Jumping Journal: March 14, 2009

Gee...this winter is REALLY getting old.

 

The famed Mud Meet.  Not just another day of jumping but the rather unusual day of actually putting on a pair of alpine skis and running gates for a few seconds, before using the alpine boots to race a 1km cross country course.  Before switching over to jumping skis to do some jumping.  Yeah, a full ski meister event.  So in 2009 fashion, what could go wrong...

 

Plenty to say the least.

 

I arrived at the hill shortly around 9AM and found Cannonball working on finishing up getting the K10 and K25 ready for the competition.  Pretty much the idea for an early morning session on the K50 had went by the wayside.  It didn't surprise me.  After a while the crowd started showing up.  I went to work showing the ladies doing registration/scoring how to use the computer program I had written up for the scoring Mud Meet.  Turns out I would spend the bulk majority of the day on/around the computer.  This has become the norm over the past couple of years since I said I would help get a scoring program setup for scoring Mud Meet.

 

When things looked like they was going pretty good with the registration process I headed outside to grab my alpine and XC times for the competition.  To say I suck, and suck consistently would be an understatement.  I placed 27th in both the alpine and XC out of 45 competitors total.

 

I headed back in and once the events had closed down and it was time to head over for the fun two jump jump off on the K50 I ended up heading inside instead to help with inputting the times for the XC and alpine competition.  It probably would have worked smoothly if the laptop was working correctly.

 

The laptop wasa donated laptop given to the club a couple of years ago before Lebanon hosted Junior Olympics.  The mouse on the laptop has a mind of its own and at times it works just like it should and at other times it will do whatever it wants to do no matter if you like it or not.  I had designed the program the best I could around the fact the mouse was a pain in the butt.  I made the program so about the only thing you ever used was the Tab key on the keyboard.  You didn't use the mouse for anything.

 

Well, if that wasn't enough of a pain in the butt problem then during the data process on the alpine times the computer just shut itself off.  For no reason at all the computer turned itself off.  It did it once later on right after finishing up entering the jumping score.  All in all the computer created for another nightmare setting at Mud Meet...the third year in a row now.

 

Once the competition started on the small hills I suited up and headed on out from the three competition jumps.  I heard the talk that it was slow, especially on the table to the takeoff.  After waiting through the other jumpers I finally got my skis on and got the signal from the knoll.  I headed down the inrun and found the inrun slowing down the closer to the takeoff I got.  I wasn't sticking but I was slowing down.  I jumped and was a bit hesistant thanks to the sticking but I still managed a 16.5 meter jump.

 

After talking some down at the bottom I walked back up for the second round jump.  It was looking like the competition could get quite close by the time things was finished, little did I realize how close.  After waiting around the knoll for the line on the trestle to get worked through all the old timers headed on up the jump.  Their was a total of 12 masters jumping on the K25 and several more jumping on the K10.

 

I joined the group and walked on up the inrun and once it was my turn I headed on down the inrun.  Once again I noticed the slow down.  I jumped and had a bit of a better jump and landed down at 17 meters.  I ended up with another 17 meter jump on the third jump of the competition as well.  It didn't seem like I noticed the slow down quite as much as on the previous two jumps.

 

I headed inside and helped to get things started on entering the jumping scores into the program.  Normally the jumping scores would be entered into right as the competition was going on but the ladies doing the data entry decided they wanted to watch the competition so they wrote down the judeges scores and distances while outside watching everyone jump.

 

After getting them started on the data entry and it seemed like things were going alone smooth I started to walk back outside to see how much longer before the hoop of fire was going to be lit.  So far I haven't missed taking at least one jump through the hoop of fire each time it has been sit up since I started jumping.  As I walked by the window I looked up toward the knoll and saw the hoop was already ablaze.  I ran outside and grabbed my skis and made my way on up the inrun.

 

By the time I was the next one in line the fire had almost went out.  I managed to get my jump through it without any troubles as usual.  It did seem like the hoop was set a little closer than normal to takeoff.  I should have taken a look and seen if it was or not.  Curiousity has the best of me.

 

Right after I landed and I started to take off the skis I got the call that they were having troubles with the computer.  Sure enough the darn computer was acting up again.  I managed to get it straightened out and knowing I could do the data entry faster than the ladies could I went ahead and entered in the rest of the jumping scores.  I printed out the final results and then was going to print the extra copies of final results when the computer decided for the second time to shut itself off.  After rebooting I managed to get the extra copies printed and got the html file copied over so I could email it to Don so he could put it on the eastern division webpage.  I shut down the computer and changed clothes while Cannonball was handing out awards.

 

Turns out the Colt brother won once again.  Jeff finished first in each event and his older brother Willie finished second in each event.  Not bad to rule the event.  Third place came in as a three way tie between Cannonball, Tom Dodds(who had did so much work over the past week and a half trying to keep the K50 jumpable), and David McCrillis.  Dave's brother Bill came in from Illinois for a ski club dinner tonight and brought his equipment along.  Bill ended up in 7th overall.  I knew David and Bill were former ski jumpers from Newport but I didn't realize how strong of alpine and XC skiers they were.  Boy...was I ever surprised.

 

Not much jumping...just like the rest of the season but a nice day and fortunately a much better program to work with than stupid Excel.  Excel is not designed for scoring a jump meet...not by a long shot.  Now just to get a more reliable laptop,  LOL!!!

 

Crash