Man, it’s been a slow year for skydiving for me.  If I’ve had the time, I haven’t had the weather.  I’ve made a jump here, a couple there, and a whole lotta nothing in between.  I feel like I finally knocked the cap off at The Blue Sky Ranch, in Gardiner, NY.  In a year where I’ve had to focus more on work than jumping, I’ve had to schedule in jump days on my calendar and keep my fingers crossed for weather.  I put the Waz-Up Boogie on my calendar almost as soon as I found out about it.  

I pulled the horse trailer-gone-camper into a nearly empty DZ late Thursday night with my brother Shawn, and my buddy Sam. Friday started out pretty quiet.  Actually, I wasn’t even at the Boogie Friday morning.  I’d sent advanced word to the horse world that I’d be out that way and scored a couple of lessons first thing Friday (jump money!)  It was a beautiful day but gusty, so I was just as happy to be out teaching rather than anxiously waiting on the ground at the DZ.  That said, I was back by noon and in the air soon there after.

The Ranch is one kick ass drop zone.  I’d been there once last year on a random Saturday afternoon, but didn’t get much time to take it all in.  I’m not what you’d call a world traveled skydiver, but I’ve managed to jump at quite a few drop zones around the country, and as of yet the scenery at altitude at The Ranch is the best by far.  The Hudson River runs down one side about 10 miles to the east, and the cliffs of the Mohonk Preserve run on the other side with the Catskill mountains peering over from behind.  Nestled in between (sometimes quite elusively) is The Blue Sky Ranch among rivers, rolling hills and farms.

The airpower was impressive. There were 3 Twin Otters plus a Carvan for rides to altitude.  Despite the fact that there were were frequently 3 planes simultaneously turning loads, there were no injuries that I heard of.  When you consider that there were near 200 registered jumpers, that’s a pretty good weekend!

Friday afternoon I joined a impromptu sport accuracy competition.  Everyone threw in 5 bucks, and the pot was to be split with the Linda Waz foundation and the winner.  While I didn’t win, I was happy to be with in inches of the top spot.  There wasn’t a breath of wind, so pretty much everyone drilled in as we all hung on are brakes too long trying to line up the target at the center of the peas.  The winner was the only stand-up landing, and he donated 100% of the pot to the foundation.  Cool!

My brother and I ended the day Friday with a good old high-pull… well, pretty high pull.  We took a horny gorilla out the door that never really flew and broke at 10k.  Fun things you should know about opening at terminal velocity at 10k.  First; SLOW DOWN!!  Oh ya, if you’re going in free-fall at 10k, you’re going to be moving along at a pretty crisp rate when you pitch.  On the upside, you know your parachute it out… WHACK!  Second; when you start deep riser turn at altitude, don’t expect your canopy to recover the it does closer to earth.  It’s kind of a funny feeling to put the parachute into a dive, let up, and have the canopy continue to rotate downward.  That’s quite a wake-up call when you’re used to the quick recovery arc of a lightly loaded 170.  Ha!  Well, since the only other object at that altitude was my brother, who I was diving to catch up with, it was all good fun. 

We finally did catch up with one another somewhere around 8k and did some fun canopy proximity flying with one another eventually turning it into a kick ass top-skin to top-skin spiral for a couple thousand feet.  I did an alti-check around 4 and decided to give another thousand feet before pausing to have another look for the DZ.  At 3k I let up my toggles to fly away from our fun to find the DZ… a few miles away.  Ooops!  By about 2,500′ it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to do better than getting into a neighboring field to the DZ, and Shawn, being a few hundred yards below and behind me wasn’t even going to make the same zip-code.  I looked for an out that was easy to get to by car, fence free, and that my brother would make too.

I gotta give the boogie organizers credit for going over the top to put on a party Friday and Saturday night.  The hanger and was outfitted with lights and amps with a a DJ looking over scene from the cafe in the loft.  It was a great idea, but Friday night the guy redlined the volume at about 8:30 effectively clearing out the hanger in about ten minutes.  They also had a smaller rave room with all kinds of glow action lighting and props.  It was a great place to spin my LED poi to get warmed up before spinning fire outside (someone told me there are fire spinning pictures, but I can’t find ’em. Let me know if you know where they can be seen).

Saturday I had a great track dive lead by a really skilled coach, John Skinner.  The trouble with track dives is that everyone thinks they are easy.  “Just get out of the plane and follow the leader.”  everyone thinks.  Of all the track dives that I’ve been on, that’s only worked out really well once or twice.  Usually they come out to be a couple or three people on a trackish dive, followed by a series of skydivers who left the plane after them using their own space in the sky.  

This was completely different.  Here’s an idea; dirt dive the tracking dive.  No really, not just the exit, but flight path with slots and everything.  Here’s another idea; let the group get together as a group before tracking.  Even another idea; everyone fly their slot!  With those concepts we took a group of low number jumpers and put together a pretty nice formation.  It wasn’t perfect.  We lost one guy out the door who’s fall rate looked like a nice down pillow, but at least he was able to fly in the same air column with us reducing the risk of someone popping in on us at break off, or getting tangled with another group.  

Another thing I really appreciated was John’s debrief after the dive.  We spent some good time looking over the video of the dive in the media room with his coaching throughout.  We pulled everything apart from the exit to break off.  These are the kind of people who are making the sport for us.  Here’s a guy who could have just decided that he was at the boogie to jump and “didn’t have time to teach” (a quote from another load organizer), but instead decided to teach people how to put a successful skydive together.  Rock on Skinner!

The rest of the weekend was filled with a total random assortment of jumps.  Some 4-ways that worked really well (some that didn’t), a hastily put together 11 way that rocked after a rugby match for an exit, jumps with people I’ve jumped with a bunch, and others where everyone on the dive was new to each other.  I spotted a black vulture below at about 2,500′ during one canopy ride.  I circled down to him, and flew on his six for a moment or two before he grabbed a thermal and left me in the dust.  I just love moments like that!  Each day ended with a sunset jump, and each night… well.. ended.

The Boogie organizers deserve a lot of credit.  They put the event together for The Linda Waz Foundation for the benefit of the namesake who’s fighting cancer and creating new skydivers while she’s at it.  From what I saw of her in action and what everyone told me about her, she’ clearly a great instructor who’s put a hell of a lot into the sport.  The foundation has plans to continue on to support Linda through her fight, and benefit other skydivers who need a hand with what life deals them.  I think they’re off to one hell of a start.  Hopefully this will be an annual event I can put on my calendar again!