My very own retro:
The dust settled. Richō and I finally made it home. I’ve got a weekend of skydiving at Skydive CA under my belt. Time and space has grown between me and the VWR attempts. It’s probably time to do my own mini-retrospective, look back at the wild-ride that was the VWR Attempts and think my thoughts on it.
What went well – in no particular order…
I touched the fucking formation! I touched it and I am so proud of myself. I fought hard for it! I only got to touch it because I waited right at the elbow of Bert, the person I was docking on, ready to dock. (Bert called me a little mosquito because I was buzzing right in his ear the whole jump.) I didn’t have the luxury of waiting 10 feet back, like people did on other days. My ditter started to scream as I went in to dock and I stayed to take it anyway. Honestly, I think that’s what kept me on the jump because the other first stinger didn’t dock and he got cut the next jump.
The Sebastian Tryout Camp: I liked that I got face time with different organizers each day. I liked that I got my report card that night. I knew that very night that I had an invite. Of all the camps, I felt most in-the-loop with the process at Sebastian
Lot of Tryouts. I went to a lot (AZ, Sebastian, AZ, Houston, AZ 100ways) which helped me feel pretty prepared.
My 1 o’clock Radial Felt Pretty Safe (and noon and 2 o’clock too): Dude, honestly very little wildly sketchy shit happened near me. I loved that. I do feel for the people that dealt with bad plane timing, where their float became a dive, or where the rotating base caused them to have to dive into floaters or float into divers. I’m glad my corner of the sky stayed calm.
I got advocated for! That was really, really cool. Thursday, one of the organizers came up to me and asked me if I wanted to move in, because I’d been flying well. What a golden feeling, to fly your ass of and see the results.
The ground staff at SDC, the pilots flying a killer formation, the mechanics who got LLLT up and going. Tracey. Incredible props to all the people behind the scenes who made this work. People at SDC. Families. Friends. Everyone. What a group effort.
Honestly, the break-offs really felt alright mostly. I really worried about this thanks to all the stories I’d heard from other records. But it wasn’t so bad.
Fresh Meat: I think it was a great sign that there’s a lot of new blood at this thing. It’s neat that there were a lot of people who owed 1st world record attempt beer. That proves there are hungry people out here who want to step up and take the place of the ninjas who are exhausted.
The Party: T’was a blast.
What didn’t go well – in no particular order, again…
Understanding Try-Outs Was Too Much For My Brain: Throughout the process, try-outs were confusing. Going in, having more clarity around how try-outs work would have been easier. How many invites are given out at each try-out? Some people seemed to know this info but how they knew is beyond me. How soon will we hear afterwards? In one AZ camp, I heard some people got an invite email, or a “you’re close, keep trying out” email. When I got neither, I called up the organizers to ask if that meant I was hopeless and should just give up. Is no email a sign you’re not even remotely qualified? Thank god for the Sebastian Camp, otherwise I might have given up out of sheer frustration. In the future, I’m likely only going to Core-run camps.
CA Sector Camps: WTF? Were the Sector camps the same thing as being invited to Echelon? If you weren’t already invited to Echelon, were you unable to get an invite from CA? How exactly did that work? That was incredibly unclear (and like, unbelievably dumb? frustrating? nepotistic?) A friend from NorCal told me that he inquired as to whether he could come to the CA Sector camp listed on the VWR website (which was the Echelon event) and was basically told “Nope.” So, would we say that CA did not have open try-outs? As someone who lives in CA, I was bummed to know I could’t get an invite near home (as I am not lucky enough to count myself among the Echelon invitees) which is why I planned on going to all the other camps to try to get an invite. There was just way too much haziness and obfuscation about how to get an invite in AZ/CA.
There Could Be More Camps: I don’t mean try-outs. I mean camps. Compared to 2021, there were not many random prep-events as other years. In 2021, Fulcrum and Polaris did some great camps in SoCal. I would have loved more of those. There were try-outs, but once you were invited, there were no “training camps”. Would we have gotten closer to success if all the sectors had training? (If the AZ 100ways were any indication, I would say no. That was not confidence-inspiring. So maybe it doesn’t matter that there weren’t as many training opportunities.)
For the Hive: Jesus, that was annoying.
the knife was not sharp enough quick enough: I wish people were sat down for a jump or two when they didn’t perform. That didn’t start happening much until Thursday. A sharper knife earlier would make people really consider what they did right, what they did wrong, and how badly they really wanted it. Selfishly, I wanted it sharper quicker so I didn’t spend so much time just sitting on the outside waiting to do stuff. Maybe I would have been moved in sooner. A rumor that I heard was that the CA/AZ leadership ran the VWR Mon-Weds and that Chicago ran it Thurs-Fri. Man, Idk what was happening Mon-Weds but we were just doing the same thing, on repeat, hoping that things would change. But there was no incentive for people to fly better, because they weren’t really being cut. I wish I’d known that was how it was going to be run; I would have at least felt a little better being a pawn in the how-to-run-a-vwr experiment if I was at least clued into the goings-on.
The Base 🙁 Womp womp. I don’t intend to just rip on the 10 people who were in the base, talking mad shit. They have a job that I don’t envy or want. It’s unforgiving and it’s difficult. But, maybe we should be re-thinking bases. Does it make the most sense to just have the biggest people in the base? Could we put some incredibly strong, if smaller, people there? Are we sure we want the 10 way base? Can we launch an 8way base? Should the base be required to do one or two training camps together in its entirety to really prepare? If someone, regardless of their skydiving resume, manages to blow up the base a time or two, can we remove them from the base? If you blow up the base, is it in good taste to do a celebratory layout over the camera flyer? Please excuse my bitterness; waiting for things to build in the very outermost ring of boondocks, my wallet hurt watching the base sort itself out. (Also, did the base do their own debriefs to help them talk about where the spins/tension/instability was coming from? Were certain pods always harassing the base?)
Sectors/Tribalism: Sectors breed tribalism. I do not like the sectors thing. I did hear a lot of people say “Well I feel more comfortable breaking off with a pod of people I already know.” which is valid. But maybe we need to teach flyers how to make each other comfortable (how to have open conversations about safety/feedback, how to discuss break-offs, how to talk about previous experience). So that then we can be comfortable flying with anyone. Overall, sectors did not help us fly like one team.
Our Bad Attitude about Cutting: At the record and afterwards, I heard rumors of leadership with the mentality that their goal was to not cut people in their sector. No. No, no no. Our goal was to get a record. Our goal should NOT have been to keep your specific players in the game. I heard people voicing their opinion that it was a good thing there were no or few cuts from their sector/state crew. That is simply a poor incentive structure. We should incentivize people to fly their best, to fly so well they won’t need to be cut. We should not be incentivizing people to just not to not get cut. There seems to be a mentality that if you bring “The Right Team” then that directly leads to “No Cuts Necessary”. I disagree so much I want to scream. Even if you bring “the right team,” one of those teammates, one out of 200, is liable to have a bad day. Our leadership should be willing to have the strength to sit down a teammate to keep them accountable to the group, to be flying their best. We as individuals should be ready to sit down if we’re not flying up to snuff. I hear a lot of murmurs suggesting if we brought the right team, we could have gotten a record. (Obviously, the assumption is we brought the wrong team.) I actually think we did bring the right team. We could have definitely built a 170 way. The knife wasn’t sharp enough soon enough.
(Personally, I’m offended that people are saying we didn’t bring the right team. As someone slotted to the very, very outside for the first 3 days, I heard everyone ragging on about the unwashed masses out there in the outer ring, those last-to-dock people. I know that a lot of people on the record assumed that everyone on the outside was just barely qualified to be there, that we were just bodies filling the last slots to get us to the requisite 200. The condescension from some experienced flyers towards people who were on the outside, or people who were doing their first record was pretty disheartening and rather irritating. I practiced hard. I earned my invite before plenty of people on the inside. I flew my ovaries off when I got moved in. As one of the heathens on the outside, I think I deserved just a little more respect. It sucks to hear everyone shit all over you based on the slot you were given.)
Debriefs: I wish we got more info in them. I wish we got inside video and debriefed by sector more. I wish people got called out for the things they were doing wrong
What questions do I still have?
Can we clarify how sharp the knife will be and when will it happen for next time?
Personally, should I advocate for myself more? At the camps? At the record? Would that have changed my experience?
How on earth is P19 going to go? I’m so exhausted from the VWR; what’s going to happen with the 102way? Will those organizers take any learnings from this? Will we have the same problems? What did I learn for myself from this record attempt and how do I apply that to P19?
Will the organizers do a debrief? Will we be privy to that info? That’ll affect how I feel about going round on this merry-go-round again. Let’s be real: I’ll probably do it. But I’d really, really like to know that we have done some thinking and aim to tweak our game plan for the future.
Next year, will the base do more training? Will the inside 50 do more training? Will there be a system of skills camps that are not tryout camps to help bring up our skills? Should I put on some training camps? (I always think about it: about running some single plane shots, or putting on a record attempt somewhere. However, I just never feel like I have the credentials or name recognition for people to actually want to show up and listen to me. Maybe some day.)
How do we improve communication up the chain at the record? My sector captains were also the overall LOs and they seemed crazy busy. My plane captain changed a lot and sometimes, I wasn’t even sure who our plane captain was. (One person was in charge of getting us to the mock-ups before jumping, but someone else was checking us in.)
Are we done with sectors? Please say yes.
How do we address it on record day when very experienced ninjas are just not having a great day? Do we sit them down? Do we talk to them? How do we handle that?
Listen. Sometimes I ask myself: Who am I to be demanding answers? Who am I to be asking for clarity and transparency in the process? I’m new to this record thing. Who am I to be so cocky about how I flew? But honestly, I need to stop that. Sometimes I don’t feel like I get some of the respect I want (and that’s probably just a perception problem on my part). But it doesn’t feel misguided to say that I am a strong flyer, with a great capacity to learn and to perform. I didn’t accidentally stumble my way up the competitive belly food chain, then to just start at the bottom of the freefly ladder and whoopsie my way onto a world record attempt. I sure hope that maybe people listen, because I have a lot to give back to freeflying if I get the chance.
Wrapping up my Thoughts
It makes me pretty sad to hear how put-out so many joyous, enthusiastic skydivers were about it. I was certainly bummed we didn’t get it. It hurts. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a nerd who uses my passwords to motivate me: for a year leading up to the record, my computer password was some kind of motivational phase about getting an invite to the VWR and achieving it. Not getting it sucks. (However, it’s easier than the let-down of doing poorly on a competitive team. On a team, I’m usually 1/5th or 1/9th of the reason we succeed or fail; in this, I was only 1/204th.) I hope this experience helped us all learn a lot more. I hope this lights a fire under our asses to do better in 2025.
All in all, I’m pretty tuckered out; I’m excited for a break and when I say break, I mean not worrying about jumping every day of every weekend on my head trying to remain ultra-current so I would be prepared/wouldn’t get cut from the VWR. I’ll still be jumping plenty; I’ll just let myself do other things. Might try to work on my baby swoops. Might organize a mini-MFS comp locally. Might take a day to go paragliding. My wingsuit canopy should be here soon, so I’ll be playing with that. Might put on the old belly suit and rip around on my tum. Might just hang out at the house doing much-neglected sewing projects. The break will be nice.
But wait! Tamara, don’t you have Project 19? Well, yes, I do. But I’m not worried about that. I’m not part of the inner 40 (and I didn’t get to go to Abu Dhabi, 🙁 womp womp) so there won’t be much pressure. Since I’m not particularly well-acquainted with the organizers, I don’t really anticipate being put very far in. Honestly, my biggest worry with Project 19 is that I can be a bit of a bull-dozer compared to other ladies. I probably ought practice flying a little more delicately before the record so as to not fling anyone out into the stratosphere. Richø’s must be rubbing off on me.