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Oh my gosh, did Summerfest ever deliver, or what? It absolutely did. I was only there for the first weekend plus a few days. If I’d stayed until the second, my brain would have exploded from awesomeness and then they’d have to be scraping up my gray matter all the way from the Tiki to the hangar.

So, I flew out Thursday to VFS team train at Summerfest. (Gasp! What idiot would do that? Well, jokes on you because it actually went well. More on that later.) And instead of flying home Sunday, I extended my trip for a few more days. I had so much FUN! I did FUN jumps! One of my MOST fun fun-jumps was a no-plan 2-way with an old friend. Literally, the plan: 1. Hold hands 2. Jump out of plane 3. Land safely.

I have not done a no plan jump in… 1000 jumps? 1300 jumps? It’s been since my wahoo days at Byron probably,. Even those had a Mad John plan which generally only 22%-worked but was still a plan. I was actually nervous about having no plan. Where do I put
my feet? (Always Sunny anyone?)

So, obviously, I chattered incessantly on the way up to altitude. I tried not to worry about sucking. How can you suck at a no plan dive? Well, even if I can’t suck at a no plan dive, I’m such a good worrier that I can worry about it. And then it was time. I jumped out of a plane, no plan, and had a killer rip. I forgot the joy of just plummeting to earth and not then dying at the end. What a salve for the soul.

Overall though, I had an awesome time at Summerfest. The Flying V, my VFS team, did 20ish training jumps and we really saw improvement! Since the first weekend of Summerfest is a little quiet, we were able to commandeer LOs and camera flyers pretty easily. Sam Lendle flew video for us once or twice. Nick Nash was flying video for Summerfest and he took some gorgeous footage of us as well, which 1. Helped us see what was happening on our jumps and 2. Gave us some awesome promo footy and stills, making us look super cool. Norman Kent tagged along for a jump with us because who DOESN’T want to fly with 4 talented ladies?

Plus, we got some coaching. Sam debriefed the jumps he did with us and helped us with exits. We had a well-timed weather hold so JRuss sat down with us, debriefed our jumps and then proceeded to drop more VFS knowledge with us for almost 2 hours. Right place, right time.

Plus-plus, we got visibility as a team. Team training at a boogie may make us like like sticks in the mud but we sure do show dedication and fortitude, turning down all the fun jumps we got invited on. Joking aside, I think that says something about dedication to the team. We want to be good.

I got Sunday evening, Monday and Tuesday to just goof around and fun jump. Joey Baker LO’d a tube jump for me and some pals. I fun jumped with some peeps I don’t see so often. I tried flying MFS camera for Seeing Double (half of The Flying V). Holy hell, MFS camera is a blast. [Anyone looking for MFS camera, hit me up. I’m not great but it’s so fun.] We had an amazing sunset load Sunday that was magic and you’re getting that video too. (So much content!)

Really, I’m just pretty pleased. Overall, rad long weekend. Saw a lot of familiar faces from near and far. Met a lot of new faces. While I love my SoCal bubble, it’s also nice to get out and about. Next up, tum team training with Kombucha Punch in Eloy next weekend. Praying I don’t turn into a piece of toast or a melted crayon in the heat.

P.S. I forgot to remove the sound from the videos before I posted to youtube so just deal.

I am writing this on my way to Summerfest, so it vaguely counts as a skydiving post.

I’ve been feeling strung out lately. Strung out on work. Strung out from society’s covid-hangover. Whelmed that I’ve only barely gotten my social feet under me in SoCal despite living there for 9 months. Overwhelmed at trying to navigate the social skydiving scene of SoCal.

I’m tired, embracing the little things in my life that give me a little respite: my garden, my plants. The voices and songs of my hobbies and passions are echoing in my eardrums and getting stuck in my head. The melodies combine and harmonize; instead of hearing isolated songs these days, I’m beginning to hear a symphony. My heart sings a little song every time I visit my garden and drizzle water on my only dependents, my vegetables and herbs. The dry hot southern California wind hums to me as I empty my compost and turn the pile. I listen to books on tape about meditation and healthy diets and Native American biologists talking about Sweet Grass and our relationship to nature. All these topics might seem disparate but underneath them, I feel the rhythm of a synchronous drum beat. I’m tired from trying to figure out how to make these tiny snippets of song in my life into a unifying symphony to which my entire life is an accompanying dance. I’m tired of convincing others that these things matter, that the earth matters. How can plants, the earth, and environmentalism be less of a side-gig and more of the main attraction of my life?

I thought working for a mission-driven company was enough. But you can only ride the high of high-minded benevolence for so long. Even in a company that strives for mental health for all people through mindfulness and meditation, I feel aspects of my own mental health slipping. I feel like the world is insisting that I care about things that I simply don’t: HITRUST, rotated passwords, secrets management, default VPCs, and NACLs. I truly can’t care about HITRUST (HIPAA compliance specifications for software systems). Mostly, because I stop caring when it seems like short-sightedness and willful-ignorance trickles down from the top of the company, landing in a pool of wildly optimistic (and unachievable) deadlines, uninteresting work, excessive toil at my feet. I stop caring when I see lots of other employees fleeing. I stop caring when I see us, as a company, move in the opposite direction of my own person values. I’ve always valued the sanity of my coworkers, eliminating toil, and streamlining the process of moving from code on a laptop to a production level system of software. HITRUST is wearing down the team, creating toil and uninteresting, repetitive work. Unfortunately, the management has decided this is the new charter of my team. I have a hard time staying invested in something so… Utterly boring.

I only just recently realized that I’ve traded clear work boundaries for remote work and unlimited vacation. I’ve traded asynchronous email communication for always-on Slack messaging and on-call rotations. I never really feel like I’m done working. I never feel like I’ve done quite enough at the end of the day when I shut my laptop. It’s like chasing a moving finish line in the race of my career. Or with another race metaphor, it’s like running a marathon but no one can tell you the path or the possible routes to get to the end or even how long the race is. It’s like I’m huffing along, desperately waiting and hoping for that runner’s high, that state of flow, to kick in. I’m watching all those around me slip into flow, follow their passion, and seemingly enjoy their job. I’m watching jealously, and my steps are growing stumbling with the disillusionment I feel. I am once again so far away from the consumer, the user, the person that I’m actually wanting to write software for. I don’t care enough for software itself. I love what it can do for people.

Skydiving is, as always, lovely. But ever since I went through the XPG4 ordeal, I’ve been rather disillusioned and lost. I don’t have a clear goal. I’m trying to attend more events, test out new goals to chase. Project 19? Competitive static freefly? I had a taste of life at the top and I didn’t like the flavor it left in my mouth. Nor do I have a clear way to give back to the community. In Colorado, I organized tunnel belly events, did 1-on-1 belly coaching, and load organized. But now I freefly poorly and drift between DZs. I host no events. I have started to load organize again so maybe that will help. Maybe. But I am a still tiny fish in a massive pond here in California. What do I have to contribute?

I’m also not free to move about the cabin, in the same way I used to be. (Forgive me using an airline phrase. I’m currently on a plane, as I write this.) When you’re dating someone in the same discipline, I guess there are a lot of rules that didn’t exist before. I second guess all my social media posts on now: Am I too proud of accomplishments that are trivial? Do my posts suck? Does anyone care in a skydiving world full of influencers and a feed full of fomo? I never used to worry about that. I’ve never been one to worry too much about whether people like me either. (I always count on them coming around eventually.) But there’s another person who is tied to my reputation now. And I guess I oughta think of him too. While I can agree that an unexamined life isn’t optional, an over-examined life might also be the wrong direction. It sure doesn’t make me sleep any better at night.

But here I am, on my way to Summerfest. On-call blew up as I was arriving at the airport and someone had to sub for me, but I can’t exactly be bothered right now. I’m ostensibly on my way to do team training but really I’m just excited to hang out with some awesome ladies for a weekend. I’m just happy to be venturing out from home, out into the world, away from SoCal, where I’m not required to overthink everything.

So recently, I heard a friend mention she wanted to get better at visualizing and it got me thinking, “Hey, I feel like I’m kinda decent at that.” I haven’t necessarily been trained, but if you multiply the number of team training jumps by minutes in a plane ride to altitude, that ends up being a lot of time that I’ve spent visualizing.

I Have Visualized A LOT

[Let’s conservatively say half of my jumps are team training which is 650 jumps. And let’s say I spend 8 minutes of an Otter ride visualizing. Ten minutes seems realistic but I don’t want to pad my numbers; five minutes seems too short. If my math works out, I’ve spent 87ish hours visualizing. Wow, I am shocked by that number. Plus, that estimation completely leaves out half of my jumps, which isn’t a good representation, as I visualize for fun jumps and jumps at events.]

I also have gone through periods where I visualize 5 minutes a day at home, walking and visualizing skydives. I often do this to prepare for team training camps, a new position, a new team, or some other event that will require seeing a lot of new things in the sky.

Since, I’ve spent a lot of time visualizing, I thought I’d share some notes about my process and what I’ve found works for me.

Side Note: The first time I asked a coach how I should visualize, the answer was “Try something, do it every jump and be consistent about it. Then change it if it doesn’t work.” That was more vague than helpful so I’m going to get very descriptive when I tell you what I do.

Ride to Altitude: Team Training

This is my process for my ride to altitude during team training. I’ve broken it up by altitudes.

0ft – 1,5k (seatbelts off): Breathe

Here, I breathe. Specifically, I breathe in for three, out for three. On the count of one, I breathe into my upper chest. On the count of two, into the sides of my mid-ribs. On the count of three, into my tummy. For the exhale, I reverse that, breathing out of my tummy, then my side ribs, then the upper chest/collar bone region.

Why? Because I have to focus to breathe like that. I want to maintain focus on my breath and only my breath to get calm and steady before I visualize. Plus, when I wear a weight belt, it’s really easy to breath shallowly, so I force myself to breathe deeply with my whole chest. (I use the meditation practice called Noting. Any thought I have unrelated to my breathing, I try to “note” as a thought, and avoid engaging with the thought, diverting my focus back to my breath.)

1,5k – 5k: Visualize the crux

I think about the jump and identify the part that will be the hardest part for me, the crux. In 4way and 8way, that tends to either be a block move or some blind move from one random to another. (For example of blocks, in 4way point’s move on the 22. Or in tail, the 10. In 8way, the three person piece on the 8.)

First, I would not generally conjure an image but keep my mental “vision” blank, thinking about how I engage certain muscles to do that movement. I would “see” blackness, but think about my body moving in an empty space, a void. How do my hip and leg muscles contract? Where are my arms? When is my headswitch? What does my core feel like as I’m arching or hopping someone’s burble? I think about those mechanics a few times.

Then, I envision in my minds’ eye how move looks, generally from the camera flyer’s view. I envision my helmet, my jumpsuit and my shoes in the correct color. I envision my typical flying form as it looks in videos, but doing the move absolutely correctly. For example, I fly with a very uniform arch and wide legs, so I envision me doing the moves with my signature flying tendencies, big arch, wide legs.

Sometimes, my brain takes control and I have to correct it. For example, I’ll try to envision myself doing a 360. However, my brain plays a video in my head of me doing over-rotating, even just a few degrees. Or perhaps my brain shows a video of me me wobbling during a turn, instead of turning smoothly. I have to stop my brain and try again, slowing down the mental video of the move until I see my body doing the move perfectly in freefall.

5k-8k:

Goof off. Joke with my team. Make faces. Stare out the window. Sing a song. Whatever.

8k:

Gloves, put on my helmet and buffs, zip up the jumpsuit.

8,5k-slightly before exit: Visualize the jump

I visualize the entire jump from climb out to pull time, from my view. I visualize the colors. I visualize what my cross partner looks like, their helmet, the emotions on their face. I visualize having to see them over my shoulder if I’m outfacing. I visualize seeing their side or their legs, if they’re in a sidebody or outface position. I think about how I engage my muscles as I do my moves, and what I see as I do that. That includes imagining my grips, my de-arching or arching (depending on whether I’m going over or under on the burble hops), pointing my toes, extending my arms or pulling them in, etc. I even imagine the muscles that will be tired as I do a difficult block. In that view, I visualize one more page than I expect to do (in the past, that was generally 2 or 3 pages).

Then, I visualize the entire jump from climb out to break off, from the view of the camera flyer. I visualize the colors correctly, rigs, helmets and jumpsuits. I visualize perfect points, with the entire team moving, gripping, and releasing in sync. Again, I create that picture in my mind for a couple of pages.

Door!

Jump out and do it.

Tada! That’s it!

Those are the basics of how I visualize team training jumps. I’ve tried my best to capture my process clearly; it’s a rather abstract thing, like trying to describe your dream, or the precise way your brain assembles thoughts and memories. If you have any questions, I would be happy to chat.

This post has gotten pretty long, so I’ll continue this post next week. In that post, I’ll cover how I visualize at events or on fun jumps, which tend to be much less predictable than team jumps. I’ll also cover how I visualize when I’m not in the plane on the ride to altitude, as that is different for me as well.

Until next week, toodles!

What has happened to me?

What has happened to me? Seriously. I have been trying and failing to write a blog for hours. Everything I type morphs into an insipid truism: “What an amazing camp!”, “I’m so humbled and pleased to be part of this group!”. Which are true, but bland.

Why am I worried about whether my blog is boring? What happened to the colorbarf that would write a blog about whatever came to mind, come hell or high watermelon? I’m not sure, but it sure does bum me out. I ought to shake this self-censorship business; it’s bad for creativity.

All I want is write a post about how much this weekend meant to me, sans writers’ block…

But the blog keeps ending up too boring, not documenting anything of worth. Or my other drafts turn into a dramatic saga about “switching from belly to freefly” (which HAS been fraught with insecurity and much eating of humble pie). Eesh, I’m strangely sanitizing my own opinions. Apparently, I have taken to heart the ever-present raking-over-the-coals that skydivers do to each other. It’s that low-grade grilling; someone posts too much, or too little. Their posts are too humble-braggy, or too sophomoric, or too much something else. Oof, when did I start worrying about what people though about this blog. Yuck.

I’ll just type up this blog as fast as I can and hope I don’t overthink it.

Last weekend was superb!

It was a dream. I had a blast. I want to fly bigway practice again and again and again.

Polaris (minus Katie who had to miss the event) put on an Intro To Bigway type camp at Perris. Two-plane shots of 17ish ways the first two days, working up to a third day of two plane shots of 30ish ways. 30ish ways doubled my biggest head down skydive!

I am thrilled to be allowed to attend at all. All weekend, my brain kept asking, “Damn, how did I get into this?”. Then I reminded myself I’ve been working my tush off lately to get here. But still, I feel honored when organizers trust me do be safe and do my job at an event like this. I like to think I reaffirmed their decision to let me attend. 

And folks, the people, the PEOPLE, made my weekend.

The organizers obviously make or break a camp, so the good experience started at the top with them. The good vibes trickled down from there. The coaching: stellar. The briefs and debriefs: thorough. The level of jokes/happy-fun-times to seriousness: perfect. I felt set up for success, but also challenged. That’s a tricky line to walk.

And the organizers enticed an awesome group of attendees. 

So many funny, welcoming people, so many talented flyers, came from far-flung locations for this weekend. I feel like a dorky kid after summer camp, wanting to tell all the funny stories about all my new friends from camp. _{(And, the event was in my backyard. I guess, once again, that’s the beauty of SoCal.)} After events, I spend far too much time debating whether I should add people on Facebook and/or follow them on Instagram. Am I being overzealous? Overly friendly? Too chipper and over-eager? But, I’m trying to fight that instinct and just add them. I had such a great time meeting these people; I sure hope they know that I thought they were the bees knees.

I have a skydiving hangover.

I constantly check the socials, hoping to find cool photos or videos of the event. I check my calendar. I scheme about upcoming events. I want to do anything but work. I just want to think about skydiving and talk about skydiving and go skydiving after an event that good. (Fortunately, I had a badass tunnel session Monday to follow it up, so that helped.)

But, but, the final but: I feel like I can’t go spouting off how much stoke and hype is bursting out of me. 

Because someone who wanted to go, couldn’t make it. 

And I don’t want to rub their face in it. For their sake, I feel like I oughta contain how thrilled I am, trying not to relive the weekend in all its glory constantly. Nothing sucks worse than hearing about how fun a party was that you couldn’t go to.

How do you spare someone’s feelings while also communicating your gratitude to everyone who made this camp awesome? For now I’ll just cross my fingers and hope this blog walks that line, but it probably doesn’t. Maybe they just won’t read it. 

Whoa! Back to blogging, after a year or longer! Why the long hiatus? 1) I got my mitts on the colorbarf.com DNS finally instead of just colorbarfskydiving.com and wanted to move my blog. Then I realized I didn’t want to do the research to figure out exactly how to migrate only some portions of my old wordpress database to my new self hosted wordpress database. In short, I’m lazy about my tech projects when they’re on my own time. 2) The whole world got weird and turned upside down because coronavirus.

So what’s happened?

In late 2019, I got onto a very high-end women’s 4way FS team for an indoor season. The team and I parted ways (long story, ask me later) but I guess I got a gold medal out of it and a discounted G4 with fancy side plates to remember the experience by. I learned a lot about teams, flying tail, and where there’s an excellent nail salon in Raeford, NC.

Early 2020, I got invited onto another women’s 4way team with one of my very, very best friends in skydiving, based out of Skydive Elsinore. We planned to figure out training around this new, unfolding coronavirus situation. Coronavirus got worse. My very, very good friend died. That was all just too much for me, so I stepped down from the team.

Mid-year, I lived in Iowa for a few months with my parents and did no skydiving. With no team and a directionless feeling, I reflected on skydiving a lot. I learned to juggle. Largely related to my experience on the high-end women’s team, I swore off belly flying.

In the summer, I moved back to Colorado. I fun jumped a little with my Colorado peeps. I floundered through learning how to be headdown in the sky. (Before joining the indoor women’s team, I flew a good chunk of freefly tunnel time in Utah at the end of 2018 and finally decided to put it to use in the air.)

Late this year, I moved back to SoCal. Since then, I have kept blundering through becoming a freeflyer, which just about gets us caught up to today.

Anything else? Not really. I’m honestly not sure what I have to add to the skydiving conversation these days. It’s pretty saturated; everyone has lots of opinions about skydiving. Mine aren’t really so novel as to need a blog to share them. Plus, people keep telling me my loud mouth gets me into trouble. It’s the only mouth I have though.

But, in the end, I’m paying for the domain name so I sure as hell am going to at least have a website on it.