Jumping Journal: June 18, 2007

T minus 10 and counting.

 

Yep, it's now been 90 months since I first started ski jumping.  I haven't missed a month of jumping since I started.  10 more months and I'll be joining the old timers club, even though I don't think their is such a thing since I don't think anyone else has ever jumped this many months in a row before.

 

The weather almost seemed autumn like this afternoon and evening, at least compared to last Tuesday when some of guys got together and jumped.  West central New Hampshire experienced its first heat spell since the summer of 2002.  A heat spell is when the temperature reaches 90 degrees for three consectutive days.  Actually, Lebanon was 90 degrees or warmer Saturday, June 7th through Tuesday June 10th. Now we have instead entered a very summer like pattern without the summer time temperatures to add in the misery of the sunny mornings and rainy afternoons.  Instead the temperatures are once again right at or just below normal for this time of the year.  It sounds like this pattern is going to stick around for the next week at least.  I have never seen the weather forecast with this much rain in it.  Admittedly, the chances for rain are slim but they are still their.  The area can use it.

 

I made my way up to Storrs Hill Ski Area this afternoon after a morning of sunny skies that turned cloudy then finally rained about 3PM before turning back mostly sunny by the time I got to the hill shortly before 6PM.  Admittedly by the time I got home around 10PM it was raining again...go figure.

 

After a warm up run and some stretching and immos we suited up and the jumpers chose their game plans.  In all 10 jumpers, one adult, one Concord High School student, and 8 younger jumpers were all out jumping this evening.  It was the biggest summer jumping session I have seen in the past 90 months.  Normally if you get six jumpers to come out for a session, normally at the very beginning of the plastic season in April, then you can consider it a big crowd.  This year something else has happened, I'm not sure what.  After the past few years where the only jumpers have been adults this has once again been quite a pleasant surprise to be jumping with a bunch of kids once again.

 

As all the kids, several first time plastic jumpers, were getting used to the idea of being on plastic on the small sliding hill I walked up the landing hill of the K25 and was soon followed by one of the kids from the Andover Outing Club.  As I started up the inrun I noticed it looked like Cannonball had put the picnic table back up on the top of the inrun.  As I got a little further up I saw I was correct.  I didn't think much about until I was mid air for the first jump and I realized the difference the picnic table actually makes.  Instead of landing just before or MAYBE on the trap door I was solidly landing on or below the trap door.  Easily I was jumping 2-3 meters further than I had been jumping the last time I jumped three weeks ago.

 

After thinking about it for a second I remembered what I had been working on the last time I jumped and decided I would be smart and just keep working on it.  Like I said above the simple fact of not calculating in the picnic table caused me a little shock on the landing.  It almost seemed like I had soap on the bottom of the skis even though I didn't.

 

The second jump of the evening was probably the best all around jump of the evening.  Everything seemed like it was more fine tuned than it did at any other point during the session.

 

All in all I ended up taking six jumps.  One of the kids may have actually had a couple extra jumps on me.  It was impressive to watch AJ, around 9 years old.  I guess he has been jumping three years now, I can remember the winter of '07 and '08 but I don't remember seeing him in 2006.  He hadn't ever jumped on plastic yet.  He took several runs on the slide hill and then several runs and a couple of jumps on the landing hill of the K25.  Before the evening was over he had two or three jumps off the K25.  I was at the takeoff when he took his first jump and I must say he looked pretty good for his first jump off the K25 on plastic.  Way to go!

 

Crash