fun jumping

I was up at 4 am this morning for work, done at 10, so it must be possible to squeeze in a few jumps before 2 pm, when i must leave again for work. The news on the girl that broke her leg yesterday is not very good. Apparently it is not a clean fracture, and it will be a long revalidation for her.

We start off the day with an 8-way. I brief the jump, it 's ambitious for this loose bunch of funjumpers with very mixed experience and currency levels, but should be possible. Stairstep, double satellite, zipper flake, double bipole. Pity, we funnel the exit big time and it's only at 10k that we can start the jump. And, like so often after a bad exit, everybody is rushed, flying is not clean, fallrate is far from constant. We manage to go through it almost twice. Nice start of the day!

Next, I have to leave that group to be secondary on a level 3 AFF. Student is a long, skinny youngster, so they ask me for the jump: I can go slow. Good exit, but he is looking straight down at the ground, with his arms stretched out in front of him. I check if Luk is comfortable, release and go in front. I have to go low before he sees me, and when I come up level again, he keeps looking at me, so that's first problem cleared. Next I take his arms and bring them in position. All this time, he hasn't checked altitude, so I check mine with an exaggerated move, but he doesn't imitate me. Luk is still holding him, and I can see their must be quiet a bit of tension there, but I can't exactly see what's wrong: he arches, he holds pressure on his legs, only thing I see is his upper body is very tense. Then Luk lets go, but he starts swinging around immediately. We end up switched, with me as primary and Luk in front of him, but time is up. He is now altitude aware, and pulls at the right time, but with a rather horrible body position. Flies a clean circuit and lands smoothly.

No more time to make another jump, but hey, that's two more that nobody can take away from me!