Jumping Journal: September 14, 2008

The nickname stands...err CRASHes.  What a dousy.  The second best of all time.

 

A rainy start to the day and the forecast of showers and storms this afternoon almost caused me to skip out on ski jumping this afternoon in Lebanon.  The skies were mostly cloudy all afternoon but trying to get work done on project I've been busy with for the past couple weeks had me thinking twice about going up to do any jumping.

 

I decided since I needed to pick some stuff up, I could do it in Lebanon or Claremont, I figured I could make the trip worthwhile and add some ski jumping into the plans and pick up the stuff I was going to get in Lebanon.  I knew I had a couple of other errands to run as well and they would fit right in to the mix quite perfectly.

 

I arrived at Storrs Hill to find only one other jumper present.  Actually there were several there but only one that was planning on doing any jumping.  The others had been there working on securing up a building that need some work done to it.  The temperature was close to 80 with the humidity close to 100%.  It was by far the warmest day of jumping I've seen in a LONG time.  I would guess it has been two or three years since I felt it this balmy when ski jumping.

 

I suited up and headed on up the hill.  As usual, I didn't bother messing with soaping the skis any.  I knew with only me jumping on the K25 I didn't have to worry about conditions changing any I could easily tell if I did something different by how far I went.  The lack of soap would make me work harder as well if I wanted to get down the hill further.

 

On the way up the inrun Cannonball made mention that he had been wanting to remember to tell me I had been dropping my arms on the inrun.  UGH!, that problem is back again, DRATS!

 

I head down the inrun for the first jump and this time I do keep the arms up and manage to have a fairly decent jump.  I landed somewhere roughly around 15 meters.  Given no soap on the skis/inrun it was naturally slowing things down and wasn't going to let me jump as far as it would otherwise.

 

I walk back up for the second jump.  After getting up top Cannonball asks if I put soap on my skis.  I told him "No".  He sad "Talk with me before you head up for your next jump."  I knew what his intentions were and I just laughed.

 

I headed down the inrun and ended up jumping late and a bit chesty as well.  It still ended up right in the same area as the first jump, maybe a bit better.  At least I was keeping the arms up.

 

I managed to sneak by Cannonball on the way up for the third jump.  He mouthed off again when I was up top and right before I headed down the inrun he tried to play like he wasn't going to flag me for the jump since I didn't put soap on the skis.  I managed to jump pretty much on time and added another 1/2 meter to a meter onto the jump.

 

As I walked up for the fourth jump he was standing right there.  He wasn't going to let me get by.  He tried telling me this sob story about how he needed to know whether his coaching was working or not and the only way he could tell was if I had soap on the skis.  I was dying laughing.  As he was putting soap on the skis I was thinking about devious plans of attack to thwart his efforts, like not jumping at the takeoff, or intentionally jumping late, or anything like that.  I figured then I might get him to quiet down a bit.  I made my way up top and put on the skis.  I started down the inrun, with more speed, naturally, thanks to the soap.  I jumped at the takeoff and right before I landed I noticed I was about to land on the 20 meter blue line.  I was a little caught off guard.  Normally even with soap I'm only going 18-18.5 meters.  Definitely not as far as this jump by a long shot.

 

As I go to land, it almost seems like I didn't come out of the flight position and at the same time it seems like I must have been trying to put in a telemark landing.  From my own recollection, my left ski was way further forward than the right ski very shortly after I landed.  I'm not sure if I did land in a tele or if I slid into one after landing.  Since my bodyweight was so far forward to begin with I wasn't able to recover and instead got sucked down head first.  I started flipping over.  I think I flipped over two or three times before I finally came to a stop.  I definitely rattled my brains nicely on the crash.  I was fine and was surprised to see that at least one of the skis wasn't broken.  The way I flipped I figured for sure their should have been some equipment damage.  Like I said at the beginning, it probably goes down as the second most impressive/worst crash I've had in the eight years I've been jumping.

 

After putting some of the pieces of plastic back in I walked back up and Cannonball thought he would be able to get away with me not putting soap on the skis for the last jump.  I think, according to what he said, he finally realizes my mind doesn't want me to get to the bottom of the hill no matter how much I want to get there.  Gee, he understands it now...it only took how many years, LOL!!!

 

The fifth and final jump of the day went pretty smooth.  It was almost a repeat of the previous jump.  Going through the transition I did think for a second that I was going to lose it and end up going down but I managed to save it and ended up instead going the furthest out the outrun that I have ever went during the summer months.  I would have thought since the rain stopped around noontime, by the time we started ski jumping at 3:30PM the grass would have been dried off for the most part.  It wasn't!!!  Both the first and last jump both surprised me since I went so far out the outrun.  I probably only had 3-4 feet at the most of outrun left before I would have started going down the backside of the outrun toward the parking lot.

 

An intersting day of jumping to say the least.

 

Keep the ski tips up,

Crash