Jumping Journal: September 14, 2009

A nice evening for for flying.

 

Yeah, it was a real nice evening fro ski jumping tonight.  The temperature was in the upper 60s with partly cloudy skies.  You couldn't ask for much more from a late summer session of ski jumping.  If you wanted a lot of guys to jump with, you had that as well.  This doesn't seem quite right to have this many jumpers out at this time of the year.  This is definitely one strange summer.

 

I showed up to Storrs Hill around 6:15PM after a rather dismal afternoon.  You could say things didn't go quite as I had hoped they would go.  Mother Nature just wouldn't cooperate the way I thought she was going to so I ended up with anything but what I had planned on for the day.  As I walked up to the lodge I heard someone coming to a stop at the end of the outrun.  As I got to the point where I could see who it was I wasn't a bit surprised to see it was Walter.

 

I changed clothes and headed up the hill to join Walter, Dan, Colin(1), Brad, Jonathan, 3 high school kids, and 3 junior jumpers all out jumping on the K25 this evening.  Walter was definitely laying the jumps down the hill.  He has managed to come back into his old form and tonight was working on adding the V into the flight position.  His first attempt looked more like he was trying to go spread eagle rather than V style.

 

Tonight did seem a bit different then the past few weeks when I have been out.  I didn't soap at all tonight and instead just relied on everyone else that was soaping to get the soap on the inrun.  I was still managing to jump at 17 meters on each and every jump.  Nothing with my technique changed...I wasn't jumping any harder or anything else.  For some reason though I was going 2-3 meters further than what I had been jumping over the past several times I have been out.  I don't know what the difference was.

 

Out of the five jumps all but maybe one of the jumps I managed to keep the hands up nicely going through the sawdust and out into the outrun.  The new way of riding the sawdust does make for a much more comfy feeling.  I still remember a couple of years ago when I jumped in Lake Placid on plastic and had the trouble because I was sitting so far back and always dragging my hands.  At least I'm finally breaking that bad old habit and keeping myself a bit more upright.

 

Keep the ski tips up,

Crash