Another great Saturday in the land that can have the 4 seasons all in one day. Started up early, getting up at 7am (part of my ongoing early riser experiment) and taking the train for 1 hour from Amsterdam to Apeldoorn. After that, since I took my bike with me, a nice 20m cycling ride to the dropzone to warm up ;)
Last time I was there I jumped with a Spectre 210 because they didn't have anything 190 available, so I was happy to discover that this time I had a Spectre 190 waiting for me. I had only jumped with something that small (I know it's big, but for me is fast enough right now :)) once in Texel, also in the Netherlands so I was kind of curious whether my other landing was just luck, hehe :D
The DZ was packed with tandems today. Apart from that, I got to go in a couple of jumps with these two elders that were doing manual pulls jumping from 4000 feet. They were having a blast and so was I, watching them scream "Bye Bye" every time they left the airplane :)
I only did 3 jumps today, mainly because I'm finding it boring to jump alone and, since I didn't know anyone in this place (and everyone speaks Dutch but me), I didn't really feel comfortable asking anyone to jump with me. Nevertheless, the 3 jumps were definitely worth the ride, though the last one I had a bit of a worrying ride, watching 3 people that jumped just before me opening their canopies below. I'm still getting used to the fact that other people will eventually open their canopies relatively close to me when jumping in 2-ways or more, but I'll get there.
Oh yeah, the audible altimeter is really handy. I set it to 4500, 3500, and 2500 feet alarms so now I always know when to stop fooling around and adopt the deployment position :D
What else? The Spectre 190 is a fast thing! And when there is side wind gusts, man... I almost shit my pants while landing. But I know it's just a matter of getting used to it. I only wished that particular one had a way to retract the slider, because it really messes me up having that thing always flapping, especially on final approach :(
Another thing: if, like me, you started packing parachutes in older rigs (whose canopies have a lot of porosity) then I have news for you. Brand new canopies are a bit harder to pack; you really need to take all the air out of it and be really careful where you put your hands not to mess up your entire 10 minute work, after you are halfway through :)
I also became a member of the Teuge dropzone. They even made a card for me. They got the name wrong. But they made a card :)
[caption id="attachment_395" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="For the record, my name is Pedro Assuncao"][/caption]
Finally, I could not resist the temptation and bought a closing pin necklace. I'm not as brave as Ashley from http://www.skydivechick.com/ (she actually tattoed a closing pin on her arm), but I think it's a nice addition to my collection :)
Blue skies!
