MAYBE??? the K65 in Salisbury.  That's questionable though.

 

I went up and was the second person to jump.  The conditions were definitely the slowest I have seen them in quite a few weeks.  The temperature had to easily be into the lower 40s in the sun by the time we started jumping.  In the shade it was in the upper 30s.  I looked down the inrun and noticed the track Dan set wasn't the straightest but it wasn't bad either.  I figured I would try and see if I couldn't straighten out his skied in track.  Yeah, the sledders even decided to try going at least half way up the inrun and see if they couldn't hurt themselves.  They destroyed the track we had previously in the inrun as a result.

 

I pretty much ended up following Dan tracks right on the money.  The small wobble Dan made I followed perfectly, I'm still not sure how.  It must have been a bit of a pitch in the inrun that created the situation which caused each of us rode the same track all day.

 

Right before the takeoff I noticed something weird.  I couldn't really tell what it was but it did catch me off guard and I reacted and ended up blowing the jump big time.  I only went 28-29 meters.  I think that was my longest jump of the day.  I rode the landing hill and had no problem with it or the outrun.

 

I walked back up the stairs and flagged Dan for a nice smooth second jump and than flagged Don.  Everything looked swell as he was coming down the inrun and then right before the takeoff I heard him go OHHHHHHH.  I could tell by looking that he was WAY far back behind on the takeoff.  I thought he was going to make the jump successfully but he ended up losing on the bottom of the landing hill and went over rather hard.  He started to slide toward the edge of the bridge but managed to come to a stop before he could go over the edge.  He ended up dinging himself up on his 110th jump of the season and didn't jump the rest of the day.  He did give himself a bit of facial AND leg road/snow rash otherwise he was fine.

 

I walked back up and met Dan at the top of the jump and told him about Don's comments earlier about having to change his inrun position to jump the K50.  Dan took his second jump and I followed behind him.  Everything seemed better this time but I was still a little 'nervous'.  It is that time of the year and the conditions are such that you definitely watch out or you could get caught by anything.

 

We walked back up and went for the third round.  This time I ended up sticking going across the bridge.  I wasn't really expecting it as the snow looked like it shouldn't be causing any stickiness.  The appearance was very deceiving.  It remained sticky the rest of the session.  At least today it was sticky where I typically expect it to be sticky, unlike what it was back on Thursday afternoon.

 

The fourth round was pretty much identical to the third round.  I was only going 27-28 meters thanks to the slow conditions.  Fortunately, I hadn't noticed any stickiness on the inrun.  After Dan's fourth jump he said he was done.  He also said he had stuck on the inrun on that jump.

 

I wanted to grab one more so I headed up for what looks to be my final jump on snow for the winter of 2008.  All the way up I had the Semisonic song going through my head.  I must admit it has been going through my mind for the past couple of weeks now.

 

The last jump of the season wasn't worth a crap.  I ended up jumping whimpishly and late as well.  I landed somewhere around 25 meters or so and managed to avoid the sticky part as I had found on the jump before it that if I skied my way to the right side of it then I didn't notice the stickiness as much.

 

As we changed and as we were walking back out to our cars we continued to talk with each other.  Don figured it was probably on about 32 degrees in the shade and 35 in the sun.  I checked the thermometer on the lodge as we walked by.  It is always in the shade.  It was showing 40 degrees.  I kinda figured it had to be in the 40s to be softening up as much as it was.

 

As it turns out I should have thought more about taking one more jump today.  It looks like I ended up the season with 449 jumps on snow.  Drats, one shy of 450.  I had thought about taking one more jump but when I managed to bomb the last jump I decided to call it quits.  I could kick myself for that one, at least I can in hindsight.

 

The forecast right now is for rain everyday except Thursday starting tomorrow late morning/early afternoon all the way to and through next weekend.  The high tomorrow is supposed to be 38 wh a low of 38 tomorrow night.  The high on Tuesday is suppose to hit 60.  It's suppose to remain in the 40s all week long.  It does look like winter jumping is over for another year.  Time shall tell.

 

Crash