You know who you are.
Friday, June 27, 2014 LAST RESORT - a musical interlude http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2014/06/last-resort-musical-interlude.html
I forget how to size it, besides the detail is kinda nice too. :coolsmirk:
besides, I gotta get my head outta this computer, got some watering to do, start cleaning and packing, leave at 5:30am.
But, I mean is this guy cool or what? Been meaning to do this since I got it this past New Years.
There it’s done 
little genuine shard and the artists touch. - it’s a freak’n frig magnet.
courtesy of old timers at Ottinger’s in Moab, Utah.
Like Lin’s son told me as I was paying: “You know, that was the best one we had?” - “YUP” I said with a big grin.
YeeHaa.
It was a rush.
Maybe it was the fascinating scenery around Moab that captured my attention going up in the plane,
but that moment of terror, when the reality of what I was about to do, never did set in.
Then the door opened, swing your legs out and step onto the step, look around…
holy poop, I’m outside of a plane ! Wow, check out those fins melting out of the sandstone way down there,
nothing is between us !
… then push, arch your belly like you were doing the limbo,
keep hands/arms tucked to your chest, look up and back to catch a view of the plane disappearing,
feel the tap on the shoulder and it’s time to let your arms out and feel the air…
then, it’s like moments meditation time, “holy poop I’m actually dropping through the air”,
breathing was cool, {my own pre-flight “concern”}
and processing the reality of the moment was wild, {exhilarating and analytic}
but no time to linger…
…woop, there it was, yank and dangle, watch the ground and air strip coming closer.
Boss hands over the toggles to steer the chute (er wing).
now we’re having fun, in fact, last pull he introduced some definite counter tension and I backed off.
{My daughter, who’d landed previous to me, says I/we did some good turns. :- )}
Then I could recognize her smiling face way down there, I gave her the Victory V,
the ground started getting bigger, faster, much faster…
swish, pull up, slow down, slide into home,
guess we were going too fast to try the four point landing.
Verry sweet nonetheless. [… too bad there’s no smilie to do it justice]
~ ~ ~
Well from the first time I almost did it
(Pre-Tandem days, back when it really did take cohones to do your first jump.)
forty years have flown by -
not sure why I allowed one thing after another to keep shoving it back down my ‘to-do list’ -
but I never forgot.
It’s a done deal … (probably in less than two minutes)
… and now after having “walked on air” and smiled with the gods,
it’s time to go to the kitchen and get caught up on the dishes*. :coolsmirk:
Happy Birthday CJ !
{yea, I could see doing it again, though at +200$ a shot… er, “drop” - it sure won’t become a habit}
…….
… *pssst, I tip my hat to MzLee]
Happy 59th CC. And stepping out of a plane into midair? Better you than me man! But what I rush I imagine.
Cap’t Jack
Been meaning to find a picture of the fins I was talking about.
Here it is, though the snow was gone 
:
http://www.desertnuclear.com/Landscapes.htm
Yea, Cap’t it was a rush. Bet, you’d surprise yourself.
I remained fairly cool calm and collected, but I tell you
it keeps coming back to me with a crispness most memory don’t hold.
That rolling out and away from the plane, that total letting go,
then getting your senses backing and looking around and felling the air.
I find myself playing it back in my head a bunch.
But, you know sweetest part of the weekend was the before and after
my daughter, her boyfriend and I
bookended the jump with a couple short (5mile-ish) walks up two different canyons.
One the day before and one before heading home,
both were in small canyons, one had running water.
These places are like cathedral, art museum and playground rolled into one,
within an atmosphere of total freedom…
well, actually, you’d better not get too free and forget to follow desert rules of survival,
it’s a wonderland, but very unforgiving of carelessness and mistakes.
Since I’m contemplating existence and last weekend, tell you a secret Cap’t,
one of my “supreme moments of life”, right up there with making love and dancing to music at its best,
{started in Wawona '74 working at Moore’s Redwoods and living a mile or so down the South Fork, on the other side of the river}
is attempting to walk and jog ‘with grace’ on top of river rocks,
when it’s right getting a good tempo going and flying down, or up, streams,
or their empty stream beds, {too much of that going around lately}
my body doing all the important calculating and me just keeping up with it and feeling this sense of Earth around me and belong to it.
… the felling of being alive and healthy and exalting in it,
thanking providence for the good fortune of these few years of sampling the universe I’ve been blessed with.
Sometimes I feel survivor’s guilt because I know so many who have been slammed with ugly situations not of their own doing.
But, we only have our own lives to live and I’ve gone through some mighty rough years on the way to 59,
and I’m sure tough days are ahead so I’ll continue appreciating what I have while I have it. cheers