First and foremost. Thank you to my lovely boyfriend. Whose first comment was “NOT EVEN A SINGLE MENTION OF ME?!?” when he read this. And then pouted. Even though I definitely posted something cute on our anniversary. And he did not. And I post other cute things of him on my insta all the time. “But I post about you on my story all the tiiiiime.” he replies. But all of his followers can vouch that he mostly just makes fun of me on his story. So. Thank you to my lovely Richo. My lovely boyfriend. Who constantly wanders around whining at me “Be nice to meeeeee! You’re mean!”. My very cute boyfriend. He brings me along to all sorts of fun activities I probably wouldn’t find myself in otherwise, like the Fluid Wings speed fly event. He comes with me on my adventures, like trying a slow speed tunnel camp. He helps with any event I want to host. He happily will fly an any comp I want. He is my adventure buddy and so very thank you to Señor Butts for an excellent 2023. He’s such a hunk.
Even though 2023 felt like a nothing burger in terms of skydiving, it took going through my calendar from last year to realize I actually did quite a lot. But without it all being under one, unifying goal (like the 200way in 2022), all my disparate activities seemed scattered into the breeze. But here’s what I got up to.
Jumps: 303. Phew. I am glad to see I topped 300 (anything less feels like a VERY slow year) but the year still felt slow anyway. Most of these are freefly jumps, with about 30-50 wingsuit jumps in there, and a dozen or so belly jumps.
Events:
- A week of slow speed dynamic torture with Martin Dedek
- First Fly 4 Life camp!
- Speedflying Camp with Fluid Wings in Utah!
- Cloud Games
- Matt Fry’s experimental bigway event in Perris
- WI Head-up Record!
- Summerfest
- FJC with Chuma
- Women’s CA Head-up Record!
- Took my first canopy course with the intention of learning about swoopz
I also hosted a fair amount of events this year also. Okay, the corny way to say this is that I’m “trying to be the change I want to see in the world”. It’s not that I necessarily want to see change, but I do selfishly want for certain types to exist, so I’ve started trying to put those on. I wanted to see more HU focused jumps so I made the effort to get friends out to the DZ and kinda took charge to get us doing static stuff, with a fair smattering of head up opportunity. I organized an MFS scrambles day. I’ve got a few other future events simmering, percolating. And I organize those because that’s the kinda flying I want to do. I don’t really love angles. I know myself, and I know that I will fall out of skydiving without some structure to my fun.
I also hosted the kind of events that I am glad I had access to. I was lucky enough to come up under the wing of Christy Frikken, who just runs the best events. In addition to regular old events, she will host some with a twist. Like she was cooking up this 4way tunnel comp called like Spy vs Spy, where during a 4way scrambles, everyone would have secret roles. If you were the spy, you had to subtly sabotage your team, but if everyone guessed you were the spy, you lost points. If you get a chance, you should try them out. You can see her love of board games coming through. They’re super neat. Additionally, I benefitted from a lot free or cheap events and organizing for noobs, and it made me better. So I want to provide some structure and coaching for newer people who want to get better. So I hosted a couple events for newer belly flyers at Skydive California, with more to come!
I did some wingsuit jumps in there too. The number of jumps I’ve done this Oct-now probably doubles what I had. Up until this late fall/winter, I probably had 20 wingsuit jumps? And I’d guess I’m up to 40 maybe now! I’m at least not totally petrified when I wingsuit. Ted Chen has been organizing wingsuiting at SDCA which I’ve been doing a bit of. I’m getting to the point where I’m mostly staying with basic skydives. But I still get stressed at pull time. I forget to wad myself into a small ball, and I forget to slow down. And I pitch and I forget to collapse my tail and arm wings. Then my legs are flying wildly toward my riser and I shake all about in my harness. But my Winx opens super on heading so that’s good. My G4 looks AWFUL from the riser slaps. I am baffled that I’m not more sore or beat up after a day of wingsuiting.
I did a smidge of tunnel but less than I would like. I miss Oceanside and when I lived 7 minutes from the tunnel. I miss their scene and the ease of scheduling and the events and the members program. That tunnel is so good. That staff is so good. The people who fly there for fun are so good. The coaches around are so good. It’s just so great. In the last few months, iFly SF Bay has been surprisingly pleasant though. The last couple months have been fairly busy every time I’ve been to the tunnel, especially compared to the handful of times we flew there earlier in the year.
Honestly though, there was just a lot of jumping with my local friends. We had a super wet, cloudy winter last year that I didn’t get jumping until pretty late in the season. And I did spend a lot of time on some other things this year too. It’s weird to have such a slow season for me.
Events Unrelated to Skydiving
For a while, I tried to keep this blog solely about skydiving. But, even though I skydive a lot, that’s a really thin slice of my life. And since I’m less and less inclined to write big posts & do photo dumps on Facebook these days (and Instagram isn’t quite the right medium), I’ve decided to start posting more of my whole life on this website. So here’s some other stuff I got up to this year:
- Worked remotely in South Carolina for a couple weeks @ Myrtle Beach
- Bought a house & tried to figure out pool maintenance
- Acquired another cat (Sid, aka Baby Cat, aka Baby Tiny, aka Six Dinner Sid, aka Chungus-Among-Us, aka Chonkasaurus , aka Baby Chonk)
- Visited & Hiked Glacier National Park for a week
- Solo vacation to Mexico City
- Colorado for family Christmas
Highlights
As probably is expected, Summerfest is high on my list. I have so much fun there. I love love love organizing, and that’s such a high energy event. It’s so chock-full of stoke and talent and fun. Skydive Chicago just puts on an excellent event and I’m so proud and grateful to be part of it. Plus, I really do like the extended period of time to hang out with some of my other friends I never see because they live on the other side of the country. It’s like adult summer camp. I never want to stop going. I will go back and organize until they tell me I’m too old and uncool.
Considering I love me some records, the WI State HU general ranks high up in the list too. That was my first HU record attempts of any kind, and it was my first record! I was so proud of how I flew, plus I love a reason to visit the folks at Skydive Midwest. They are such a fun and welcoming and lovely crew. Highly recommend that you pop in to do some rips there if you can; you’ll have a nice time. Plus, there’s all you can eat sushi fairly close and that’s always a good cloudy day activity. Plus, once I saw a car on fire on the highway near there and that was very exciting.
Secondly, I’d list the Women’s CA HU record up towards the top as well. There’s just something so rad about women’s event. It’s just really cool to see a bunch of other women who have worked hard to get good at this sport work together to accomplish some cool goals. The ones I’ve been to seem to have a lot of positivity and support and all that cheesy cheerleading I both like and am good at. Plus, I really do just like getting my name down in the history books of skydiving, even though it’s a silly, tiny sport, so so so niche. Not even to be remembered, but just to know that at one point, I was part of a superlative group of women who did achieve something that no one else had, up to that point.
Again, Cloud Games shows back up in the top things. It’s just a good time. It’s fun to get some friends together to try our best, even if we have no real hope of doing super well. It’s fun to bring a tiny bit of discipline to my fun jumping, but also a whole bunch of ridiculousness. Every time we’ve done it, mostly I remember how hard we laugh our faces off all day. Because we constantly do dumb stuff, like cork. Or walk the dive wrong and get a bunch of busts. Or throw the SD card out the plane door because you’re a dum-dum. Or brain lock. Or lose the shapes a lot. Or spend a couple skydives absolutely panicking because you don’t have any idea how to fly camera and if you bust the whole round, all your friends might be a little disappointed. It’s a great time! Plus this year, a couple newer teams participated too! It was so fun to see some people dip their toes into the competition madness. The older kids tried to help the newer kids by coaching them on exits, or helping with engineering. I think a lot of people really enjoyed it as well.
Lowlights
Man, I was so disappointed by my slow speed dynamic camp. I tried to keep a positive attitude but I was so let down. I got so little out of it. I was reduced to curling up in a ball on the net and screaming because it felt like such a waste. The style of coaching just did not jive with me. I really, really would like to learn how to fly dynamic but I can never, ever, ever do anything like that again.
New Years Resolutions for Skydiving
- Host 4 events for experienced jumpers at Skydive California
- Host 4 events for newer jumpers at Skydive California
- Attend 4 events for experienced jumpers elsewhere (HU camps, HD camps, sequential events)
- Fly on a trained VFS or MFS team at Nationals
- Go through a rigger course
- Be on the Vertical Sequential world record attempt
- Organize Safety Day at Skydive California
- Do at least 1 day of wingsuiting a month
- At least one HU record try-out
This might be ambitious. Or maybe it’ll all be fine? I just like to have goals. Keeps me from growing moss. But then people come and throw a wrench in things. Literally, Day 3 of the year, someone was like “Wanna do an AFFI course?” and I was like, “Well, obviously yes.” So maybe these will all change. Because I also kinda want to run my first ultra this year. And I’d like to get into pattern drafting in sewing. And I really wouldn’t mind redoing the landscaping in the yard. And picking up roller skating. And trying out some vegan cooking. It’s a lot.
So yeah. Happy New Year. Hello 2024. Let’s go do some neat skydives.
