My years as a skydiving instructor

Graduation Day as an AFF skydiving instructor

I will never forget this day: June 18, 1994. After more than a year trying to get certified as an AFF (accelerated freefall) skydiving instructor, it finally happened on this day. My sister Fia with her daughter Megan (at my feet) and brother Buz are in the picture as well. I had flown to Dallas from Boulder to complete the course, and I asked my siblings who live nearby to come and celebrate with me. Tomorrow will be eighteen years since that happy day. I'm amazed that I didn't have any grey in my hair at all, and now it's completely white. It happens so slowly that you don't notice until you see a picture like this.

For more than twelve years, skydiving instruction became my true passion. Over the years I made more than 1,200 skydives with students, covering the gamut from me being terrified to me feeling totally competent to deal with anything that might happen in freefall. Sometimes we had a cameraman accompany us, but usually it was a threesome, the student and my partner. This is the way it works in AFF: the student has been through a rigorous training session. At some places I worked, a preliminary tandem jump was mandatory. I noticed that a student who had been introduced to freefall by making a tandem, before being required to perform certain tasks, was much more likely to pass the level. In AFF there are seven levels of proficiency to pass before you are allowed to jump out of the airplane on your own.

Me, student, fellow JM Cameron

On Level I, both jumpmasters have a secure hold of the student before the door is even opened, right at the center of gravity at the hips, one jumpmaster at each side. The student has been taught to arch (thrust hips forward) as this is how stability is gained in freefall. We jumpmasters are expected to maneuver the formation of the three of us out of the airplane door, with the student doing his or her part by assuming proper body position. Well, this happened most times, and then the fun started. The student performs a "Circle of Awareness," looking out at the horizon, then down at the altimeter on his or her chest, then getting eye contact with each jumpmaster in turn. Next the student makes three practice ripcord pulls, with the jumpmaster assisting if the student needs it. At 5,000 feet above the ground, the student then pulls the ripcord, and the jumpmasters let go of the student. If necessary, the instructor will pull for the student and of course the student needs to repeat the level. The student is alone under canopy and needs to ascertain if the parachute is airworthy, find the landing area, and fly it to the ground. Most Drop Zones have someone on the ground with a radio, and the student has a radio that the jumpmasters have hopefully remembered to turn on before leaving the plane. After everyone has landed, we meet together to discuss the skydive.

Sorry for the long description, but I realize that most of my readers have no idea what is involved in being a skydiving instructor. It's a lot of responsibility and I took it very seriously, not only because it was required in order to be a good jumpmaster, but because it gave me tremendous satisfaction to help someone else through that narrow doorway to become a certified skydiver.

Looking back, I am amazed at how much I learned from this activity. I was able to help students understand how to take it one step at a time, one success at a time, before moving on to the next task, and the intense satisfaction I felt when each student graduated to become a skydiver who was competent and filled with the joy of accomplishment. Each time a situation came up that was new to me (and students managed to surprise me throughout the years), I would discuss it with my fellow jumpmasters to learn the best way forward.

Every weekend I looked forward to working at the Drop Zone as an instructor, making between four and ten skydives with students in two days. I also earned money, as I not only had my jump paid for, but I also earned $25 to $30 for each skydive with a student. I used this money to take skydiving vacations or to buy the newest parachute gear. One year I made more than $5,000 skydiving and made more than 200 student jumps. It amazes me from this vantage point to remember how much I enjoyed all that. I could not imagine continuing to skydive without continuing to teach.

But you know, nothing stays the same. In 2000 I experienced a very bad skydiving accident by making a turn close to the ground. I've written plenty about it, but I had taught students over the years not to ever do something like that, and still I did it. Although there were other options, I didn't know what to do and made the wrong choice. I missed six months of skydiving from that accident, and it was awhile before I returned to teaching students. It's one thing to know something is dangerous, but it's still another to experience it in such a dramatic fashion. I like to think that my own accident has helped to prevent others from making the same mistake. Most skydivers don't get hurt or die from the freefall part of the skydive, but because they make poor decisions upon landing. Complacency builds up quickly when you have made thousands of soft landings.

Looking back at those years, I realize how much I have forgotten about those students, about those skydives. Who would have ever believed that something so dramatic, so extreme, could ever become mundane? One day I realized that I was no longer passionate about teaching and that it had become another job, that the spark was gone. Teaching the class on the ground became more enjoyable, because I was good at it and I no longer had to stretch myself to my physical limit wrestling a student around in freefall. Of course, by this time I had long ago passed my sixtieth birthday and was getting ready to retire from my career at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

There are no requirements for skydiving instructors to retire, but I felt that once I retired from my job, I should also retire from teaching skydiving. It was scary to contemplate at first, but I knew that playing, making formations in the sky with friends, was enjoyable. I spent more and more time doing that, and before I knew it, teaching had faded from my weekend activity. It also helped immensely to move away from Boulder and begin a new part of my life in another part of the country.

I have gone from making as many as 400 skydives in one year to barely making 50. It's been a gradual shift, but in the Pacific Northwest skydiving is a seasonal activity, beginning in May or June and stopping in October as the weather turns cloudy and rainy. So far this season I've been out to the Drop Zone four times and have made 12 skydives. I see the jumpmasters teaching their students, and I realize that those days are long gone. Not one molecule of my being wishes to trade places with those instructors. It's an amazing transition, really.

It makes me realize that the passage of years, the imperceptible movement from one state to the next, happens to all of us from birth to death. Now that I am in the twilight of my life, the light is gentle and oh those sunsets are spectacular. Contentment fills me, although it's Sunday and if the weather had cooperated, I would be driving down to Snohomish to play in the air with my friends. Today I am content to write this post, putter in the garden and read a good book.

My first bike

From Retro Raleighs

When I was very young, maybe eight or ten, my dad came home from one of his TDY (temporary duty) overseas trips with a shiny black English Racer bicycle for me. It looked a lot like this one, as I remember. Nobody else had a three-speed bike with brakes on the handlebars; all my friends' bikes had coaster brakes and only one speed. I was terrified of it.

I've since learned (after doing a little research on line) that the Raleigh English Racer was built in Nottingham, England beginning in the 1930s. I found a cool website called "Retro Raleighs" and found the picture from Raleigh's 1951 catalog. The bike was too big for me and had the bar across the top, so it was a boy's bike rather than a girl's. I've actually only owned one bike that didn't have that stabilizing bar. It also didn't have the carrier bag in the back, that I remember anyway. When I looked at the picture in full size, I was amazed to find that the bike was pricey, costing £13 even back then! (That would have been about $600 in today's dollars.)

The bike stayed outside propped up against our house in California for a long time before ever being used. Every once in awhile my father would take me out and sit me on the seat to see if my feet reached the pedals. I remember scrunching up my leg so it wouldn't get anywhere near the pedal so I wouldn't be forced to learn how to ride it. Owning and riding a bicycle was nowhere near as common in my world back then. Today, a ten-year-old child has probably had a bike for years.

Daddy would try to encourage me to give it a try, and I loved my dad so much that I wanted to please him, but this was beyond scary. "How does it stay up?" I asked. When he explained the concept to me, it sounded like magic, not logical at all. I don't remember if he tried to ride it (the size disparity makes me dubious) to show me how it all worked, but I was sure there was a trick I didn't know about, and I kept my distance.

Then one day, I was looking at the bike, I don't know what made me finally decide to try it, but I propped it up next to the house and got on. My feet touched the pedals just fine; I was no longer given that excuse. I sat there, propped against the house and imagined myself going down the street for a long time before I finally worked up enough courage to try moving it. But curiosity and a kid can surmount many an obstacle.

Even though I have lived almost seventy years and have been on the planet for more than 25,000 days, that day stands out in my memory, bright and vivid. I learned through trial and error, and many spills, to ride that bike. It was exhilarating and empowering. Nobody was helping me, and I remember learning to keep it upright before I learned to stop it with the brakes, and I ran smack into a telephone pole. Fortunately neither of us were hurt very badly, but I remember that crossbar hit really hard in my private parts. I was sore for days, but I never told anybody about it until today, afraid that if I told my parents they might take my bike away from me! Plus it was a silly mistake, once I learned to coordinate riding AND stopping. Necessity is the mother of invention.

By the end of the day, I was riding the bike as if I had known how all along, and I only came in because the sun went down. I was in love. The magic of the bike staying upright thrilled me, and it still does to this day. The old saying about never forgetting how to ride a bike once you've learned is true, I find. Just last week I purchased a used bike and took it down to the local bike shop for a tuneup. I rode it to the bus stop (less than a mile) and put it on the bike rack at the front of the bus. I've watched people do this for years, but it was my first time. I made a couple of mistakes and was nervous, but the bus driver was helpfully shouting instructions out the door as he watched me attempt to secure the bike. A total of three bikes can be placed on the bus.

As I sat on the bus, proud of myself and holding my bike helmet in my hands, I realized that I have come full circle in my bicycling journey. The young girl who learned to love her English Racer, and the senior citizen who wheeled her newest purchase into the bike shop six decades later, are both proud bicycle riders. There might be yet another bike purchase in my future, if I catch the bug and find a community of riders that entices me into buying a fancy-schmancy bike with all the bells and whistles. I was a bit shocked at the price of the fancy bikes in the shop: well over $4,000!

In my years as a bike rider, I have used a bike to commute to work, went without a car for years and only used a bike, and have ridden my bike from Boulder to San Francisco (in 1974). I've replaced many a flat tire and knew enough to keep my bike in good working order. I've forgotten all that, but I guess I'll learn again. Bikes get flats and need regular maintenance. If you see a white-haired lady wrestling with her bike by the side of the road one of these days, you might stop and see if you can give her a hand. She may be old but she's willing to learn. And re-learn.

Rock climbing and other pursuits

When I was much younger, I used to climb fourteeners and took up rock climbing. I'm not sure exactly when this picture was taken, but I know it was taken on top of Longs Peak in Colorado. Colorado has more than 50 mountains that are higher than 14,000 feet, hence the nickname "fourteeners" for these peaks. I wrote about how I got started in this activity a while back.

Last week, Norma Jean asked me why I wasn't using this blog to write about the past, as I had done when I began writing here. After all, I designed my other blog to be short and sweet, with lots of current pictures, and she feels that the Eye blog has morphed into something more like DJan-ity. It made me think about why I write here. When she brought it up, I felt a distinct sense of guilt, as if I had somehow been caught out doing something not quite honest. She's right, you know: I realized (after feeling around inside myself) that writing these posts stirs up a whole lot of buried angst. One way I've dealt with the pain and sorrow of my past is to distract myself, and this blog was supposed to be designed to keep me from spending my entire life doing that very thing.

There are a whole lot of stories that are languishing in the dustbin of my memories, and if they don't get exposed to the light of day, they will die when I do. So here goes: some of those past experiences have begun to emerge, and I'm willing to dust 'em off and write 'em down. In the days like the one in the above picture, I was learning how to do things that most women didn't do. In fact, that's what appealed to me about pursuing them. Rock climbing was a big thing in Boulder, so I found some partners and purchased a harness and a rope.

Now you might look at that picture and think it's not that different from what I do today, going out and hiking up mountains, even if they were a lot higher in Colorado than they are here in Washington state. But Longs Peak has many routes to the top, and the woman (whose name is lost to me now and hovers right out of reach) and I, along with one other woman, had climbed up one of the technical routes on Longs Peak. (I don't have a clue who that guy in the white helmet is; he wasn't part of our group.) The third woman took our picture.

We climbed a route known as Kiener's Route. I found this link to Jared Workman's website, and he just happens to live and work in Boulder. I didn't know him but I'll bet we crossed paths more than once. He has a couple of cool pictures on that link showing what Kiener's Route actually looks like and explaining it in detail. We carried ropes and belayed each other as we crossed Lamb's Slide and a very exposed section known as Broadway. Here's Jared's picture of Broadway.

See? It's not actually all that hard to walk on that green area, but it's the fact that you just don't want to slip up. It's called "exposure" and when you see what the consequences of a missed footstep might be, using ropes to save yourself from certain death makes a whole lot of sense. In fact, now that I'm a skydiver, it's sort of like your reserve chute: you probably won't need to use it, but in case you ever do, it's there.

Anyway, we didn't have any problems making it up this rather easy technical route, and as we summited (when that first picture was taken), we saw many dozens of other hikers who had come up the non-technical traditional route, known as the Keyhole. They were amazed at seeing us come up from another route that looks terrifying, looking down from the summit. I've also climbed up the Keyhole route, too. The entire climb is eight miles each way and traverses up 5,000 feet in elevation. Knowing how tired I am after a hike these days of half the height and half the distance, I realize that I probably couldn't do this today. But then again, it was probably thirty years ago that I climbed up Longs Peak.

During my climbing days, I spent many a summer's day out in the wilderness enjoying the views from different peaks. Summiting fourteeners was the first time I realized how rarified the air is at 14,000 feet. In Colorado, it was so clear that it seemed you could see forever. Although at that altitude smokers and people who are not in pretty good shape have a hard time, it was exhilarating to me. I learned to slow down as we gained altitude and the air got thinner and thinner. My heart would pound from the effort and the lack of oxygen; everyone slowed down.

When I was a climber, I would get what is known as "sewing-machine legs," when I would become scared and the adrenaline in my system would cause my legs to tremble so bad that I couldn't continue until I gathered my wits about me and relaxed. It was usually because I was afraid that I would fall, even though the rope would catch me (theoretically, anyway) and I wasn't really in any danger. I saw it happen to many climbers, not just me. Exposure did it to me, my very active imagination allowing me to contemplate falling. The only way around it was to relax and concentrate only on the task at hand. Perhaps overcoming my fear of falling while climbing helped me to learn to skydive, who knows?

It was at the end of 1990 when I made my first skydive, and my interest in climbing mountains and even hiking into the backcountry began to fade. I didn't look back and didn't think I'd ever stop skydiving and return to the mountains, but I'm beginning to realize that no matter how much you love something, it doesn't stay the same. I get as much enjoyment from a brisk walk with my friends as I do when I head down to Snohomish and jump out of airplanes. Smart Guy once said to me, "you can't have a hundred jumps forever," meaning if you keep jumping you gain experience and knowledge... and familiarity. Spending 66 hours in freefall, as I've done, means that it's no longer thrilling. Well, it is, but not in the same way.

Now that I am much older and wiser (I'm smiling here), what are the trials and tribulations that are still out there to be faced? Well, as many who are older and wiser than I have said, "getting old is definitely not for the faint of heart."

And so it begins

Summer, that is. Yesterday, the first day of the Memorial Day weekend, I walked with the Fairhaven walkers (twenty of us, all women) to the home of a woman who lives on Lummi Island, just over three miles each way. I took this picture from her deck of the water in Bellingham Bay with foliage and madrone trees in the foreground. She has a beautiful place, but the island is separated from the mainland, necessitating a ferry ride to get to a grocery store, or anywhere else in town. The price of the ferry recently jumped from $2 to $7 (round trip) to simply walk on. Taking your car across costs $13 and only 12 cars can go at a time. The ferry runs twice an hour. It is very lovely, but it wouldn't be a place I would choose to live.

After coming home from the excursion to Lummi Island, I helped spread manure in our community garden. Some of the residents in our apartment complex talked the owners into the idea of using part of the area located behind the apartments for a community garden, and they paid to have the area fenced, to (hopefully) keep out the deer and other critters that will be eyeing our veggies. I decided to plant kale, collards, carrots, and squash in my little area, but we needed to spread the two piles of horse manure before it can be tilled, which will probably happen today. I am exhilarated, since I have never before had the possibility of having a garden. I may enjoy it or possibly find it to be too much work, who knows? Even the uncertainty is a bit exciting to me.

Our sunny, beautiful weather returned for a couple of days, but last night I woke to wind blowing the curtains and rattling the bird feeders. I went outside and removed them so they wouldn't be blown down and felt the change in the weather. Today is the annual Ski to Sea event here in Bellingham, and I've been watching friends in the gym working hard to get ready for it. That link will take you to a USA Today article about it that I found interesting.

A few years ago I volunteered to help organize the packets that the racers require. There are eight people in a team, which are limited to 500. People sign up for this event far in advance, and the same top teams win year after year, but many people are not as competitive and decide to enter for the fun of it. It's a relay race of over ninety miles. Here's a bit of information taken from the official website.

A Ski to Sea Race team consists of 8 racers (2 in the canoe leg) for the seven race legs (Cross Country Ski; Downhill Ski/Snowboard; Running; Road Bike; Canoe; Mountain Bike; Kayak). A racer can only be on one team, and only complete one leg. We also recommend a support team to carpool the team to the different race leg venues. From the top of Mt. Baker to Bellingham Bay, discover Whatcom County's recreational playground and the 'Ski to Sea' Experience.

Some of the teams have decided to make it even more challenging and reduce their carbon footprint by not taking any cars to get to their starting point. I heard some people talking about logistics. It's a fun event and a lot of people get totally enthusiastic about it. Although I have considered finding a senior's team (there are plenty), I haven't followed through yet. I don't have a bike, so the only leg I would feel comfortable competing in would be the cross country ski part. That's what has kept me from actually doing it. I tell myself that, anyway.

Instead, I'll learn about gardening and raising my own vegetables. I was wondering what I would be doing this long weekend to keep fit, since the buses won't be running and the Y will be closed tomorrow. After shoveling manure for hours yesterday, I no longer need to worry about that. I came in and took a shower, washing off all the sweat and grime and went to bed early after a glass of wine. Although I tried to read, I found myself nodding off and gave myself permission to retire. After all, I'd walked a fast six-and-a-half miles and shoveled for a couple of hours, so I was entitled, I figured.

It was such a beautiful day yesterday that I glanced up at the sky now and then and thought about skydiving. A gentle breeze and completely blue skies made it a perfect day for it. But last Saturday I made four jumps and was a little bit glad for a break. My friend Linny wasn't going to be there anyway, so it wasn't as tempting as it would otherwise have been to make the drive down to Snohomish and get my knees in the breeze.

The birds are singing outside; I can hear the ubiquitous robin who wakes me every morning, a couple of chickadees, the goldfinch twittering, and the house sparrows tweeting. I've got a few white-crowned sparrows hanging around, but I don't hear them right now. The wind seems to have died down and the sky is looking good for the racers. In the afternoon I'll head downtown on the bus and make my way to the finish line, hoping for some good pictures. The first teams will arrive at Marine Park by early afternoon and the rest will stagger across the finish line, one at a time, until the sun sets.

And so it begins, the unofficial start of the summer season, the blue skies and sunshine, long days and short nights. I'm feeling pretty good for having lifted that shovel so many times yesterday; my workouts must be making a difference. Not bad for an old lady, I tell myself. Not bad.

Ring of Fire 2012

From Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Today we will have the first solar eclipse of the century visible to those of us in the United States. The map above shows what parts of the country will see it best, and I've learned that even here in the northern part of Washington, we should see 83% of it. Wikipedia has a really good link with everything you might want to know about it. It tells me that the last annular eclipse was in May 1994. The meaning of an "annular" eclipse is that it occurs when the moon's orbit passes relatively far away from the earth, so when it moves in front of the sun, a "ring of fire" remains around the moon.

Unfortunately for me, I've also learned from those two links that my chances of seeing anything at all is very low. After weeks of cloudless weather, they have returned today, Sunday, just in time to obscure any view I might have had. The Cliff Mass link gives the probability of cloud cover in our area around 6:44pm when it will begin. Sigh.

But anybody who follows these celestial events knows that you don't have to SEE it to enjoy it, or to be affected by it. Sometimes I think of how it must have seemed to people when they didn't know it was coming. We know all about it, but they must have thought the world was coming to an end. The world I live in is connected in ways that would have seemed like magic to them. In fact, this blog post I'm writing right now will be available to anyone with a computer in a very short while. How much like magic that seems to me, even today.

Yesterday I spent the entire day skydiving. It was the fourth time I've gone to Snohomish for the activity so far this year, and the difference between the way I felt yesterday and the first jumps of the season last month is surprising to me. The day after I made those first two jumps, I was sore from packing, climbing outside the airplane, and flying my parachute. Even though I get a fair amount of exercise, it's such a different usage of my muscles that I felt tired and sore. Yesterday I made twice as many jumps and packed for myself all four times and this morning (so far anyway) I feel just fine.

On Thursday I went with the Trailblazers on a long drive to hike part of the way around Baker Lake. I wrote about it here, and I was plenty sore after somewhere around twelve miles and a 150-mile car trip (75 miles each way). When I tried to climb out of the car, it took me quite a few moments to get things going again. But again, I woke the following morning and headed off to my exercise class, with a bit of stiffness but nothing major.

Friday was the only day between these two events. What amazes me is that I am capable of such activity at my age. It not only makes me wonder how long I can keep this up, but what I am doing right that allows it? I know people much younger than me who couldn't possibly have done these two things in a three-day period, even if they wanted to. Most people don't want to skydive, and a whole lot of people don't want to walk such distances. But I do, and as long as I can manage to drag these old bones out to play, I will.

It must be related to the old adage, "use it or lose it." I could not have begun with such a long trek, but now it's been a weekly activity for almost four years. And as I noticed with the skydiving activity, I'm getting accustomed to jumping again after the winter's layoff. Whatever the reason, I'll take it. Right now, on this day of the Ring of Fire, I'm grateful to be here on the planet, interested and involved in the world, even if I'm not exactly leaping out of bed yet.  Once I hit "publish," I'll get up and start my day. Watch the Ring of Fire if you can!

Sunny Mother's Day

Mama and me

I have been sitting in bed reading my morning blogs, all those written since I last looked at my list on Reader. Yesterday I spent my day at the Drop Zone making three wonderful skydives in the sunshine, which were definitely exciting and fun, but I got behind on my computer tasks, and I never like to miss seeing what my friends have to say and pictures they show me. Of course most of the ones this morning have been about mothers and Mother's Day in general. A couple of them are truly inspiring. My friend Dianne wrote about all kinds of mothers on her blog, and it's well worth going over there and taking a look at the delightful pictures she chose.

When that long-ago picture was taken, obviously by Daddy, I was in diapers and Mama's hair was auburn red. She used henna on her hair in those days, and I can still remember the smell of it when she would treat her long beautiful hair with what looked like mud. She would slather it on and wrap the muddy locks around and around before covering it with a hot towel. She didn't forget her eyebrows, either, and I was fascinated by the process that transformed her from my beautiful mother to a scary creature. She let her hair grow so long at one time that when she braided it into one long thick plait it would wrap around her entire head like a crown. All of these memories of my mother are precious to me, especially now that she's nowhere around any more. It occurred to me the other day that my sister Norma Jean and I are the only ones left who share these memories of our mother. My other siblings are much younger. Perhaps PJ remembers some, but she was born when I was seven, not two as I was when Norma Jean was born.

Today I also think of my two sons who are also long gone from the world. It's just me here with my memories to remember why I still celebrate Mother's Day as a mother. Chris would always call me on my birthday and on Mother's Day, no matter where in the world he was. Or he would visit me, when he lived close by. He never had much money, so he didn't send me cards, which I wouldn't have cared much for anyway; I wanted to see him or talk to him instead, and he understood that. Our family has never been much for holidays that advertisers are anxious to take over to make you buy stuff you don't need. A hand-written card is much more meaningful to me than one with sentiments thought up by someone else. I have memories of "found" bouquets of flowers handed to me in a sticky fist, an offering by my son to his mom. I cherish the memory the way I cherished that little bouquet long ago.

Stephen died so long ago that I have only a few memories that stand out in my mind. He only lived for thirteen months, so he never had a chance to hand me bouquets of flowers, but we loved each other immoderately. I remember days when we would play hide and seek for hours at a time, both of us filled with laughter and delighted with each other. Sometimes I would neglect my household chores and find that most of the day was gone before I would remember. We had so much fun together. I have a memory of a little red wagon that I pulled along with both of my sons in it. Chris in the back and his little brother in front, waving at the passersby. That one pulls at my heartstrings even today and I don't want to go any farther down that memory lane, so I won't.

Mothers are busy in the springtime throughout the entire animal kingdom. Norma Jean has some doves that made a nest outside her bedroom window on top of an air-conditioning box. She can't see into the nest but saw the two parents creating it and now there are at least two little ones in there. I think one of the squirrels that visits my front porch is also looking for extra food for babies. It's that time of the year.

Hummingbird mom with two babies

Sometimes my friends will ask me if it bothers me when they talk about their grandchildren, knowing that I don't have any. You know, I suppose it might if I look at it one way, but I am glad that they share them with me, because all children and babies are precious to me. I don't have to sit on a nest to appreciate the sentiment of the mother bird, and I don't have to be related to a child to value him or her.

Yesterday there were children running and playing in the sunlight while their parents watched relatives who had come to the Drop Zone to make a tandem jump. Families come out to share the excitement of their son or daughter who received a skydive as a graduation present, or to celebrate a birthday, or simply to experience the thrill of a lifetime. But the little ones were a joy to me; they didn't have any idea what was happening with the adults, and they played in the sun as I watched and smiled with them. In many ways, I can enjoy the little ones much more because I don't have to be responsible for them.

They are carefully watched so that they stay out of harm's way, with barriers separating non-jumpers from those boarding the plane. In much the same way that I enjoy children, I also share the excitement of first-time skydivers making a tandem. For a few of them, they will fall in love with freefall as I did and will come back for more. But most will not. It will be an experience that will become a memory to cherish, much as I cherish those I have shared with you today.

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers and those who have or have had a mother. Pretty much covers it, doesn't it?

Super cool week

Snagged from Yahoo News

Last night the light from this incredible moon kept shining in through the windows, making it look like daylight out there. I didn't get up and take any pictures, of course, because that would have meant dressing for the cold and driving down to the bay to get anything really worthwhile. Instead, I climbed back into bed. This event usually occurs once a year; the moon is in its full phase at the same time that it is closest to the earth, and we just happened to have a clear night here. The first in many days. While much of the country has been baking, we have been having temperatures below normal.

From Climate Prediction Center

Yes, this is what happened to us all last winter, too. A strong ridge of high pressure built over the midwest, and we ended up with all the cold. Apparently this is set to change, and it can't be too soon for me. Yesterday I planned to head to Snohomish to make a few jumps, but the weather didn't cooperate; it didn't clear until late in the day. I decided to try again today, and although the temperature is quite cold (36 F), it should warm up in the predicted sunshine. I'll try again today and hope to get my "knees in the breeze" a time or two. I really don't mind the cool weather, especially when I read about some of my blogging friends already having 90-degree temperatures. Of course, a bit of warmth would be more likely to melt the massive snowpack in the Mt. Baker area so we can get some good hikes in during the summer. It's possible that the High Country will not be accessible again, for the second year in a row. But I'll think about that later.

Check it out!

THIS is what has been occupying most of my time and attention this week, though. On Monday morning I ordered myself a new laptop to replace my seven-year-old trusty MacBook. It was beginning to fail and I found myself growing impatient as I waited for things to load. Or hang up and never load. And Smart Guy told me that the hard disk was beginning to fail. This is the first post I've written on this new machine, and I love it, simply love it!

What amazes me is its incredible thinness. I remember when Steve Jobs first introduced it to the world, he pulled it out of an interoffice envelope! Even at the time I gasped with amazement, and I hadn't even seen one in person. Now it's on its second version and a new version is expected this summer. However, I saw that this one is beginning to go on sale to get ready for the new one, and I ordered it online Monday and received it Thursday. That kind of turnaround won't happen when the new version comes out, and I'm perfectly happy with my pretty new toy. It is solid state and has no moving parts, no fan inside, with plenty of connection ports. I put a link under the picture, just in case you are interested in looking more closely at my new gadget. It was seamless to migrate all my pictures and apps from my old one to the new one, so other than being FAST and QUIET, it's like my old laptop, familiar in every way.

You can tell I'm happy with it. Plus I watched a Masterpiece Theater episode on it yesterday, with headphones, and I found the screen resolution astounding. I could never have done that with my old machine, as it was way too slow and would hang constantly. Okay, I'll stop rhapsodizing over my new obsession so I can finish up this post and get ready to go skydiving.

The week has been filled with activity, and yesterday was also our eighteenth wedding anniversary. We were married in freefall, which I wrote about here, and we also celebrated our tenth anniversary by jumping out of a plane together. We won't be doing that on our twentieth, because he's not active right now and I suspect I won't be by the time it rolls around in two years. Skydiving is still fun for me but I see myself moving on to new pursuits. Every day I am grateful that I'm still kicking, jumping, hiking, and having the chance to play in the air. Life moves on, though, and feeling all my aches and pains, I'll be happy to take up knitting again. Someday.