Yesterday I went to a friend’s house to help him build a roof in the back yard to provide shade over the patio. I was there for an hour, and the wood hadn’t arrived yet from home depot, so I took the opportunity to go for another jump.
In a word, my jump was flawless. I hit my arch immediately, waited a couple seconds, reached down and pulled my fake ripcord and threw it, went back to the arch, and waited until my chute had finished deploying. This was my second practice ripcord pull. The instructor had pulled my real chute as I was jumping, so I was practicing pulling and throwing a fake ripcord.
I descended for a couple thousand feet under canopy, but as I was about to start doing my maneuvers to get back on the ground, the guy on the radio started giving me instruction, and it was nowhere near what I expected. I looked at the windsock and saw that it had changed direction from what I was used to. I immediately knew what was going on and how I was going to end up on the ground. My landing was awesome. I flared at just the right time and was able to stand without even needing to take an extra step. If I had had my hands free, I would have thrown them up like a gymnast after landing.
The next time I go will be my last practice rip cord, and then the same day I have to go up again and pull my own ripcord for real. I’m really excited about that.
To finish the original story, as we were circling and jumping, I kept watching my friend’s house to see if the wood had been delivered. I still hadn’t when I was in the air. I made it back to his place in under an hour after leaving, and managed to beat the wood by a few minutes. We worked hard to get most of the wood up. It was dark by the time we were ready to start putting the plywood on, so we put that off for later.