Jumping Journal: May 27, 2008

Ahhh, summer at last.  Well, kinda.

 

Just like back on April Fools Day, the day when spring finally showed up here in western New Hampshire, Memorial Day brought summer in.  The first two weeks of April brought almost summer like weather to the area to only be replaced with unseasonably dry weather, but cool like it should be this time of the year.  In some cases like one day last week, very unseasonably cool.  Well, yesterday, Memorial Day, saw the arrival of summer.  Most of the three day weekend was partly to mostly sunny and both yesterday and a good chunk of today was above normal for temperatures.  Yesterday and today 82 was the high temperature in Lebanon.  Quite a shift in temperature.  The talk had been about us getting rain until 2-3PM this afternoon and then a cold front would move through and clear things out and cool things off.  The rain never came...okay, I was outside most all day and I did feel a couple of sprinkles but nothing more.

 

I arrived at the hill late this afternoon and it was starting to cool off some, but not much...YET.  I saw several vehicles there, of which the only one I really knew was Cannonball's.  I had sent out a message to the kids I figured might show up that we was going to be jumping this afternoon and I had received a message back from Tim Norris.  It was a message he sent to his kids to let them know of our intentions.  He said that if any of the kids were interested in going to let him know and he would plan on being there.  Now the strange thing is I have never seen Tim around a ski jump, when jumping is going on unless the jump is covered with snow.  This would change tonight.

 

I decided to go up tonight since their was a possibilty it might be my last chance in quite a while to see the voice of Lebanon ski jumping, Fred Baker.  He has moved to North Carolina with his wife and is about to sell his house just a couple blocks from the ski jumps on Friday this week.  I saw him last Wednesday after jumping and he made it sound like their was a possibilty he would be around tonight.  I questioned whether he would be back in town yet or not but I was willing to take the chance.

 

It turns out he didn't make back into town but instead Tim showed up at the hill with several of the Andover kids and a couple of the Concord High School kids.  Now seeing high school kids come out and jump on plastic is quite unusual.  If they are big into eastern jumping they will come out but to, predominately, be high school jumpers and show up to jump on plastic is unheard of, at least in the eight years I've been jumping I haven't seen it happen until now.

 

After Cannonball gave a general introduction to the differences between jumping on snow and jumping on plastic the kids and I headed out for a short warm-up run followed by some stretching.  After they did some immos with Cannonball we suited up and got ready to jump.

 

The kids all took a couple rides on the new, ease'm into plastic idea I mentioned last week.  I headed on up and started watering down the inrun on the K25.  Shortly one of the kids, who did jump on plastic a couple of years ago and was jumping the K50 this winter, came on up to ride the landing hill on the K25.

 

After getting the inrun and landing hill wet the other kids were all heading on up the steps to the takeoff and I headed on up the inrun for my first jump of the evening.

 

I wasn't thinking about much on my first jump.  Nothing really came to mind until I remembered what I had been working on last week.  This didn't happen until I was up top for the second jump.  The first jump was the shortest of the evening.  I was a little surprised at how short the jump was.  It didn't seem like the technique was all that bad but I must have did something wrong.  The rest of the jumps during the evening were easily 2-3 meters longer than the first one.  I did notice one thing quite different from last week.  It felt like their was a rather decent size bump on the outrun as you slid from the old sawdust to the new sawdust.  I didn't remember feeling the bump last week but it was there early on tonight.

 

I walked up for my second jump.  This time I decided to work on what I was doing last week.  The rest of the session I continued to work with the idea and it continued to get better with each jump.

 

The only problem it seems like I'm still have some trouble with, what else is new, is my timing at the takeoff.  It seems like I am jumping a split second too late on about every jump I take.  Cannonball mentioned afterwards that my technique was looking real good which kinda surprised me.  I didn't figure I was moving as far forward as he made it sound like I must have been doing.

 

I ended up taking five jumps for the session.  I was thinking about taking another one or two jumps but Cannonball needed some help in the maintainence building and by the time we were done everyone was finished jumping so...time shall tell...am I back to five jumps a session for the remainder of the warm part of summer or will I get a few more seven jump sessions in.  Five jumps per session seems like it has been the norm the past several years now.

 

Time shall tell...

 

Keep the ski tips up,

Crash