Jumping Journal: January 21, 2009

Second day in a row.  The world must be coming to an end.  A little sketchy!

 

Well, it finally happened.  I have been waiting for this day for a quite a while.  I thought it was going to happen last year and I had this nice big plan all made up and then poof...it disappeared for the entire winter.

 

After spending a good deal of time the past few days working at the Newport jump it was finally time to get out there and jump the crazy hill for the first time in almost two years.

 

First things first though...as always.  It still needed to have a track cut on the inrun.  Ron has a group of newbie jumpers this winter.  I'm guessing this is the first time he hasn't had a least one returning high school jumper from the previous season in the 25-30 years he has coached the team.  I know its the first time in the nine years I have been jumping that I have seen all new faces on the hill.  Having a track on the jump would help the new kids to feel more comfortable about jumping it since they haven't jumped anything much bigger than a K18.

 

I arrived around 2PM and a couple of kids and Ron was already there getting ready to head up the hill to cut the track.  I put on my ski bibs and after gathering everything up we headed on up and got things setup to cut the track.  Ron doesn't do it the same way as Cannonball does it in Lebanon.  Cannonball stretches out a line that he follows all the way down.  Ron adds a piece of pvc pipe to his hand hold and allows it to follow the grade boards down the inrun.  This would create problems.

 

Ron and one of kids were guiding the tracksetter while one of the kids and I was manning the rope up top.  The track on the K30 side was...well...anything but straight.  It looked like it was going to be rather fun to jump, to put it modestly.  They came back up and we cut the track on the K25 side and it was pretty much the same.  I figured I was going to end up being the crash test dummy for the second day in a row.

 

We went back into the warming hut and suited up and headed on out to jump.  There was three high school kids, one junior jumper(future high schooler) and myself out jumping.  Part of the story about today was the junior jumper and the one of the high school kids are related to each other, and they are also related to the man that helped to get the K30 tressel brought down from Lake Placid, NY to Newport back 30+ years ago.  Yes, Dave the father of junior jumper showed up and watched his son jump.  Hopefully we can get him to put the skis on again sometime real soon.  It was fun jumping with him last winter.

 

I did the unthinkable and walked out the warming hut and walked over to the knoll and put my skis on.  I was going to ride the landing hill.  Such an evil thought.  Granted I was stalling time as well as I know Newport has the tendency to have a rougher landing hill/outrun than most jumps so I figured I would play it safe.

 

Fortunately on of the kids didn't take much time in deciding he was ready to jump.  He walked up and I followed behind him.  I knew either side of the tressel was going to be interesting to say the least.  I watched him take his first jump and then I put my skis on.  I got the signal and started down the inrun.  The top wasn't bad but about the time I hit the table I got bounced nicely.  It was the only bounce but it was the one that threw me the worst.  I jumped, like crap, at the takeoff and went pretty much nowhere.  It was one of the worst jumps I've had in a long time.  I rode the landing hill and outrun without any problems.  It was surprising it was in the best shape I've seen it in a long time.  I only noticed a small bump right as I came out of the transition on the landing hill.

 

I went up for the second jump and it was a bit better.  I was more prepared for it the second time around.  The third time around I was even more prepared.  I was starting to get close to landing where I would normally land in the past when I jumped at Newport.  I realized I wasn't jumping around the knee like I normally would be.  I knew it would take more getting used to the inrun before that would happen.

 

After the next jump I noticed one of the kids put in a V on his jump.  I have a feeling it wasn't planned but it just happened by mistake.  I decided since my jumps were quickly getting back to where they should be, longest I've ever had at Newport, I might as well add in the V.

 

I come down the inrun and jump and go nicely into a small V.  I'm not sure what happened as I went to land but something occured.  I ended up going down and biting it nicely in the soft snow.  Ron yelled down and said "They couldn't call you Crash if you don't crash."

 

I walked back up and went for another, much nicer jump but strangely didn't hae quite as nice of a V as the jump before it.  It almost seemed like I'm a bit hesitant to open into a V on the K25 side of the Newport jump.

 

As I got back up to the knoll I noticed one of the kids was up on the K30 side of the tressel getting ready to jump it for the first time this winter.  I had been waiting hoping not to be the first one to jump it.  After being the first person off the K25 and K50 at Lebanon I figured I would argue about someone else being the first person to jump either side of the jump at Newport.  I also wanted to watch and see how bad the carnage was going to be since the jog in the track was further down the inrun than it was on the K25 side.

 

He jumped and I noticed the jog was quite abrupt and quite 'bruttle'.  I put on my skis and got the signal from Ron.  I headed down the inrun and hit the jog and it was wicked to say the least.  It was worse than I thought it was going to be.  I'm glad I was on the whole foot and on both feet.  It was a full right/left switch in the the track in a very short distance after you already have some nice speed built up.  I made it the takeoff and had another crappy jump.  I managed to hold onto the jump even though I thought I was going to lose it right as I was coming out of the transition.

 

I walked up and took one final jump for the evening off the K30.  It was a bit better.  I was a bit more prepared for what was about to happen, thankfully.  Tomorrow night should only get better as I get more used to the track.

 

I was going to spend a lot of time last winter jumping in Newport since it's only 5-10 minutes from my house and Lebanon is 35 minutes or so from my house.  Since things just never cooperated to get the jump in shape last winter it never got jumped and I spent all my time in Lebanon jumping the K50.  Hopefully this winter, at least through high school season, mid February, I will be able to get quite a bit of jumping in on the Newport jump.  Right now I'm planning some jumping each of the next two days.  Gotta make up for lost time.

 

Crash