It's Official

The events of this weekend were so amazing, I don’t even know where to begin.

How about at the beginning?

Friday was a beautiful day and I had a work event to attend that took me well past sunset. At first this seemed like a real bummer, but the event turned out rather fabulous, what with all the drag queens and everything.

Guess you had to be there.

Saturday wasn’t an early a start as usual. I slept in a little, actually ate breakfast, and headed to the drop zone early afternoon to get in a couple hop ‘n pops that I needed checked off my list.

I was lucky enough to be accompanied by Jeromy Alexander – check him out over at Skydive Blog – who decided to come down my way for a weekend. And what a great weekend he picked.

Saturday night we headed to Canton Air Sports to hang out with the crew there and spend the remainder of Sunday jumping, packing and learning. After the hop ‘n pops I had two more jumps before earning that good ole A-license. 

So in the cloudy morning I packed parachutes and Jeromy jumped my pack on the first load while I took pictures on the ground. I can’t tell you how happy I was to see his main flying perfectly through the sky!

Second load we hopped back on and chased a group out the door, and did a couple manuvers in preparation for my check dive. 

I sat out the third and fourth loads, doing more on-the-ground work – changing a main closing loop and all that – then I met with Tom before my check jump. We walked through the dive and he signed off on the rest of my card. At this point I could barely contain my self. 

The jump went well with docking and tracking successes and a beautiful stand-up landing. By the time I was back to the hanger my proficiency card was complete and I became an A-licensed skydiver.

After this I was completely drained, but when the offer of heading up on the last load came my way I couldn’t pass it up. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being a licensed skydiver on a sunset load.

With a couple of docks and a couple spins with Jeromy it was a great jump to end the weekend.

Sunday was by far the best day I’ve had this summer. The DZ was filled with all the people I love to jump with most and spirits were high. One more reminder why I love this sport and the community of jumpers that come with it.

Blue Skies!

Ashley