Well, I’ve finally recuperated from a long weekend at Skydive Pennsylvania for the 2nd Annual Jump for Diabetes – just in time for another weekend of skydiving 
.
Let’s start with the juicy details: between raffles, sponsored jumps and generous donations, we were able to raise nearly $10,000 for diabetes research – and donations are still rolling in, so we may even surpass that mark when all is said and done!
I’m thrilled with the amount of people who stepped up to support this cause, from the gear donations throughout the skydiving community, to the incredible team of pledge jumpers who came in from all over the country to donate their time to the cause, to the participants at Skydive Pennsylvania – none of this could have been accomplished without your support.
So a HUGE THANK YOU goes out to all who contributed.
As far as raffles go, we gave away more than $10,000 in donated and discounted skydiving gear, local jumper Scott Diesel was the lucky winner of the PD canopy raffle and there were three happy winners in the Grand Prize raffle.
And guess what – we’re going to do it all again next year! We’re planning the event for Aug 12-14 at Skydive Pennsylvania once again, and we’ve already got 4 manufactuers confirmed to be on site. We expect it to be bigger and better than this year – definitely not to be missed.
Okay, so now that that’s out of the way …let’s talk a little about the skydiving, shall we?
Friday after set up we did the first Mrs. Potato Head jump of the weekend. A group of us freeflyers took it to our bellies in an attempt to put her together in the sky. Best part, she was a diabetic, so Rick had a needle-less syringe to stick in her ear. It was far from a success, with us walking away with zero pieces in place, and one lost piece somewhere in the LZ, but I gotta tell you, it sure was FUN! Thanks to Heather for bringing this tradition to Jump for Diabetes!
We gave away our first piece of gear on Friday too, a freefly suit from EG. EG suits came in from Jersey to attend the event. Thanks again EG, you were a hit at Skydive PA!
Saturday started off bright and early with long spots and off landings. We had a fun 2-way freefly practice jump to start out the day before diving into a weekend of incredibly fun freefly zoo dives, like this one:
Both mine and Rick’s parents showed up for the day which was awesome! My dad even got some great shots of me landing and packing. I’m not used to being on the other side of the camera!
The weather played nice until about 5 p.m., at which point our gear raffle picked up. This is where my dad’s height came in handy, as we were selling gear raffle tickets for $20 a body length, so a number of jumpers “borrowed” his 6′3″ frame to purchase their tickets.
(Grand Prize Raffle drawing, with Skylyn the ticket picker! *Photo by Suji Martens)
Saturday night 4 bands from around the Pittsburgh area showed up to play for us in the hangar…due to the rain. What an incredible party. The beer was flowing and we were even able to have a small fire with numerous smores consumed. Yum!
Sunday started slow because of rain and low clouds until about 3 p.m. This gave us ample time to finish out the raffles before completing the weekend with a couple more fun freefly jumps – starting with Justin’s 200th.
The last jump of the weekend was a 6-way freefly turned into a hybrid, rodeo, backfly, sitfly combo. Was one of the funnest jumps we all had that weekend…guess you had to be there!
I’m still working on a fun Jump for Diabetes video to show the highlights from the weekend, so stay tuned for that.
Thanks again to everyone who did their part to not only make this an incredibly successful weekend, but for making it a BLAST too!
Blue skies!
Ashley
(Love the new logo! Thanks, Nick Bagnoli)
