Jumping Journal: October 19, 2009

Brrrrrr.  It's getting dark awfully early these days.

 

After having cloudy weather and much cooler than what I remember being normal temperatures for this time of the year for the past couple of weeks now the sun broke out big time today and I never saw a cloud in the sky the whole day.  The temperature warmed up slightly at least they did get up to 55.  That's about the warmest its been now in a couple of weeks.

 

I arrived at the hill shortly before 6PM and walked in right behind Walter.  At first their wasn't many jumpers around.  I was wondering if the cold weather scared everyone off.  As the sun was setting the crowd started to show up and their still managed to be close nine jumpers in all, 1 junior, 2 high school kids, and Walter, Dan, Jonathan, Colin, Kevin and myself.  I guess Kevin had tried out jumping a few weeks ago and it must have been one of the days I missed.  I didn't recoginize him at all.  I guess I missed another adult jumper at some point earlier this season as well named MJ.  More adults keep coming out every single week.  It really has gotten to be the craziest thing I have witnessed since I started jumping.

 

After doing a bit of stretching and talking I changed clothes and began to realize winter is on the way.  It was a bit cold out.  Even though I was dressed in a long sleeve shirt and had a pair of blue jeans on I was chilly the whole evening.  Thankfully I had the steps to walk up on both the landing hill and the inrun.  By the time everyone was getting up top for the first jump the sun had set and the sky was already getting quite dark.  I'm not sure if I had ever jumped on plastic that late into evening before.  I've jumped with the lights on and jumped after the sun has set, but I don't think I've jumped that late after the sun has set.  It was getting quite dark by the time I took my first jump.

 

With no soap up top everyone was thinking it was going to be slow.  Walter went first and it didn't look like he was going all that slow down the inrun.  I stepped up on top with my skis already on and Dan found some soap.  I knew the next time around it should be faster so I wasn't too worried about the speed.  I got the signal from Cannonball and headed down the inrun.  It actually seemed like their was quite a bit of speed compared to what I'm normally use to when we jump without soap.  I jumped into the darkness and I was starting to think it was winter.  I'm so use to jumping on snow under lights but I'm not use to jumping on plastic under lights.  The jump went surprisingly nice.  It seemed like I was down around 17 meters.  It was one of the better jumps I'd had all summer long.

 

I walked back up for the second and after waiting my turn and chatting with the guys I finally get the signal from Cannonball.  I head down the inrun and jump at the takeoff.  Once again it seemed like one of the better jumps of the whole summer.  It looked like I was in the 17-17.5 meter area again.  The difference this time was in the outrun I noticed my skis starting to swing sideways on me...like I was trying to do a hockey stop.  I've never had that experience before.  The only thing I can figure is the leaves are helping to reduce friction more than the grass does.  It seemed like I was going way further out on the outrun tonight than I ever have when the grass has been dry.  The main difference is the leaves.

 

Jumps three and four were pretty decent as well.  I did notice on jump three that I either jumped one legged or managed to pull up one of my legs in the air.  It really felt weird.  I haven't had a feeling like that in quite a while.

 

On the fifth and final jump of the evening.  I ended up putting in a bit of V and also noticed the ski tips came up nicely compared to normal.  I was quite pleased with the jump.  Overall the entire evening had to be the best jump session of the summer.

 

Hopefully things will continue the way they went tonight.  With two more jump session left before the break for winter sets in I'm still hoping to make 100 jumps for the summer.  I only need ten more jumps and since I normally end up taking five jumps per session that shuld set me up to reach number 100 on the final day of jumping this summer.  I think the only other time I've managed to get 100 or more jumps in during the summer was back in 2005 while Dan and I was keeping the consecutive weekly streak alive at Storrs Hill.  Granted that summer I had close to 225 jumps on plastic.  We was normally jumping two or three days per week.  It was that summer that changed everything around and got us started on weekday jumping.  Prior to that we only jumped in Lebanon on Sunday afternoons during the summer months.

 

Keep the ski tips up,

Crash